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Heaven’s Gate Cult Complains Lil Uzi Vert Ripped Off Their Graphic Design

In an Instagram post today, Lil Uzi Vert revealed the album art for his forthcoming project Eternal Atake. It’s inspired by the striking, rainbow-hued imagery used by the Heaven’s Gate cult, whose members (in)famously committed mass suicide in 1997, coinciding with the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet; the cult believed the comet was a spaceship designed to carry their souls to a higher dimension. Several members of the cult survived the incident, though, and they apparently aren’t happy about Uzi’s appropriation of their graphic design.

“He is using and adapting our copyrights and trademarks without our permission and the infringement will be taken up with our attorneys,” a rep for Heaven’s Gate told Genius. “This is not fair use or parody, it it a direct and clear infringement.”

Lil Uzi Vert isn’t the first person to mine Heaven’s Gate iconography and symbols for inspiration. Frank Ocean referenced the cult in the video for “Nikes,” and the organization’s still-active, ’90s time capsule website has been a source of aesthetic fascination for some.

Eternal Atake does not yet have a release date.