Mithoon, Mohit Suri want due credit for their hit song that American rapper T-Pain has allegedly plagiarised
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 17, 2018)

Not long after American rapper T-Pain released his new song, “That’s Yo Money”, on Friday, social media users pointed out that it bore an uncanny resemblance to Mithoon’s composition “Tum Hi Ho”. The Hindi chartbuster was a part of Mohit Suri’s 2013 directorial Aashiqui 2 and had featured its leads, Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur.

Soon enough, Mithoon got wind of the development and tweeted to T-Pain, saying, “Sir, the melody that you have used in your new song is my original work for a previously released Hindi film. The (music) label is looking into this.” Following this, Bhushan Kumar, who heads T-Series, the label behind the Hindi song, got T-Pain’s video pulled down from the video-sharing site YouTube citing copyright infringement. “Woke up to getting dragged by brown Twitter. Sooooo yea. I definitely didn’t produce this song. Had no idea that was a sample and have never heard the music before I got the beat from the producer. Easy thing to work out. The labels will be in contact,” T-Pain shrugged off the issue.

When Mirror contacted him, an upset Mithoon said that the new song was brought to his notice by his filmmaker-friend Mohit, who called saying that their song had been used by a global artiste. “I knew that ‘Tum Hi Ho’ has influenced many artistes across the world, but I was surprised to see such a blatant lift and without credit. I checked with the music label and was told that it had been done without legal permission. It was disappointing. If someone wanted to use the song, they could have done it the right way. I’m glad to see the support we have been getting on the social media,” the composer stated.

He added that the music company would be taking legal action now. “The song is a part of the lives of many Indians who are sentimental about it. ‘Tum Hi Ho’ belongs to the country and it is important to highlight that,” he asserted.

Mohit was in New York when the plagiarism was brought to his attention by one of his friends. “Mithoon doesn’t want to capitalise on this, he only wants credit,” the filmmaker signed off