Oliver Tree feels that The Kid LAROI‘s new video for the track “Thousand Miles” steals from his own video for his collaboration with Lil Yachty, “A**hole.”
In a tweet last week, Tree posted multiple clips from the “Thousand Miles” video that seem to be copied exactly from the “A**hole,” including shots of both Tree and LAROI being dragged down the street on their backs and being hit by an ambulance. Both visuals also feature a falling piano, and shots of both Tree and LAROI sprawled on the ground in near-identical poses.
Tree, who directed the “A**hole” video, further expands on the copying allegations in a new interview with Rolling Stone.
“The exact same frame, the exact same ambulance, the exact same thing,” Tree says. “It just seemed a little bit odd that even the framing is exactly the same.”
Tree feels the fault lies with “Thousand Miles” director Christian Breslauer, who Tree notes follows him on Instagram. Breslaur, who’s directed videos for artists including Doja Cat and Lil Nas X, wrote in his own Instagram post last week that he “only had a week” to create the “Thousand Miles” video, which makes Tree even more suspicious.
“It’s a lot easier to just build off the things that already exist and flipping it than doing something new,” Tree says.
Tree says he hasn’t heard from either LAROI or Breslauer, and neither responded to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment. The “Life Goes On” artist adds that he’s not planning to take legal action, but wanted to speak out in support of other smaller artists who also feel they’ve been copied.
“My contributions just get buried under the rug, which is something smaller artists feel all the time,” he says.
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