KSHMR’s Tigerlily Collab Accused Of Plagiarism

KSHMR‘s recent collaboration with Australian DJ Tigerlily was hyped pretty heavily in the weeks leading up to its September 5 release, with the producer taking to social media on a few occasions to preview the then upcoming single. The track has only been out a few days and has already been climbing the Beatport charts, but KSHMR’s latest collab has found itself the center of some bad press following allegations of plagiarism over a similar track from Israeli artist Jango.

The controversy stems from a tune dubbed “IndiRasta” which was released four months ago by Jango and features the same vocal sample and what many feel is a similar bassline. Fans have taken to online forums to voice disapproval over the perceived plagiarism, landing KSHMR and Tigerlily in some hot water among some listeners.

You can compare the two songs below.

While the similarities seem a bit uncanny, the shared vocal sample can at least be written off to chance as it was pulled from the same sample pack by both artists. The bassline as well sounds nearly the same, but KSHMR has defended his production on social media, stating that any shared likeness is due to pure coincidence while maintaining that he was unaware of Jango’s song until the controversy came to light.

I’ve seen a lot of comments about Invisible Children and the track IndiRasta by Jango. Here I will clear the air: First of all, I agree — they sound alike. This is mainly because we used the same vocal sample from the Indian Vocal Sessions sound pack. We also used a similar bassline, which even to me is strange. But I promise you, it’s just coincidence. I never heard Jango’s track until Invisible Children came out and people alerted me. It is true that artists of stature often profit from the ideas of others… But that is not me. All respect to Jango, you can find his Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/jangomania/ -KSHMR

A photo posted by KSHMR (@kshmr) on Sep 7, 2016 at 8:00am PDT

Jango has written the similarities off as coincidence as well, taking to the SoundCloud player for “IndiRasta” to state “it’s just a huge coincidence … the project was on my computer the whole time and no one stole it.” While the two songs have some definite parallels, it looks like the speculations of plagiarism are just that.