Black Immigrant Daily News

New York-based Jamaican-born attorney Stephen Drummond is again lamenting the fact that many Jamaican Reggae singers and songwriters have not reaped the fruits of their labor, unlike their overseas counterparts, a situation which must be addressed urgently.   

The Hanover native, who represented veteran Dancehall artist Flourgon in his US$300 million copyright infringement case against Miley Cyrus, says much more has to be done to ensure the island’s musicians get the compensation that is rightfully due to them.

“Jamaican Reggae music has done so much around the world.  And it’s such an invaluable contribution to mankind.  And it cannot be disputed that with such an invaluable contribution, to mankind coming out of a small country, many of our artistes have not recognised and being appreciated in the financial space as many others,” Drummond said while speaking on Radio Jamaica’s Beyond The Headlines with Dionne Jackson Miller.

“So, as a Jamaican, and a lawyer who likes to see equity, I just think more should be done to ensure that the Jamaican community and those who have made such a great contribution to Reggae music should be very well compensated, more,” he said.

Drummond also reiterated that because much of the problems relate to issues of intellectual property ownership and copyright, it is critical that artists seek to protect their work.

“One of the things that I try to stress in the community, is the three Ps: Protect first.  Artistes in Jamaica they like to Perform; they want to perform; they get a joy out of performing and the business component of it, they tend to lose perspective of that.   You must first strive to Protect your work, then Perform in order to Preserve your work,” he said.

The issue of Jamaican’s failing to copyright their music has been a longstanding concern for Drummond.  In May 2018, during a Gleaner Editors forum, he made a call for Jamaican recording artists to protect their legacy.

At the time he said that while he was congnisant of the fact that most Jamaican artists love the music and love to entertain people, they needed to be business-minded about it.

Drummond had also warned that if Jamaican musicians fail to take the business aspect of the music as seriously as they ought, they might live to regret it in the end, as the business component was perhaps the most critical aspect of an artist’s success.

Like Drummond, in January this year, former Main Street Records producer and Chairman of the Jamaica Music Society (JAMMS), Haldane “Danny” Browne had raised similar concerns about recording artists and producers in Jamaica, who, by virtue of their own inaction, have put themselves in a precarious position, by not registering their ownership of their copyrighted music.

“I don’t know if the current crop of players realise that it is a business.  I can’t blame them because I was just like them; when I started out, I was just having fun,” the Filthy riddim producer had said.

Brown had also revealed that some creators of music do not know the difference between copyright registration versus publishing a song.  

“Where your copyright ownership is registered it is different from the publishing of the song.  Because anybody can publish a song.  And I discovered a lot of people dem don’t copyright dem songs. Dem just a collect the money.  And so, when issues come up, they can’t defend it,” he had said.

Browne had pointed out that JAMMS has held multiple sensitization seminars on copyright and other music-related matters for members of the industry, but this initiative has seen the organization ‘preaching to the converted’, as the persons who need the information believe they “know it all”.  

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Black Immigrant Daily News

Jamaican singer Shenseea and her label Interscope Records have reached a settlement in one of the two copyright infringement lawsuits filed against her last year, DancehallMag has exclusively confirmed.

Producer Anastas ‘Pupa Nas-T’ Hackett said he’s pleased to bring his lawsuit to an end one year after filing the matter in a New York District Court.  He had claimed that Shenseea and Interscope (a division of Universal Music Group) released Lick without his consent, even though it sampled elements from one of his Soca songs.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in a court order dismissing the lawsuit on Friday (March 31).  

Hackett, who had sought over USD $10 million in damages, profits, and legal fees, also told DancehallMag on Friday that he could not reveal the actual settlement figure because of a confidentiality agreement.

“This is just business, it’s over and everyone is agreeable and satisfied with the outcome,” the producer said.

“It’s been over a year, it’s been gruelling but I finally made it to the mountain top,” he added.

Hackett thanked his manager, attorney, and spiritual allies for the lawsuit’s favorable outcome.

“I didn’t do it alone,” he said. “My business manager Steven Thompson was with me every step of the way. Courtney, my first attorney, he was incredible, and all praises go to The Most High, mother and father God and my ancestors because in every war, it’s fisticuffs but there is a spiritual element involved, and you have to pay credence to that.”

The 59-year-old, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Trinidadian father and American mother, added that he harbored no ill will towards the 26-year-old singer and wished her continued success.

“I never had anything against her. I have been a big fan from day one. It is one Caribbean music family, we don’t tear each other down, and this had nothing to do against her personally. She will be big, and I wish her continued success in her career,” he said. 

Shenseea’s camp and Interscope did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the settlement. 

Released on January 21, 2022, Lick featured rapper Megan Thee Stallion and later appeared on Shenseea’s debut album, Alpha. As a lead artist, it is currently her highest-charting song in the United States, after peaking at No. 20 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart.

Produced by Canadian hitmarker Murda Beatz, the song sampled a 2002 remix of Denise ‘Sacey Wow’ Belfon’s Work by the production duo Masters At Work (‘Little’ Louie Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez). The duo had licensed the original song from Hackett, who produced and co-wrote Work with Harkness Taitt in Trinidad & Tobago in 1999. He owns both the original and the Masters At Work remix, as detailed by Beatport.

On Friday, Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil ordered the lawsuit “discontinued without costs to any party and without prejudice to restoring the action to this Court’s calendar if the parties are unable to memorialize their settlement in writing and as long as the application to restore the action is made by May 1, 2023.”

“If no such application is made by that date, today’s dismissal of the action is with prejudice,” the order added.

In reply to the lawsuit, Shenseea and Interscope’s lawyers, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, had argued that there was a “months-long, good faith negotiation” for the use of the producer’s song.  However, according to them, Hackett had refused to sign a written contract and, instead sought to renegotiate the contract after the song was released.

Court records show that Interscope had hired DMG Clearances, Inc in September 2021 to do the leg work of clearing the sample with Hackett.  According to an email sent to DMG later that month, the producer—through his music publisher ATAL Music Limited and their rep Alexandre Escolier—initially agreed that he would approve the sample if he were paid a $5,000 USD advance, 3% royalty on wholesale sales (PPD), and 15% royalty on Shenseea’s net streaming on the song.

However, DMG only sent the final written agreement to Escolier, for Nas-T’s signature, on February 2, 2022, 12 days after Lick was released on streaming platforms on January 21, 2022.  By then, Hackett had ‘fired’ Escolier from representing his music catalog after he learned of the song’s release from “colleagues who…had reached out to congratulate” him.

Now that the lawsuit has concluded, Hackett said that he will be turning his attention back toward music and getting “back to my home studio.”

“I’ve got some bombs, we’re gonna drop them, you know we still do what we do,” he said. 

He added that he felt great that the latest remix of Work, featuring Scottish DJ and electronic musician Kevin McKay and Denise Belfon, has been doing well on charts worldwide.  The song peaked at No. 11 on the Apple iTunes chart in December 2022. “Kevin McKay is a DJ based in Glasgow, his label is Glasgow Underground and the song has been doing great,” he said. 

Shenseea is still facing another copyright lawsuit in a California court.

In an October 2022 complaint, visual artist Stephanie Sarley accused the Blessed singer and her label of ripping off three of her ‘artistic’ Instagram videos depicting the sexualized handling of bisected fruit.  The three clips allegedly appeared in the original music video for Shenseea’s 2019 song Foreplay, which has since been removed from YouTube.

Shenseea and Interscope, who are represented by Ballard Spahr LLP, have claimed, among other things, that any infringement was “innocent” on their part, because the Foreplay video was uploaded to Shenseea’s YouTube account by a “third-party distributor” without their knowledge or involvement.

Sarley is demanding actual damages and profits from the three alleged infringements, or alternatively, $150,000 in statutory damages for each infringement.  But, Shenseea and Interscope contend that if Sarley is able to prove infringement, then statutory damages would be limited to “as little as $200” for each of the three videos. 

In a joint court filing on February 9, 2023, Sarley and Shenseea’s lawyers told Judge Fernando M. Olguin that they anticipated the trial lasting 2-3 days, with a proposed start date on April 9, 2024, and with a total of three witnesses for Sarley and five witnesses for Shenseea.

The singer signed to Interscope Records/Rich Immigrants in 2019, a joint venture spearheaded by Jamaican producer Rvssian.

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