Shia LaBeouf, noted artisté, Transformers actor and useful Chrome extension, can probably add "serial plagiarist" to his CV at this point, as he's (once again) been accused of plagiarizing a prominent underground rap crew in his newly-surfaced freestyle.
The latest instance is even more cringeworthy as it comes straight from an underground female MC crew known for an independence-driven ethos that comes as a direct result of being women in the male-dominated hip-hop industry. And to add insult to injury, he's gone viral for this new, previously unknown "talent," even though the rest of his (actual) freestyle is pretty weak.
Incomprehensible and painfully awkward for the entire video's duration, MC Beouf compares himself to Tupac, all while throwing down odd tuna casserole-centric insults and um, tying in a reference to Galileo with potatoes (???). However, what we're mostly interested is why LaBeouf just can't come up with any original art -- especially as these new (and pretty founded) accusations come after last year's blow-up with comic artist Daniel Clowes, his string of blatantly copy-pasted apologies (from King Guwop, no less) and his whole Thomas Pychon paper bag "art" thing.
As crew member Pri the Honeydark points out, LaBeouf takes his gas mask joke and "the rare commodity, the quality is what it's gotta be, and my philosophy is farther than what your eyes can see"
line from the crew's 1999 track "Perfectionist," completely unattributed, unreferenced, etc. etc., which is problematic in the sense that he's continuing to make headlines for directly stealing from women-of-color artists. Stick to making headlines for your rattail, Shia.