Even the biggest artists in the game aren’t immune to lawsuits emerging from hit records. Drake and Chris Brown face a $5 million copyright infringement lawsuit, with artists Tykeiya Dore and Marc Stephens alleging that their 2016 song “I Got It” was copied in the 2019 hit “No Guidance.” Filed in New Jersey, the lawsuit claims the two songs share “the same chord progressions, tempo, pitch, key, melody, harmony, rhythm, structure, phrasing, and lyrics,” pointing to a change from “I got it” to “You got it” as a direct example of copying.
The complaint adds, “It’s impossible to not hear the two songs are substantially similar,” with a since-deleted YouTube video illustrating the overlap.
We haven’t heard it but if we did, we would weigh in.
Drizzy and Breezy aren’t the only ones named. The suit names co-writers Velous, Nija Charles, and Michee Lebrun, producers Noah “40” Shebib, Vinylz, J-Louis, Teddy Walton, and Brown’s label RCA Records. It also alleges that “I Got It” came to Vinylz’s attention through a YouTube channel, while Nija Charles allegedly received a copy from Dore’s uncle, Jesse Spruils. The lawsuit further asserts that Spruils confronted Charles about “stealing the chorus” but didn’t inform Dore due to feeling “incompetent, humiliated, and embarrassed.”
Oh but wait, there’s more. The lawsuit unusually seeks damages from YouTube, Alphabet, and Google for defamation after Stephens’ channel was deleted following a takedown request over “No Guidance.” YouTube restored his channel two months later after he threatened legal action, claiming the takedown request wasn’t fraudulent as the company suggested.
Interestingly, the lawsuit follows a previous 2021 copyright claim on “No Guidance” by Braindon Cooper and Timothy Valentine, who accused the song of copying elements from their track “I Love Your Dress.” The earlier lawsuit also highlighted the phrase “you got it” in the hook, though it was ultimately dropped in August 2022 after an undisclosed settlement. Brown and Drake initially labeled those claims as “baseless.”
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