While the world is enjoying J. Cole’s fourth album 4 Your Eyez Only which released today, a pretty remarkable story of theft is coming off the back of it.
Upon first hearing the LP, fans have been wondering why the track “De Ja Vu” uses a nearly identical instrumental to Bryson Tiller’s hit “Exchange“. Producers of Cole’s version, Boi-1da and Vinylz, have taken to Twitter to clear up the confusion.
They allege that the producer of Bryson’s version – Foreign Teck, one half of production duo The Mekanics – heard an early version of their beat on a video recording and straight up stole it.
Vinylz wrote on Twitter, “It was stolen from us by a thief named @ForeignTeck Cole song was recorded before exchange. I sent this thief a video of me making the Deja Vu beat..a week later he post a beat on ig with the same drums. I made him take it down.”
See the tweets for yourself below. Stream J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only here.