Moroccan-US rapper French Montana’s dancehall single Unforgettable featuring Swae Lee is now certified 5x Platinum in the U.K. for selling more than 3,000,000 units in that territory by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). The certification announced on Friday March 17, 2023 is measured by the Official Charts Company counts streams and pure sales towards single certifications.
Last year the song joined the list of 100 songs to have gone Diamond in the U.S. after it was certified by the RIAA on Thursday August 8 for selling 10 million units.
The music video for “Unforgettable” which was shot in Uganda has now surpassed 1.4 billion streams on YouTube and featured the Ugandan youth dance troupe Triplets Ghetto Kids. “Most of the them live in the States now,” according to Montana.
A few months ago the Coke Boys rapper sampled the Tony Rebel produced “Ghetto People Song” for the track “Higher” which was sung by Everton Blender.
Blender told World Music Views from his Florida residence in the company of his wife that, “I feel good, I say to myself this is a good look cause Everton get so much fight over the years and now this come, it is a Joy, it is a good look.”
The single “Higher” appears on French’s collaborative album with Harry Fraud “Montega” and has since been used as a promotion on French Montana’s social media. French posted a now deleted post on his instagram a YouTube Billboard promoting the album with the song playing. He captioned it “@youtubemusic MONTEGA out now 🎶.”
Producer Tony Rebel says the song had not been cleared and no one had reached out to him nor his representatives to clear the Hip Hop reggae sample. He told WMV that he generally likes it when Hip Hop samples reggae, but he also wasn’t aware of Montana and Fraud’s use of Ghetto People Song for their single on the No. 1 iTunes Hip Hop/Rap album.
Blender says the song was a hit and he has enjoyed the spoils gained from it’s popularity in terms of his bookings for stage shows, “Ye man it was a hit, it go good, everywhere me go and performing it people react to it.”
That is the extent of his reaping from the song as the Lift Up Your Head singer states that he has never collected any royalties or publishing from the success of the song since he recorded it in 1996.
“A dat me a seh now, I don’t know who cleared it,” he says contemplatively. “I have never collected any royalties from the song since the song put out 1996, we still have lawyer on the case to collect back royalties,” he says.
WMV tried to reach French Montana for a comment but he did not respond.
