The Weeknd Sued For Allegedly Sampling 'The Hills' From Sci-Fi Film Illegally

He scored a whopping seven Grammy nominations just days ago, but Canadian R&B singer The Weeknd has found himself in a sticky situation since being accused of illegally sampling a score from 2013 sci-fi flick The Machine for his hit song The Hills. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a film financier based in the UK has filed a copyright infringement against The Weeknd, real name Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, and in court papers filed in federal court yesterday, Cutting Edge Music Limited is suing Tesfaye, his producers and labels including Universal and Warner Chappell.

The key factor Cutting Edge Music are using as evidence in the case is an alleged message posted on Twitter by  Emmanuel "Mano" Nickerson, who produced the track, directed to Tom Raybould, who scored the British film. 

According to court documents, "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!'"

Further more, the company allege that "Both the Infringing Song and the Track featuring synthesizer bass-lines performed with almost identical idiosyncratic sounds at the same register and using the same pitch sequence, melodic phase structure and rhythmic durations."

Read the documents in full here.

The Weeknd is yet to publicly comment on the matter.

The Hills peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this year and cracked the top ten in Australia, UK, Ireland and New Zealand.