The well-known Ghanaian musician Obrafour may be entitled to up to $10 million in compensation from the Canadian rapper Drake, according to sources.
Obrafour, a well-known Ghanaian musician, has filed a $10 million lawsuit against Grammy Award-winning rapper for using a sample of his 2003 hit song “Ohene remix” on his 2022 smash song “Calling My Name” without the artist’s consent.
Drake, according to Obrafour and his legal team, only asked for permission to use the song a week before its release, according to Daily Mail UK.
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.
Obrafour’s legal representative Imran H. Ansari said.
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 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.
Lawsuit stated.
But Mr. Eazi previously used social media to criticize Bad Bunny for the same thing, so this wouldn’t be the first time a foreign musician had their work accused of violating copyright.