American rapper and songwriter could faces a second lawsuit from Jamaican producer Cleveland ‘Clevie’ Browne over his latest song. Blue Green RedThe song is said to take lyrics and melody from dancehall artist Tiger’s 1991 hit. When without permission.
Blue Green Red was originally shared as part of Drake’s “100 Gigs for Your Headtop” dump of unreleased music and behind-the-scenes footage last week, according to HipHopDX, and was officially released on Saturday (August 10) via OVO/Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
Clevie, who produced When as part of the duo Steely & Clevie, told TanzhalleMag on Monday, “SONY/EMI called on Friday and said they wanted to release When but they didn’t send the song. We can’t release a song without hearing it. But Drake leaked it beforehand, but the record company blocked Drake’s release and then they released the song over the weekend without us giving the release. Because they did that in advance, that can cause problems.”
He added: “They only used the melody in one section and it was repeated twice. So that’s a clear violation.”
The interpolation is clearly visible in Drake’s post-chorus line: “What is the clock in London? Yes, Big Ben.” which is reminiscent of Tiger’s original text, “What about the name London? (Big Ben).”
This potential legal issue comes as Steely & Clevie Productions is already involved in an ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit in California federal court filed against over 160 artists and record labels, including Drake and UMG. In that lawsuit A dance with Wizkid and Kyla and his Mía Collaboration with Bad Bunny are among the more than 1,800 tracks accused of infringing the duo’s 1989 riddim. Fish market.
Clevie admitted that it is common for music companies to wait until the last minute to get approval for their songs.
“They often wait until the last minute to request permission. But we need to know how frequently the work is used so that we know the level of infringement and can judge what is appropriate in terms of copyright share.
Efforts have been made to reach out to us, but it is the record company’s responsibility to release the song,” he said.
Interestingly, Clevie said he found out on Monday (August 12) that Usher and Nicki Minaj had previously When in her 2014 song, She came II Give it II U“There is a three-year statute of limitations on songs, but there is a non-disclosure rule if you can prove you never heard the song, and sometimes a court will accept that,” he said.
Minaj had previously sampled Sasha’s Kill the bitch for her single, Beam me up, Scotty at the publisher Steely & Clevie.
Clevie explained the intricacies of music publishing with regard to the musical composition of songs and authorship.
“When we make music and an artist writes songs to a rhythm, people often think that the author is the only one who receives compensation, but that is not the case. If they infringe on a song, it affects the composition and authorship of the song, as it relates to the share of publishing rights. With When“Steely and Clevie built the rhythm, but we also compose the lyrics, we are also writers,” Clevie explained.
tiger
Tiger suffered a stroke in 2021.
Efforts to get comment from his daughter, artist Rhialty, were unsuccessful. He is signed to Dubplate and Greensleeves Publishing, which is run by producer Gussie Clarke.
The 64-year-old artist was known for his distinctive growl and manic delivery, which brought him a string of major hits in the late 1980s, including songs such as Wanga Gut, Puppy Love, Bam BamAnd ^ “Ram Dancehall”. He seemed to disappear from the scene for a few years.
Then, in 1991, he reunited with Steely & Clevie for Cool me down and then the magical, almost omnipresent hit When thereby restoring his presence in the reggae world. Not long after, Tiger’s first album for a major American label was released — Claws of the Cat at Sony Music’s subsidiary Chaos – was released.
“We wrote When “Half an hour later we had made the riddim and Tiger was looking for songs when someone called him about a show and HE kept asking ‘when?'” Clevie remembers.
“Tiger asked something like, ‘When’s the show? When?’ but we couldn’t hear the other part of the conversation, and Steely heard the ‘when’ and said ‘That’s it, Mek, we’re making a song based on ‘when,'” he added with a chuckle.
The master producer said that the song was created based on a life experience, similar to how he and his late musical partner were able to Double trouble with Beres Hammond.
“I remember one night we were in the mixing lab from 9pm until about 3am and we couldn’t find the song. Then it was close to three and Steely said, ‘I got it’. And he started singing, ‘Now look at me, it’s quarter to three/I want to go home, that’s where I should be…’. Then Beres added some lines, I added some lines and it was composed from a real situation,” Clevie told TanzhalleMag.
“We all have something to say when we have life experiences that people can relate to. The hits simply represent an experience that resonates with a wider cross-section of the population,” he said.
