A new lawsuit accuses Nicki Minaj of straight-up stealing the beat for her song "I Lied" from another artist ... a scenario sources close to Nicki say is impossible considering she didn't handle the song's production.
The rapper, along with mega-producer Mike Will Made It, is being sued by Julius Johnson, who says the music playing under the vocals on Nicki's track from "The Pinkprint" sounds like a carbon copy of a song he created years before she dropped "I Lied."
However, our Nicki sources tell us she wasn't hands-on with the beat, saying, "Clearly Nicki is a lyricist, so the claim in terms of production will obviously have to be addressed by the applicable parties."
As for those applicable parties, it appears Mike Will was the one who brought Nicki the beat.
As for the history, Johnson claims he published his song, called "onmysleeve," on YouTube in September 2011 ... 3 years before "I Lied" came out.
In the docs, Johnson claims he had the beat on a hard drive when he attended the Art Institute of Atlanta ... and he says in 2013 the hard drive was taken from a studio session without his consent.
Johnson claims associates of Nicki and Mike Will Made It were at the Institute around the same time and believes they somehow got their hands on his missing hard drive.
When Nicki released "I Lied" in December 2014 it obviously gained attention ... and Johnson claims when he finally heard her song in 2022, he immediately recognized the similarity to his beat ... insisting that, aside from the lyrics, Nicki's track has basically the same underlying instrumentation and beat as his track.
He's going after Nicki and Mike Will Made It for the profits they earned off his song ... and wants a judge to order them to stop using it or at least give him credit on "I Lied" for his contribution.
A rep for Nicki had no comment.