American artist Oliver Tree has called out Christian Breslauer, the director of The Kid LAROI‘s video for new single ‘Thousand Miles’, accusing Breslauer of copying multiple shots from his own videos.
Last week, Tree took to Instagram, sharing a video that compared scenes from LAROI’s ‘Thousand Miles’ with sections from the clips for his songs ‘Miracle Man’, ‘Hurt’, ‘Alien Boy’ and his Lil Yachty collaboration ‘A$$hole’.
“Kid LAROI’s new music video copies multiple shots from my videos. As an underground indie artist who writes and directs their own music videos, I am so sick of big artists ripping me off,” Tree says during the Instagram video.
“Now, I know it’s not Kid LAROI’s fault, so I looked into the director, and it turns out this dude follows me on Instagram. Coincidence? I think not.”
It is not known if Breslauer has seen Tree’s video.
Since uploading the comparison clip to Instagram and TikTok, The Kid LAROI’s posts about the ‘Thousand Miles’ video have been flooded with comments from fans accusing the singer of stealing concepts for the video from Tree.
Now, speaking to Rolling Stone, Tree has since elaborated on the similarities between the videos. “The exact same frame, the exact same ambulance, the exact same thing. It just seemed a little bit odd that even the framing is exactly the same,” the he told the publication.
“It’s all about taking something that exists and flipping it and doing something new, but you got to be smart about it,” Tree added.
The songwriter continued that he had decided not to pursue legal action against Breslauer or LAROI, and that while he wasn’t “trying to ruin the guy’s career”, he did want to raise awareness around the issue of smaller artists having their work used as inspiration for more prominent acts.
Neither Breslauer nor The Kid LAROI have commented on the perceived similarities. NME has reached out to a representative for LAROI.
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