Her boombox might backfire.
Esperanza Spalding, the jazz singer who infamously beat out Justin Bieber for the 2011 Best New Artist Grammy, has turned the cover art for her latest album into her personal “totem” — and it has another artist crying foul.
On the cover of 2012’s “Radio Music Society,” the 28-year-old singer is pictured sitting on a classic ’80s boombox.
But the radio is actually a sculpture made of pictures attached to a wooden box. Spalding and her team had found it at Brooklyn’s Galapagos Art Space.
Now the man who took the pictures, photographer Kevin Ryan, 57, says in a $500,000 Manhattan federal court suit that Spalding failed to credit him or license the pics. He says she and her camp ignored his request that they do so.
“I love Esperanza, and I love her music, and, actually, I like the image,” he told The Post. “But you wish people would have done their due diligence.”
Calling it a “totem,” the singer has recreated the image as a stage prop and sold it on e-cards and T-shirts, his suit says.
Ryan, of Brooklyn, says he had given prints of his photos to sculptor Ryan Humphrey, who stuck them on the box for an exhibition at Galapagos.
Spalding declined to comment on the suit.