It has been reported that Canadian rapper Drake may have to pay up to $10 million to famous Ghanaian singer Obrafor.
The Grammy award-winning rapper has been sued for $10 million by popular Ghanaian singer Obrafour for sampling his 2003 hit ‘Ohene remix’ over his 2022 hit ‘Calling My Name’ without the singer’s permission.
According to Daily Mail UK, Obravor and his legal team alleged that Drake only asked for permission to use the song a week before it was to be released.
In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail UK, Imran H. Ansari, legal representative of Obrafor said:
It’s such a blatant rip off and sample of our customer song. More than that, we have as part of the complaint emails from the woman wiping out Drake’s rights, communicating with our client via email and not waiting for him to get permission. Then Drake dropped the secret album kind of, if you will, without the right passes that my client had.
“Quite frankly, it’s an insult to a musical artist who is so popular, especially in his home country, and so proud of the creative work they’ve put together,” Ansari said. Only to find out it’s been snubbed in the sense that Drake is sampling his work without permission. The emails indicate that he knew he needed to do this. And he didn’t.
The lawsuit also stated the following:
The transcription of the sample phrase in the infringing work is so direct in nature that the sound of the sample phrase heard in the infringing work contains as little manipulation, processing, or any audible change to its original nature as heard in the copyrighted work.”
To date, in just the 304 days since the infringing work was released, the infringing work has already been streamed over 4.1 million times on YouTube, streamed over 47,442,160 times on Spotify, and streamed tens of millions of times on Apple Music. .
However, this wouldn’t be the first time a foreign artist has been called out for copyright infringement, as Mr. Easy has also taken to social media to call out the Bad Bunny himself as well.
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