Frank Ocean sues ‘Blonde’ producer over songwriting credits

Frank Ocean is suing one of the producers of his Blonde album, saying that he tried to take credit for co-writing tracks.

The singer alleges that Om’Mas Keith tried to falsely register with performance royalties organisation ASCAP as a co-writer of eleven tracks on the 2016 album.

According to credits, Ocean did the production but was helped by a number of producers including Keith, Malay, James Blake, Jon Brion, Buddy Ross, Pharrell Williams and Rostam Batmanglij.

Also named in the suit are Keith’s company Analog Genius Corporation and several unnamed John Does as defendants, whom Ocean insists "did not own any portion of the copyright rights" to his music and “did not contribute any lyrics, melodies, or music that would give rise to any claim of authorship.”

Documents tendered to court say that Ocean’s lawyers tried several times to get Keith to sign a written agreement that he did not write any of the Blonde songs.

But he refused to sign and, it claims, tried to get himself registered as a co-writer.

These were for ‘Be Yourself’, Futura Free’, ‘Godspeed’, ‘Ivy’, ‘Nights’, ‘Nikes’, ‘Pink + White’, ‘Pretty Sweet’, ‘Skyline To’, ‘Solo’ and ‘White Ferrari’.

Ocean wants a judge to rule that Keith and the other defendants do not own any part of his song, they must stop claiming they did, and for legal costs.

He is not asking for damages.

Keith had helped Ocean produce his breakout record Channel Orange, as did Malay.

Ocean and Keith had a written agreement that Keith would understand he was a hired hand, be paid a flat rate and would sign that he had not written or co-written the songs.

The two had, apparently, an oral agreement for Blonde.

But when Ocean’s lawyers tried between 2014 and 2016 to get him to commit to a written agreement, Keith refused.

He supposedly even refused to acknowledge that he had not served as a writer on ‘(At Your Best) You Are Love’ a 1976 Isley Brothers tune that Ocean cut in 2015 and emerged on his visual album Endless.

‘(At Your Best) You Are Love’ is credited only to the Isley Brothers and is commonly thought to have been written about their mother.

According to Ocean, Keith also claimed he wrote Buddy Ross’ song ‘Be Yourself’ that was on Blonde.

Blonde went to #1 in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Belgium, Norway and Scotland.