Pretty gangsta going to court over a cover named “Gangsta B*tch”…

Looks like Cardi B is in trouble with the law over her 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 cover, first being sued in 2017 by model Kevin Brophy Jr. and now finally being dragged to court. The cover depicts Cardi posing suggestively with a man with Brophy’s back tattoo, which Brophy claims was photoshopped into the cover at Cardi’s direction.

Brophy is now alleging that the tattoo constitutes misappropriation of his likeness and says it’s used in a  “misleading, offensive, humiliating and provocatively sexual way,” while also claiming it depicts him in a false light (otherwise known as a fusion of defamation and privacy invasion). Yet, Cardi’s lawyers are arguing that the tattoo falls under fair use, as it was used in a “transformative” manner since it was copied and pasted onto a different model.

It seems the Judge in the case isn’t buying Cardi’s reasoning, stating that “To constitute a transformative fair use, the revised image must have significant transformative or creative elements to make it something more than mere likeness or imitation,” which is pretty fair tbh, considering the tattoo looks like the exact same version of the original. Hell, even the cover artist for the whole mixtape admitted it was the same tattoo, who claims that after being paid $50 to make a quick design, he was told to change the original model’s tattoo, Googled “back tattoos,” and overlaid it onto the cover model.

Hilariously though, Brophy thinks he’s entitled to over $1 million USD ($1.3 million AUD) worth of damages, as well as over half a million dollars from the followup mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 2, which used a totally different cover image. Of course the judge isn’t at all buying his claim, but it’ll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out. Check out the two tattoos below and see if you can spot the difference (or not).