Beyoncé has been accused of stealing visuals used on her Renaissance world tour from The Weeknd’s collaborator Hajime Sorayama.
Sorayama, who is an acclaimed Japanese illustrator, took issue with some designs used by Bey during her record-breaking 2023 tour, which he claims ripped off his own work.
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In a post on Instagram, Sorayama wrote: “Yo @beyonce You should have asked me ‘officially’ so that I could make much better work for you as like my man @theweeknd.”
Sorayama also posted pictures of Beyoncé’s tour visuals along with his own work, which do bear many similarities, particularly the silver headpiece the singer can be seen wearing during one video clip.
While Beyoncé has yet to comment on the allegations, many of her fans have rushed to her defense.
“I understand you feel like your art has been imitated and copied by her but this visual has been out for months (6+ months) so to now have outrage about it. Seems like a reach for something or a grab at something,” one person wrote.
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“Even though, Metropolis has been imitated by so many people. To have this image of her be picked a part when a headpiece like the one above has been used by so many people known and unknown to the masses is crazy. Well wishes.”
Another said: “Metropolis, Mugler, Gaultier, and more have all done this. You don’t own the Android aesthetic.”
Others defended Sorayama and told the BeyHive to do more research into the artist: “The amount of people essentially being like ‘boo hoo cry about it’ on this post when point blank period someone is benefitting off an image that someone else spent a majority of their life building is CRAZY.
“Yes, Metropolis is source inspo, but Hajime Sorayama has quite literally been a master and icon in the art and k!nk world for time, and Beyonce is 10000% referencing it. Y’all need to get out of the bee hive and touch grass.”
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Sorayama rose to fame in the 1980s due to his illustrations of erotic female robots, with his work frequently appearing in Playboy magazine. He recently announced a collaboration with PornHub.
