French Montana and Harry Fraud released their collaborative album “Montega” on Friday June 24. Track six on the album is the song “Higher” which samples the 1996 reggae hit “Ghetto People Song” written and produced by Patrick Barrett popularly known as Tony Rebel, his cousin Steven Lindo and Everton Blender.
Tony Rebel told World Music Views exclusively that he was not aware of the sample, even though it was released on his Flames Record label. Upon hearing Montana and Fraud’s “Higher” with Blender’s voice echoeing and the distinctive horns, he initially responded in shock by saying, “me a send it to my lawyer dem a New York right now.” He then contemplated, “I wonder if somebody clear it, who would be the one to clear it?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avlXvb9sBXI
When asked who is the owner of the song, The Rebel Salute Festival director says, “A mi own it.”
Higher, by French Montana also features a skit towards the end with Jamaican born comedian Majah Hype playing the characters “Bobby Bunz” and “Di Rass” discussing whether or not they know French Montana.
Tony Rebel also says he is not aware of who Montana is but says he generally likes it when hip hop samples reggae music.
“Because it makes a difference with the original song but it’s kinda the same thing. It gives it life and It shows me another angle where the song could have gone and where it can go to,” he told World Music Views.
The Jah By My Side singer while listening to Montana’s Higher said, “I released that song in 1996. The horns are distinctive right through the song and it shows that It had potential.”
In highlighting how Ghetto People Song was Made, Tony Rebel, 60 told World Music Views, “he (Everton Blender) came into the studio with a song, ‘Ghetto People Song’, and when him come into the studio the lyrics were too much, so me just start sing to him the verse, ‘Followers, followers of downpression/Why do you only terrorize the poor?/ Diluting the fact they are human/ Who one day will not take it anymore’.”
“In the studio me write the three verse and leave the ‘ghetto people song’ chorus,” he continued.
The song which was produced at Penthouse House studios had a previous dispute between the beat maker and Tony Rebel who he says won a default court case against him.
“Me and the youth who made the riddim, had a court case, he won because of a default, it was an ‘unless order’ from the Judge, but he brought the beat to me with three instruments and I put on about 8. Him win and him a carry me go court for damages.”
An ‘unless order’ is a legal term referring to when a judge attaches a conditional sanction to an order requiring performance of a specified act by a particular date or within a particular period.
Rebel, who was previously signed to Sony Records recalls ‘Ghetto People’ doing well in Jamaica upon its release, “as me drop it the song hit. Me actually drop it before Jah By My Side,” he told World Music Views.
French Montana and Harry Fraud’s Montega is currently No. 1 on the US Hip Hop/Rap Itunes Chart.
Montega is French’s fifth studio album and his first collaborative LP.
A month ago he was threatened with a copyright suit over Hot Boys lyrics. A member of the late ’90s rap group Hot Boys is threatening to sue the Billboard chart topping rapper, Montana for copyright infringement, claiming the chorus to his 2021 track “Handstand” directly copies a 20-word block of lyrics from a 1999 song.
In a May 4 cease-and-desist letter, an attorney for Turk said Montana’s song featured two lines of lyrics that were lifted almost word-for-word from the Hot Boys song “I Need A Hot Girl,” which reached No. 65 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 2000.
Just a few weeks ago, A US judge set a deadline for a motion of default judgment against Jamaican singer Shenseea and her label Interscope Records after there was no response to the $10 million copyright lawsuit brought by NY-based producer Anastas ‘Pupa Nas-T’ Hackett over her Lick collab with rapper Megan Thee Stallion.
According to court records seen by our affiliate DancehallMag, Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil has also dismissed the lawsuit against the two other named defendants, ATAL Music Limited and Alexandre Escolier, after Hackett and his company Travelling Man Productions, LLC, failed to file proof of service of a summons on them.
Shenseea, whose real name is Chinsea Linda Lee, and Interscope Records were each served with a summons containing Hackett’s 9-page complaint at a New York address on April 22, 2022, the court records show.
