Singer Frank Ocean has filed a lawsuit alleging that producers on his “Blonde” album are wrongfully claiming co-authorship of songs from the 2016 collection.
According to the suit filed Tuesday in federal court in California, Ocean entered into an oral agreement with Om’ Mas Keith and the Analog Genius Corporation in 2014, stating that they would produce tracks for the album in exchange for a flat fee per master recording.
The agreement covered a dozen songs, including the “Blonde” tracks “Godspeed” and “White Ferrari,” none of which the defendants wrote or co-wrote, according to the suit.
However, the suit says, Keith and Analog Genius refused to sign an agreement containing a provision acknowledging that they hadn’t written any of the songs, and later instructed their publisher to file registrations with ASCAP, “falsely claiming that they had co-written” 11 of the songs.
“Plaintiff has never written any compositions with Defendants,” the suit states, adding that the songs “were written well before Defendants, or any of them, rendered any services whatsoever in connection with any of the masters. Defendants did not contribute any lyrics, melodies, or music that would give rise to any claim of authorship by Defendants in the Compositions or the ASCAP Compositions.”
Ocean is seeking a “judicial determination” that the defendants don’t own any portion of the copyrights to the songs, and an injunction preventing them “from any further misrepresentation that they co-wrote Plaintiff’s music.”
TheWrap has reached out to Keith for comment on the lawsuit.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.