Crush’s “Oasis” under fire for plagiarizing Eric Bellinger’s “Awkward”

As Crush has been topping charts in Korea, a professional Korean hip-hop critic has accused the artist of plagiarism on an “adaptation” level.

Hip pop artist Crush (Shin Hyo Seop) is under fire for allegedly plagiarizing his new song, “Oasis.” Originally posted by professional hip-hop critic Kang Il Kwon via Twitter, fans and netizens have been drawn to the new scandal.

Critic Kang Il Kwon states that Crush’s “Oasis” is a plagiarized version of U.S. R&B artist Eric Bellinger’s song “Akward” on an adaptation level (not merely copied but rearranged). He claimed that until “the original copyrights owner sues and reaches a verdict, we can only assume that it is plagiarism.”

He further continued to state that “there are so many musicians that are addicted to copying reference songs in the Korean music industry” and that “there are musicians that don’t even notice what they’re doing is wrong.”

In contrast with typical netizen sentiment, most agreed with the critic Kang’s thoughts. Most netizens stated that “it could literally be labeled as a reference song” and that “even the beat tempos are similar.” Only some commented otherwise stating that “only the beginning is similar and rest is different” and that “in order for it to be plagiarism, it must copy at least 4 verses but it isn’t the case here.”

After the scandal emerged, videos have been created that compare both Crush’s “Oasis” and Eric Bellinger’s “Awkward.”

A top netizen comment on this video stated “for someone like Crush, who wants to be praised on his ability to produce songs, it is really disappointing that he is already coming out with a song that syncs highly with another song” and that “it is even more disappointing that even the BPM seems similar to the original song.”

“Oasis” was written and produced by Crush and the production group Stay Tuned. Block B’s Zico also helped write the song, while featuring in it.

[ + 4121 / -116] What??? It was plagiarism?? If the plagiarism is on an adaptation level, that’s too much.

[ + 4056 / -113] Copying is copying, how is there a level of copying someone

[ + 3787 / -90] There were a lot of talks starting couple days ago.. they were trying to down the talk… but how slow can the articles come out;; this cannot be protected..

[ +2877 / -91] After hearing it, I can only feel that it’s plagiarism

Source: KMIB