Chris Brown is in the news again.
As per Rolling Stone, the controversial R&B singer is facing allegations he didn’t properly credit and compensate a songwriter for their work on two songs, “Monalisa” and “Sensational”.
In a lawsuit filed this week in Manhattan federal court, Steve Chokpelle claims he was at Brown’s Los Angeles home with Sean Kingston in 2020 when Brown asked him to compose lyrics for “Monalisa”, a song purportedly released on June 4th, 2021.
A 2022 “Monalisa” remix from Nigerian musicians Lojay and Sarz that also featured Brown eventually peaked at No. 8 on Billboard’s US Afrobeats Songs chart.
Chokpelle further alleges he penned the lyrics for “Sensational” in 2021, and that after Brown heard a demo of the song, he decided to cut it himself.
According to Chokpelle, Brown recorded, mixed, and mastered his own version featuring Lojay, which featured on Brown’s 2023 album 11:11.
The track, which listed Kingston and Lojay as co-authors, climbed to the top of Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart and peaked at No. 71 on the Hot 100.
Although the lawsuit claims “Sensational” generated over $1 million in revenue, Chokpelle alleges he didn’t make any money from it.
He claims that Brown stopped him from getting “his properly entitled compensation flowing from his role as author/owner of the lyrics.”
As a result, Chokpelle wants a court order to declare him an author and copyright owner of the two songs, and is also seeking damages from Brown, Kingston, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Publishing Group.
“Defendants sustained a tremendous benefit, and shall continue to receive tremendous benefit, by earnings millions in revenues, acclaim, accolades, and goodwill, from the commercial exploitation of ‘Monalisa’ and ‘Sensational’,” the lawsuit, filed by Chokpelle and his lawyer Simon J. Rosen, states. “Chokpelle is entitled to a full, discrete accounting of all revenues earned by [Brown] from the commercial exploitation of the subject songs, from inception through current, and ongoing into the future.”