Have you heard of the up-and-coming singer/writer/producer/original talent of bbygirl! Currently, he/she/they/who knows is killing it with 3 million plus monthly listeners on Spotify alone, each cut racking up millions of plays and even more on TikTok. No??? Me neither. Thousands of "Sped Up" and "Slowed + Reverb" versions of covers for hundreds of songs spamming Spotify nearly every week, and the thing linking them all? Not a single one shares the same vocalist and are labeled as a "cover." Usually the vocals are painfully mediocre or off-key at several points, the instrumentals' quality changes drastically, and every cover art is some young teen e-girl/IG post. They also don't credit anyone involved, and only sometimes crediting the original writers of the songs they're "covering."Note: I'll be uploading every bbygirl song referenced here to Pillowcase so you can hear them yourself, I don't want to give this person any plays.
What brought this on? My partner. They told me about "this amazing Latin version" of Don Toliver's "No Idea" that they believe is better than the original by miles. Where did they find this version? TikTok. It was a trending sound that day, I guess, because they said multiple people were using it. I thought that was strange because I'm pretty sure if there was an official "Latin version" of "No Idea," me or anyone on here would have heard about it at some point. What they played for me didn't even sound like Don Toliver, but my partner could not tell the difference (This will be important later).
So what was this? bbygirl's "no idea (latin version) - remake cover" is a stolen song, as are every other song on this person's account. They don't post anywhere except to streaming. If they do have any socials, it's hard to find them seeing as their name is just "bbygirl." But I was able to find the original version of this Latin "No Idea."
Originally an unofficial remix uploaded to SoundCloud and YouTube, producer CalixtoIVy has formed a small but steady following across multiple platforms, except streaming. Calixto is known for making "but it's Latin" remixes of popular songs, like Joji's "SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK," Baby Keem & Kendrick Lamar's "Family Ties," and Metro Boomin's "Around Me" to name a few examples. Besides the remixes, he posts the instrumentals he makes for them and also produces original material for a few people. The posting the remix instrumentals is the key part here as one he uploaded on SoundCloud was his Latin remix of "No Idea," which currently sits at 173,000 plays and shares an awful lot of similarities with bbygirl's "No Ideas." If you have any doubt about who stole from who, Calixto's instrumental was uploaded April 2, 2023 and bbygirl's cover was released on April 19, 2023.
This discovery was shocking to me. I knew there were people exploiting streaming platforms for easy money, but I never expected plagiarism on a mass scale in the way bbygirl is doing it. Every cover has a sped up version, a slowed down version, a sped up + reverb version, and a slowed + reverb version. I thought someone at some point would step in to sue the hell out of them, but then I saw that "No Idea" had a copyright tag from Don Toliver himself. But I'll spoil it for you, that doesn't mean anything. Streaming distributers give artists the option to credit different people and labels for the copyright; if it was actually cleared by Don Toliver, it wouldn't say "Don Toliver," the copyright would be attributed to Atlantic Records, Cactus Jack and We Run It Entertainment. I played the remix, its instrumental and bbygirl's version in Audacity to see the waveform differences and quickly jump between them. One hitch came into the equation: bbygirl's version was different, but not by much. All three files had the same drums, percussion and bass, and that's where the similarities end because bbygirl's version has cleaner, louder synths and a more "blown out" (my partner's words) master. I was actually kind of amazed that the instrumentals weren't one-to-one as this confused me. Calixto's instrumental has a high end cutoff over the synths, so bringing them out with such clarity would be impossible just from the low quality SoundCloud rip. The only explanation I could come up with was that either bbygirl managed to recreate every detail of Calixto's remix except the synths, or bbygirl contacted Calixto for the stems. Looking at all three in Spek wasn't all that revealing though, as bbygirl's didn't quite look 320kbps but definitely was fuller compared to Calixto's remix and instrumental, which I ripped from YouTube and SoundCloud respectively so I knew those were 128kbps.
What makes this situation even worse is that people like my partner (average people) can't tell the difference between what is official or not, kinda like what Sony is doing with their Morbius/Madame Web/Venom universe-thing: Pumping out crap that is vaguely related to the real thing (that being the MCU, in this example) and muddying what the common consumer associates with that brand. Unless you're a chronically online dork like me or half the people here (no offense), you're not gonna tell the difference, nor are you gonna care enough to be educated on something so trivial in the grand scheme of everything.
If you needed a better example of the blatant theft (and one that'll probably hit home for some people here), look no further than bbygirl's biggest song, "bando (sped up + reverb)." Not only does it credit the copyright to Playboi Carti, but the phonographic copyright reveals bbygirl's streaming distributer, Afterpeak Music Group. "bando" itself isn't performed by Carti, the vocals are instead being performed by some (sadly) unknown rapper that bbygirl probably hit up on Fiverr. Their "sped up + reverb" version has also been re-uploaded three separate times; once in 2017, then 2019 (these dates will make this complicated as bbygirl's unaltered "cover" wasn't released until 2023), and then in 2023.
So what is "bando" though? The song "bando" is actually a pretty well known remix of Playboi Carti's "Fuck It Up" aka "Did It Again," an unreleased throwaway (leaked August 26, 2019) song produced by Pi'erre Bourne for Whole Lotta Red v1, that ta2cute and YUGEN aka empireofyu remixed/mashed up with Piero Piccioni's "Amore Mio Aiutami." I was so sure bbygirl had stolen from these two until I saw that bbygirl had released the sped up version twice before. bbygirl's versions also follow the vocal structure of ta2cute and YUGEN's remix and not the initial leak.While looking for more of bbygirl's "music," I also uncovered that they are not the only one doing this formula. Check out slo, twilight and Tazzy's "bando - slowed + reverb." Seeing this other version by three people I'd never heard of until this point, I was even more confused. I was so sure I'd figured out the pipeline of ripping off creators' works for easy streaming money but now I don't know who's stealing from who. But I did figure out that ta2cute and YUGEN aren't the original idea guys in this little rabbit hole. That title belongs to Octomber (I think). Having released "Bando," an instrumental remix of "Amore Mio Aiutami" with ZickCovers in 2021, this is currently the oldest iteration of this "Playboi Carti x Piero Piccioni" concept without somehow doing time travel.
The timeline didn't make any sense to me as the first bbygirl-slowed version was released in 2017/2019/2023, the actual Carti leak was in 2019, Octomber's beat was released in 2021, then ta2cute & YUGEN's remix was released mid-2022, and finally, bbygirl's un-edited cover (following ta2cute/YUGEN's structure) was released in 2023. What the hell is happening???
Turns out, Octomber's release dates were bullshit. TikToks featuring the beat didn't start popping up until 8-10 months ago. The same goes for bbygirl's versions. T&Y's remix is also pretty different from Octomber's, but bbygirl's is very similar to T&Y's remix. This means that these fucking assholes plagiarizing and stealing material from unknowns know full well what they are doing and are actively trying to hide it by changing the metadata to make it look like they are the originators.
What can you or anyone do about this? I don't know, to be honest. It's such a massive empire of concealed fraud that streaming platforms profit from, so I know nobody in the mainstream or even mid-stream would talk about it. Technically, this article is useless besides bringing some minor attention to a growing issue. Which is sad as an artist looking in.
This is a symptom of the TikTok trend to release a sped up/slowed down version of every song to streaming, an egregious example being French Montana's Mac & Cheese 5 which got the original album, a deluxe album, then the acapellas, instrumentals, "sped up" and "slowed" versions, clean versions of all of those, and finally a "Versions" album combining everything (about 13 releases on streaming total). This is a plague that I hope dies out in the next 5 years because I know it will only get worse in the next year or two.
March 08 Update: GloRilla is now the most recent victim of this kind of theft. Someone on Spotify named "SkitzU" uploaded her song, "Yeah Glo!" to streaming and that "version" is what's going viral. But she isn't the only one.
SkitzU has also stolen music from Jhonni Blaze (her song "Ratchet"), Apollo G (his song "Si K Sta"), and BbyAfricka (her song "Mango Sticky Rice"). SkitzU also uses A.I. generated artwork for their "releases." The original artists are credited on each release, but if you click on their name it'll just bring you to a dead account with the same profile picture as SkitzU. This is done to hide unassuming TikTok users from the reality that they are listening to stolen material, yet SkitzU doesn't even bother editing the song to make it a little bit different, it's just a direct lift of the original track.
You may not like any of these artists, but that doesn't mean they deserve to have their original music stolen from them.
P.S. This is not an actual guide. And if anyone can find the secret message written in this blog, I'll give you like a cookie or sumn.
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