Back in 2019, Ariana Grande was on the come up after her broken engagement to comedian Pete Davidson. Like many before her, Grande was turning her broken heart into some amazing music and plenty more success.
However, things weren’t all peachy in the artistic department for Grande, specifically when it concerned her song ‘7 Rings’. The song and the music video were both smash successes, not everyone was on board with it. Particularly, New York-based rapper Princess Nokia took to Twitter to share her thoughts on where the song came from.
Although the song in question was written not just by Grande, but also by her songwriting team, consisting of Victoria Monét, Tayla Parx, Njomza Vitia and Kaydence, the rapper accused Grande of stealing both the lyrics and the beat from her song, ‘Mine’, which appeared on her album 1992.
Nokia posted a video of herself listening to the song and saying, “Doesn’t that sound familiar? Ain’t that the little song I made about brown women and their hair? Sounds about white.”
This beef was relatively one-sided, as it seems that Ariana Grande didn’t respond or acknowledge the claims of plagiarism, which might make a bit of sense considering she didn’t write the song on her own, and the similarities could very well have come from another member of her songwriting team.
Even though Princess Nokia seemed to be quite outspoken about the issue at the beginning, she herself deleted the tweet when a producer exposed her for stealing that same song from Kali Uchis. It seems that even with these controversies, some of these things can simply be chalked up to coincidence.
Ariana Grande was also accused of stealing the song from other artists, including Soulja Boy and 2 Chainz. Again, with so many writers on the track, this could be a simple coincidence, as the song follows a relatively simple hip hop beat and flow.
However, the lyrics are a bit harder to argue with, as ‘7 Rings’ goes “I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it/ You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it/ I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it,” in a very similar flow to ‘Mine’, where Princess Nokia sings, “It’s mine, I bought it/ It’s mine, I bought it/ It’s mine, I bought it.”
If you want to be the judge of the controversy yourself, you can compare the two songs and see what you think. As for the two artists, it seems that they haven’t spoken since the incident in question.
