Reasons Why Drake Might Be Forced To Pay A Ghanaian Artist 10 Million Dollars
Canadian rapper Drake might be compelled to pay a popular Ghanaian musician ‘Obrafour’ up to 10 million dollars
The famous Grammy award-winning rapper has been slammed with a 10 million dollar lawsuit by Ghanaian singer Obrafour for sampling his 2003 song ‘Ohene remix’ on his 2022 hit song ‘Calling My Name’ without the singer’s authorization.
According to reports from Daily Mail UK, Obrafour and his legal team claimed that Drake had only asked for permission to utilize the song a week before its release.
Imran H. Ansari who is Obrafour’s legal representative in an exclusive interview with Daily Mail UK started;
‘It’s such a blatant rip and sample from our client’s song. More so, we have as part of the complaint the emails from the woman that clears rights for Drake, reaching out to our client via email and not waiting for him to get the permission. Then Drake dropped the sort of secret album, if you will, without getting the right clearances owned by my client.
Quite frankly, it’s insulting to an artist who is a musician of some popularity, especially in their home country, who takes pride in the creative work that they have put together,’
Ansari argued.
‘Only to find out that it’s just disregarded in the sense that Drake samples from his work without permission. The emails are indicative that he knew he needed to do so. And he didn’t do so.’
The lawsuit also stated;
‘The copying of the Sampled Phrase in the Infringing Work is so direct in nature that the audio of the Sampled Phrase heard in the Infringing Work contains little or no audible manipulation, processing, or other alteration to its original character as heard in the Copyrighted Work.’
‘To date, over the mere 304 days that have elapsed 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.’
This would, nevertheless, not be the foremost time a foreign singer would be called out for copyright violation, as Mr. Eazi also sprinted to social media to call out Bad Bunny for a similar infringement too.
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