Ten days. That’s how long Aviel Hirschfield’s copyright lawsuit against Drake lasted before the producer quietly pulled the plug. He filed over “Janice STFU” on October 16, then voluntarily dismissed the entire case on October 27, 2026.
The dismissal came without prejudice, which means Hirschfield can technically refile or amend down the line. But a claim that collapses this quickly tends to say a lot on its own, and plenty of people watching saw it coming.
Hirschfield claimed he wrote the song’s chorus. His complaint said he created his version between December 2025 and January 2026, recording original vocals for a demo that January.
The timeline ran into trouble almost immediately. Drake had previewed an early version of the track, then titled “That’s Just How I Feel,” during an Iceman EPS 3 livestream on September 4, 2025. That was months before the alleged demo was supposedly recorded.
Then the internet got to work. YouTube creator What’s the Dirt isolated the vocals on Hirschfield’s leaked demo and lined them up against Drake’s official release, reporting that the waveforms matched identically.
His breakdown argued the so called reference track was actually Drake’s finished hook, pitch shifted and run through altered formant filtering, then laid over a leaked FnZ instrumental.
In other words, it read less like an early draft and more like a remix built backwards from the final song.
Drake’s legal team pushed further, publicly accusing Hirschfield of forging digital metadata and timestamps.
Had the case reached discovery, a court appointed forensic examiner would have gone through the creation dates on his files. What’s the Dirt believes that looming scrutiny is what pushed Hirschfield to walk away.
The lyric argument had holes too. Hirschfield pointed to the line “swear my label got to free me baby” as proof his demo came first. What’s the Dirt noted the phrase was already floating around during Drake’s late 2025 teaser streams.
The melody was an even tougher sell. The chorus interpolates Lykke Li’s 2011 song “I Follow Rivers,” and Drake, OVO and UMG cleared the publishing with her team from the start.
Hirschfield was effectively claiming a melody Drake had already paid another artist to use.
From day one, Drake’s camp called the suit a “manufactured and baseless attempt” to cash in on his name. They also labeled it “career suicide” and a “manufactured attempt to exploit Drake’s streaming momentum.
Boi-1da, a longtime Drake collaborator with roughly 30 billion Spotify streams on credited songs, offered a view from the producer’s chair.
Every time you make a hit song there’s always some weirdo plotting to say you stole it from them,” he said. “It’s happened to me every single time.”
Fans were less measured. One X user urged Drake supporters to remember Hirschfield’s name, calling him a “shameless scammer” and questioning his credit on the song “HEATED.”
The door isn’t fully shut, since Hirschfield keeps the legal option to come back. Nobody’s expecting a sequel anytime soon, though, and “Janice STFU” keeps racking up streams in the meantime.
