Childish Gambino Wins Plagiarism Lawsuit For “This Is America”
Childish Gambino racked up a victory in the court of law this week over his 2018 hit “This is America.” A New York judge ruled in favor of the 39-year-old, saying it was not plagiarized.
Donald Glover was originally sued in 2021 by a rapper named Kidd Wes, who said the actor stole his 2016 record “Made In America.” Wes went through the process of copyrighting the track in 2017, and claimed the 3.15.20 artist stole his flow and ripped him off. AllHipHop reports that the judge presiding over the case felt otherwise, specifically given the fact Wes secured a copyright for the recorded version of “Made In America” but not the actual music itself.
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“Even if Kidd Wes had a copyright registration for the composition of Childish Gambino’s Composition, however, dismissal would be warranted here because the elements of Childish Gambino’s Composition purportedly infringed upon are insufficiently original to warrant protection, or because they are not substantially similar to the Challenged Composition,” Judge Victor Marrero stated via court records.
While that situation ended positively for the eclectic rapper, he recently caught fire on the television front for how he handled Dominique Fishback and her character, Dre, on his new show Swarm. Glover admitted that he intentionally did not provide her with a backstory on Dre because he felt it was not necessary during an interview with Vulture.
“I kept telling her, ‘You’re not regular people,'” he said. “‘You don’t have to find the humanity in your character. That’s the audience’s job.'” He even encouraged Fishback to think of Dre as an animal and not a human being.
