The legal dispute between Mantse Aryeequaye, the founder of the Chalewote Street Art Festival, and acclaimed Ghanaian rapper Obrafour, along with music producer Dave Hammer, has finally reached a resolution. The court has dismissed Mantse’s copyright ownership case.
An Accra High Court ruled to dismiss the copyright ownership case brought forward by Mantse, who had sued Obrafour and Hammer for allegedly claiming sole ownership of the famous phrase “killer cut blood.”
The ownership of this phrase, famously used in Obrafour’s track “Oye Ohene,” came into question after the rapper sued Canadian artist Drake for using it in his track without permission.
In his suit, Mantse accused Obrafour of asserting ownership of the phrase and copyrighting it in the US in September 2022. He claimed that his spoken word piece titled “Killer Cut” was used in the song “Oye Ohene” by Obrafour with permission but without the transfer of any rights. Mantse asserted that Obrafour had no permission to register the work as his own or receive any payments from its subsequent use.
Mantse further argued that the “Killer Cut” used in Obrafour’s song was separate from the song itself and had been recorded independently before being incorporated into Obrafour’s track by Hammer to enhance it.
Following Drake’s request to use part of the “Oye Ohene” track, Mantse claimed to have called for a meeting with Obrafour and Hammer, but none of his requests materialized. He later discovered that Obrafour had registered the track with the phrase in the US, allegedly infringing on his intellectual property rights and seeking exclusive payment for Mantse’s work.
However, reports from Ghana Web indicate that the court, after sitting on February 25, 2023, dismissed the case due to what it termed “inconsistencies and breaches of court rules” in Mantse’s filing. Additionally, the court awarded the defendants, Hammer and Obrafour, Gh 10,000.
