Leon Bridges and Noah Cyrus Stolen Art Controversy

About

Leon Bridges and Noah Cyrus Stolen Art Controversy refers to the art created by OAKAI which was commissioned by Jeffrey Hidy and made the album art for the remix of "July" by Noah Cyrus featuring Leon Bridges in November 2019. Jeffrey Hidy claimed the art as his own and in January 2020 OAKAI reached out to Twitter to regain credit.

Origin

On November 8th, 2019, Leon Bridges posted a promotional clip for the remix using OAKAI's art (shown below, left). The post gained over 10,600 likes in two months. On January 6th, 2020, Twitter user @OAKAIARTS^[1] tweeted, "Today, I found out one of my customers had passed off MY work as his own. A thread. [ left pic is the original work i’d sent to him. The right is HIS post ]" (shown below). The tweet garnered over 108,700 likes and 43,600 retweets in two days.

Spread

On January 6th, 2020, Twitter user and artist @OAKAIARTS^[2] tweeted that Jeffrey Hidy blocked them but originally contacted them to commission "a piece for his friend’s birthday" (shown below, left). The tweet accumulated over 10,500 likes in two days.
OAKAI^[3] continued saying that they weren't aware that the art would be used commercially (shown below, right).

That day, OAKAI received an outpouring of support and Leon Bridges' Instagram post was flooded with comments regarding the art's credit. OAKAI^[4] responded in a few tweets that same day saying, "the support i’ve been getting is incredible. thank you so much to everyone who helped and reached out to spread this :( i just wish for this situation to get cleared up, please dont send any harmful messages if there have been any!!" They also tweeted "Noah and her team have reached out to me and they've been really sweet and understanding about the whole situation. We talked about working on a future project and I'm looking forward to it♥️♥️♥️Thank you so much for all the love and support. 🥺♥️" (shown below, left). On January 6th, @noahcyrus^[5] replied to OAKAI arts thread saying "well shit 🤯 I had no idea! Your work is so beautiful and I want you to help work on new art for this remix. sending you a dm now🖤" (Shown below, right). The tweet received over 15,100 likes and 600 retweets in two days.

Twitter user @DirkPower^[6] tweeted screenshots of Hidy's alternate account and said, "The dude spent a while using an alt saying Jeffrey had apologised and the thread should be deleted or the original artist could be sued, till people realised it was him. So now hes trying to intimidate OP as himself" (shown below, left). @DirkPower^[7] continued, sharing another screenshot saying, "Meanwhile, as he used an alt to insist he deleted everything, I saw he'd RTd his main Twitter, and sure enough he still had the tweet saying it was his art, and vaguetweets about not trusting twitter Dudes bad at covering his tracks lol" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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External References