Drake Vs. Khia Shine: Who’s Telling The Truth?

This morning I received more than a few emails about #KiaShineWrote, which is a hash tage for the Number One Trending Topic on Twitter Last night. The topic originated from a bunch of back and forth between Drake and southern Hip Hop artist Kia Shine over the hit record “Best I Ever Had”. Here’s the rundown:

On Tuesday of this past week, Kia Shine posted a photo of himself holding up 3 BMI Awards for Drake’s hit song “Best I Ever Had” sparking the rumors that he was a ghostwriter for Drake. According to Kia Shine, he owns 25% publishing for the “Best I Ever Had” record because it samples a record he gave to Wayne called “Do It For The Boy”. He gave the record for Wayne in March 08 and it appeared on a mixtape that October. He tried to contact Young Money so that he could get paid for the track but never heard back from them. He then heard the Drake record in January and noticed that Drake had sampled the melody and some of the words to his song. Since he had already registered the original record, he sent it to his legal team and they settled at 25% of the “Best I Ever Had” publishing.

However, Drake took to his blog the next day and denied Kia Shine’s claims:

There have been questions posed to me the last few days about the writing of Best I Ever Had and I figured I’d take the time to clear the air directly. I have never met Kia Shine or worked with him. I wrote the entire composition in Toronto and I borrowed one line from a Lil Wayne song that he produced the BEAT for. The claims of 25% ownership are false and for a artist to brag about splits on a song is distasteful to begin with.

I normally don’t get into this Hip Hop back and forth but I just had to know the truth, especially after checking BMI’s database and noticing that Kia Shine was not credited for the song. I reached out to Hanna Pantle over at BMI who straightened the whole situation out. According to Hanna, The song was sampled and there are copyright laws that state if you sample anything, the person gets the songwriting credit which is what Kia shine did. Kia Shine is legitimately listed as a songwriter on the record and BMI wouldn’t have given him an award if he wasn’t. The only reason Kia’s credits for “Best I Ever Had” is not listed in the BMI database yet is because the updates for the song registration takes a while, however, it will be listed over time.

I told Hanna about Drake’s blog and I asked her how did he not know that Kia Shine gets a percent of his record. She tells me:

“Really that comes down to him and his people. If Drake didn’t know then that’s him and his people”.

So the moral of the story is: Kia Shine handled his business and is telling the truth. He owns a percentage of that record (the exact percentage is unconfirmed) and he will be receiving a check. It is what it is…

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