Even though he received seven Grammy nominations earlier this week, The Weeknd is facing some major trouble in the form of a lawsuit.
The copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in court on Wednesday. According to Mashable, the suit claims that The Weeknd AKA Abel Tesfaye "took a bass line without permission" from a 2013 sci-fi film entitled "The Machine."
The New York Times reports that the lawsuit filed in the United States District Court in Los Angeles by Cutting Edge Music on behalf of Tom Raybould, the man who wrote the music for the film's soundtrack.
The complaint states that one of the soundtrack's tunes, "Revolution" has a very similar bass line to The Weeknd's "The Hills," having "almost identical idiosyncratic sounds at the same register and using the same pitch sequence, melodic phase structure and rhythmic durations."
Furthermore, the lawsuit also claims that one of The Weeknd's producers, Emmanuel Nickerson AKA Million Dollar Mano, sent a direct message to Tom Raybould via Twitter, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
"On or about March 9, 2015, Defendant MANO sent Raybould a Twitter direct message stating 'I sampled your music might make it 2 the weeknd next album. Huge fan of what u did 4 the machine movie!'"
If the direct messages are deemed authentic, then the message "never translated into any formal credit or compensation" for both Cutting Edge Music and Tom Raybould, as per The Verge.
The plaintiffs are "claiming copyright infringement as well as unjust enrichment and is demanding damages as well as a permanent injunction" against the defendants: The Weeknd, his producers and music record labels Universal, Warner Chappell, Sony/ATV and others.
Read the full complaint here.
The Weeknd's camp, and representatives of Republic Records - which is The Weeknd's label - declined to comment on the recent news.