The Story Of ‘Ghetto People Song’ Touches All Sides Of Music Rights Issue In Jamaica

Fragments of the Reggae classic Ghetto People Song form the nucleus of Harry Fraud’s production on French Montana’s recent track, Higher. Many welcomed this interplay between genres and generations. For others, the song’s release poured salt into a 26-year-old wound.

Everton Blender, who sings on the 1996 sample, is somewhere in the middle of this divide. “I feel good man, the only thing I would want the song to say is, ‘featuring Everton Blender.’ I did not get that recognition that I am supposed to get, so that would be great,” he recently told DancehallMag.

Ghetto People Song‘s producer, Tony Rebel, was less receptive and equally in the dark. “Me a send it to my lawyer dem a New York,” he said. “I wonder if somebody clear it, who would be the one to clear it?”

Both Blender and Rebel allege that they were unaware of the sample until after Higher was released. This grim detail opens the latest chapter in what has been a winding and shady saga for both Ghetto People Song and its riddim track, Lala Bella. It also highlights the thorny side of copyright that has long plagued the music industry in Jamaica.

“A mi own it,” Tony Rebel said of Ghetto People Song. It’s a claim that he’s clung to for a quarter-century, even in the face of open hostility and legal action from the track’s other writers and the beatmaker. More than a title though, credit and compensation are at the heart of these disputes — things that the musicians involved claim they’ve had to fight for since the track’s release. 

From the cast of writers, Everton Blender has been the most vocal with allegations of unpaid dues. “That song was written by me, Tony Rebel and Steve Lindo…but Rebel claimed all the rights of the song. I haven’t got any royalties to this day,” he revealed. Blender maintains that he contributed the chorus, the “higher” intro and the lines “give a little / know who you give to / I am talking to you, Mr. Fortune.” He also said, “A Steve do the balance of it. He wrote the other verses.”

Steve Lindo recently told the Jamaica Observer that Tony Rebel had asked him to write songs for Rebel’s Flames Productions label based on the strength of Lindo’s previous work. Lindo added that he wrote much of Ghetto People Song alongside Shanty Plus, after which, “me and [Shanty Plus] teach Blender the song and the three of we walk go inna studio go record it.” Lindo also noted that Rebel removed a verse from the original song and “added some words.”

Tony Rebel’s version of events begins similarly enough. “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 terrorise the poor / Diluting the fact they are human / Who will one day not take it anymore.”

But then things take a sharp turn. In that same interview with Donovan Watkis, Tony Rebel continued, “in the studio, me write the three verse and leave the ‘ghetto people song’ chorus.” From this point on, the contradictions between the three accounts eclipse the overlaps. 

Yet the question of who wrote the song has proven less consequential than the fact of who registered the copyright. Ghetto People Song was released on Tony Rebel’s Flames Productions and was followed by other songs voiced on the Lala Bella riddim such as Tony Rebel’s If Jah (Is By My Side) and Aaron Silk’s The Right Path, among others. While these subsequent versions hit big in Jamaica, Ghetto People Song became its own phenomenon. In addition to animating crowds all over the island, it became the theme song for the Reggae Boyz’s home matches after they qualified for the 1998 World Cup. 

But success wasn’t all sweet. If Tony Rebel was able to shrug off mounting calls for compensation, as is alleged, he couldn’t dodge a court order. In a lawsuit filed in 1999, the keyboardist Wayne Lattibeaudiere claimed that Tony Rebel and Flames Productions breached his copyright in relation to the instrumental Going Home, eventually released under the title Lala Bella. 

According to court documents, Lattibeaudiere alleged that he was the composer and sought damages after the defendants caused the composition to be broadcast, distributed, sold, and published without identifying him as such. This applied to all the Lala Bella tracks backed by the instrumental and released under Flames Productions.

Tony Rebel denied this. The defence hinged on the assertion that Rebel was the sole composer of Lala Bella. Rebel also challenged the originality of the Lala Bella composition against the Forbidden Love recording by Reggae band Third World. 

The case sat in limbo for the next seven years. A default judgement was given in favour of Lattibeaudiere in 2006 owing to the fact that, as The Hon. Mr. Justice Martin Gayle put it in 2008, “this is a 1999 suit which was not yet reached trial and may never reach trial because of the Defendant/Applicant’s (Tony Rebel’s) ill-timed applications.”

In 2014, Tony Rebel appealed the Supreme Court’s decision, arguing that he was not informed about the 2006 default judgement. Justice Kirk Anderson struck down the appeal, maintaining that since the documents were served to Rebel’s attorney, Sandra Alcott, the singer could not argue that he was unaware of the ruling. 

Exactly how much Tony Rebel and Flames Productions owe Wayne Lattibeaudiere is still unclear. A hearing to assess legal damages was postponed until October 2022 after initially being scheduled for 28 June 2022. Coincidentally, the previous June weekend saw the release of Montega, the joint album by French Montana & Harry Fraud which features the Lala Bella/Ghetto People Song sample on the track Higher.

So now as another potential legal skirmish looms for the Ghetto People Song contributors, the jumbled issue of ownership takes on a new urgency. In Jamaica, where copyright protection is a relatively new safeguard for creators, cases like this are alarmingly common (even if not as protracted or highly publicised.) And when exploitation of intellectual property becomes normalised, it gives rise to problems such as producers going uncompensated when artists perform and profit from dubs. 

Or it leads to a situation like this where beatmaker Wayne Lattibeaudiere says, “I am the copyright owner” of the Lala Bella riddim; producer Tony Rebel says, “A mi own” Ghetto People Song; rapper French Montana writes, “I OWN A 100% OF EVERYTHING NOT A 90/10 NEITHER” regarding his project, Montega; and, the original singer Everton Blender, allegedly bears the brunt of it all, saying “mi still a fight” for royalties owed.

Added Blender, “I know French Montana will fix things. Him know the struggles we face as artist in this music world.”