Vancouver makeup artist wants to sue Lil’ Kim over copyright infringement

Lil' Kim is facing a big lawsuit by a Vancouver makeup artist who is accusing the "Looks Like Money" rapper of stealing one of her images to promote her new album.

In October 2013, Samantha Ravndahl uploaded an image of her "Glam Zombie" look to Instagram. Within weeks, one of her Instagram followers told Ravndahl that Lil' Kim had posted the photo to her own Instagram account.

“I went there and saw that she had posted it with her copyright over it. She didn’t credit me or anything,” the 20-year-old Canadian told the Globe and Mail.

Ravndahl "thought it was kind of weird" and started searching further and found that Lil' Kim was using the image as cover art for her single, "Dead Gal Walking," promoting it on Twitter, Facebook, and TwitMusic, in addition to Instagram. (The image has since been deleted, as have the others.)

Ravndahl initially contacted Lil' Kim's team directly. “I just went under the image and said, ‘Hey, can you guys give credit to me? That would be cool,’” she told XXL Magazine. "They continued to keep posting it and wouldn’t give me credit or get back to me."

After Ravndahl and her followers posted about the issue, she said the 39-year-old musician's team finally contacted her.

“She was like, ‘Hey, Lil’ Kim’s sorry. She’s totally fine giving you a shout-out,’” the make-up artist told the Globe. “I said, ‘No, I make a living off selling my images. I can’t just give this away.’”

XXL Magazine contacted Lil' Kim for comment, and the rapper claimed she was in the dark about the whole thing. “I don’t know what the heck is going on,” she said. “If there were something going on, my team would know better than I would. You have to get that from my team, because I really don’t know what’s going on.”

Los Angeles lawyer Scott Burroughs offered his services to Ravndahl and reportedly sent Lil' Kim a cease and desist letter on Nov. 20, but he has not yet received a response. “Your conduct amounts to copyright infringement, misappropriation of likeness, misattribution and violation of state and federal law," the letter said. “The addition of your copyright language to the image is especially problematic.”

According to the letter, Ravndahl is seeking as much as $150,000 in damages.

Lil' Kim's team did not respond to requests for comment.