Baba Sadiq Abdulai Abu, a media/entertainment entrepreneur and political aspirant has said if Obrafuor had paid attention to legal precedents he wouldn’t have filed his original lawsuit against Canadian rapper, Drake.

According to the former CEO of the 3 Music Awards, Obrafuor did not have the right to seek compensation from Drake in the first place.

Abu’s argument is based on the fact that Drake did not use Obrafuor’s actual song in “‘Calling My Name’, but rather a sample of a guest feature on the track, Mantse Aryeequaye. As such, Obrafuor did not own the rights to the sample used by Drake and therefore had no legal standing to sue for compensation.

“When you come down to it, you look at all the various case studies whether Mantse has sat down all these years and not spoken about if he was paid or not, there’s an inherent publishing right in whatever he composed and since that part was what was sampled, the compensation was solely his,” he argued.

Sadiq’s argument is in line with many international copyright laws, which recognize that only the owner of a piece of music or a specific sample has the right to seek compensation for its use.

Citing the Desmond Charles and Cisco studies as reference, he argues that it is  Mantse Aryeequaye, not Obrafuor, who owned the rights to his own voice, and therefore had the right to control how it was used.

“Unless Mantse waivers his right and says ‘Well I’m giving Obrafuor permission’,  in actual fact following all the case studies he has no right to seek compensation,” he pointed out

The global music industry is no stranger to legal disputes and lawsuits, however, Obrafuor 10-million-dollar suit againt Drake for sampling his song “Oye Ohene remix” in his ‘Calling My Name’ track is a novelty here in Ghana.

This also makes it one of the most recent case to make headlines both home and abroad because of the stature of the two individuals.