I Am The Owner – Mantse Aryeequaye Calls Out Obrafour Over Drake’s Lawsuit
The man with the distinctive voice, Mantse Aryeequaye formerly of the Last Two Records has emerged to claim ownership of the jingle ‘Killer Cut’- the introductory voice that fuelled Obrafuour’s hit song Oye Ohene song following his lawsuit against Canadian rapper Drake.
Tru News Report previously published that Drake is being sued by legendary Ghanaian rapper Obrafour for sampling his 2003 remix of “Oye Ohene” on the track “Calling My Name” off the album Honestly Nevermind.
According to court records filed by Obrafour in New York, he claims that Canadian rapper Drake violated his copyright by using a piece of his song without permission and that the producers of “Calling My Name” profited from his work.
The rapper said that the defendants had taken advantage of them in a number of ways, including through live performances, despite the fact that the respondents in the aforementioned infringement case had reaped enormous benefits, including the production of enormous sums of global streams and sales across a number of platforms.
Although an agent of one or more defendants approached Obrafour in an effort to secure Obrafour’s consent for the use of the copyrighted work in the infringing work, “the defendants released the infringing work on June 17, 2022.”
The Ghanaian rapper claimed that after the success of “Calling My Name,” Drake and the other defendants gained financially from his creations. Obrafour wants, among other things, damages of at least $10,000,000.
Parts of the statement reads: “Defendants released the Infringing Work on June 17, 2022, despite the fact that an agent of one or more Defendants had previously contacted Obrafour seeking to obtain Obrafour’s permission for the use of the Copyrighted Work in the Infringing Work. Obrafour never granted Defendants permission to use the Copyrighted Work and the Infringing work was released mere days later.
In this fresh development, however, Mantse Aryeequaye has said via a series of tweets that the intellectual property more specifically the ‘KILLER CUT’ sound which was sampled by Drake in the track “Calling My Name” belongs to him (Mantse Aryeequaye) and not to Obrafour.
According to Mantse, the “Killer Cut’ sounds were ‘never relinquished to Obrafour and were used by Edward Nana Poku Osei aka Hammer, Producer of Obrafuor’s album on Obrafuor’s song as he did with others.
Mantse concluded by saying he’s the one who should be compensated, not Obrafuour. Check out what he said in the tweets below;
