Ben Hemsley accuses Hugel and Matt Sassari of plagiarism
He alleges that the French producers ripped off his idea for a remix of Sonique’s ‘It Feels So Good’
Ben Hemsley has accused French producers Hugel and Matt Sassari of plagiarising his edit of Sonique’s 1998 hit ‘It Feels So Good’.
The Newcastle-born artist shared a side-by-side comparison of his tech-house edit on Instagram, which was released in 2017 on SoundCloud, and Sassari and Hugel's 2024-released ‘It Feels So Good’, which has since racked up over 166 million streams on Spotify alone.
Hemsley claims that his original edit – which he released at the age of 19 when he was just making his start in the music industry – was played out "years ago" during Matt's shows. “So there’s no excuse that he didn’t hear it. There’s also a tracklist of him including it in one of his shows,” he claimed in an Instagram post. “No excuses for this one.”
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“Looool at the scene… ‘scene’ robbing a 19-year-old version of myself and still not managing to make it as good,” Hemsley continues. “Not doing this for money, which I deffo could take them to court for.”
He claimed that Matt played his track at shows years ago, which Hemsley was “happy” about at the time, before both he and Hugel “blatantly” used his idea to create their own version without crediting him.
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“Reason I didn’t chase for money at the time is because I thought, fuck me, must be shit to rob an 8-year-old idea off of someone,” he said. “These balloons just thought they’d take the full idea of my remix and class it as an original.”
“Embarassing, but aye, behold, the world of dance music at its purest form,” he added. “I want to let yous know how fulla shit people can be.”
While Hemsley's edit was released unofficially and has remained off of major streaming services like Spotify, Sassari and Hugel cleared Sonique's sample, officially releasing the track online.
Matt Sassari and Hugel have not responded to Ben Hemsley’s claims. Mixmag has reached out for comment.
Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Associate Digital Editor, follow her on X