Yung Gravy Is Back in the News After Being Sued by Rick Astley

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | January 27, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | January 27, 2023 |

Some of our older readers are asking, “Who the hell is Yung Gravy?” but that’s only because they’ve already forgotten about the time Yung Gravy appeared on this site last August. We sat down right here and we had a conversation about Yung Gravy — a 26-year-old rapper — and the mother of TikTok star Addison Rae, Sheri Easterling. The two were supposedly dating — Yung Gravy professed to being attracted to MILFs.” Remember how Sheri’s ex-husband displayed cringy divorced dad behavior? It’s all coming back to you now, isn’t it?

Recall that Yung Gravy’s biggest hit was a song called “Betty” (Get Money).” It’s an obnoxious song, but it will also grow on you, like a bad fungus. The song samples from Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” i.e., the Rick Roll song. (Aside: If Rick Astley ever decided to join Cameo, he’d make $1 million a week). Listen to it here, paying specific attention to the first ten seconds.

Do you hear someone singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”? That’s actually not Rick Astley. In fact, Astley only licensed the song’s instrumentals. Yung Gravy found a Rick Astley impersonator, Nick Seeley (aka Popnick), to impersonate Astley’s voice. Listen again: It’s eerily good. I would have never known.

Astley is now suing Yung Gravy for the unauthorized use of his voice. Astley also claims in the multimillion-dollar lawsuit that he had planned to incorporate his voice into a future collaboration, and now he claims that the project is ruined. I believe him, too, because if he’d planned to do, say, a duet remix of “Never Gonna Give You Up,” with someone like Carly Rae Jepsen for the soundtrack to some ’80s reboot, it would top the charts for months. Hell, “Betty” is a crap song and it reached gold status in the United States. That’s the power of Astley who — by the way — is an incredibly nice, down-to-earth guy.

For what it’s worth, Yung Gravy and Sheri Easterling’s “romance” was limited to only one date.