Dua Lipa Sued Again for 'Levitating'

Dua Lipa is facing yet another lawsuit over her 2020 hit single "Levitating." Music producer Bosko Kante on Monday filed a multi-million-dollar copyright claim against Lipa and Warner Music Group alleging he never gave the singer permission to use his "talk box" recording in remixed versions of the song.

In the lawsuit, filed in a federal court on Monday, July 31, per Billboard, Kante claims he was approached by Stephen Kozmeniuk, one of producers of "Levitating," about creating a talk box performance that would be incorporated into the song. A talk box is a decades-old device that allows musicians to apply speech sounds onto the sounds of an instrument, with Kante calling, who launched a company called ElectroSpit in 2014 and who has contributed to talk box performances for Kanye West and Big Boi, calling himself one of the world's top artists on the talk box. Kante says in the suit he did the talk box performance for "Levitating," and eventually reached an oral agreement that the track could be used in the song. He did not, however, give permission for the song to be used in future remixes, including the remixes with by DJ The Blessed Madonna, one with rapper DaBaby and another that Lipa performed live.

"All three remixes sampled and incorporated a greater amount of plaintiff's work than that used in the original version," Kante's lawyers wrote in the suit. "Defendants did not seek or receive any authorization or permission to use the composition or sound recording of plaintiff's work from plaintiff."

The lawsuit adds, "Plaintiff made numerous attempts to resolve this matter short of litigation, but such efforts were unsuccessful, due to Defendants' unwillingness to cooperate or accept responsibility for this blatant infringement of Plaintiff's copyrights." According to the BBC, the lawsuit claims Kante is entitled to more than $20 million.

The legal action marks the third lawsuit over "Levitating," which spent 77 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart after debuting in 2020. In March 2022, Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System filed a lawsuit alleging the song copied the hook of their 2017 track Live Your Life. The case was dismissed in June. In another ongoing case, songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer claim Lipa used their melody from the 1979 song "Wiggle And Giggle All Night." The case has not yet gone to court. Neither Lipa nor Warner Music Group have publicly addressed Kante's lawsuit.