Ice Spice. Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images.
Rapper Duval Chamberlain and producer Kenley Carmenate (aka D.Chamberz and Kass the Producer) have sued Ice Spice for copyright infringement, TMZ first reported and court documents confirm. Chamberlain and Carmenate allege that the popular Bronx MC — along with her frequent producer RIOTUSA — copied their song “In That Mood” to create “In Ha Mood,” the third and final pre-release single from her January 2023 debut EP, Like..??. Along with Ice Spice and RIOTUSA, the lawsuit names Capitol Records, 10K Projects, and their parent company, Universal Music Group, as defendants.
“The similarities between ‘In Ha Mood’ and the Work [‘In That Mood’] — including the key phrase used in the chorus and repeated in a substantially similar manner numerous times throughout both songs — are such that it is simply not reasonable to believe that ‘In Ha Mood’ could have been created without having heard the Work first,” Chamberlain and Carmenae’s attorney Chester Chester R. Ostrowski writes in an initial complaint, filed on Wednesday in New York federal court.
Chamberlain and Carmenate first teased “In That Mood” on Instagram in August 2021, according to the complaint’s timeline. The track then briefly appeared on streaming services early the following year (“in connection with licensing for an advertising campaign that never ran”) before being released on D.Chamberz’s summer 2022 album Boom Bap 2 Drill Rap. More importantly, Ostrowski argues, Chamberlain performed the song “no less than 36 times” and has reason to believe that Ice Spice, RIOTUSA, “and/or members of their creative teams were present” during at least one of those performances prior to the inception of “In Ha Mood.”
The plaintiffs also point to an Instagram video RIOTUSA posted on November 15, 2021 of Ice Spice’s “No Clarity” playing on Hot 97. Per the claim, which cites another Instagram video posted by Chamberlain the same night, the New York radio station played “In That Mood” mere minutes later, “making it a virtual certainty that Riot actually heard In That Mood more than a year before In Ha Mood was first created and published.”
The FADER has reached out to Ostrowski and to representatives of Ice Spice and UMG for further comment.
