Entertainment

A songwriter says Drake’s ‘Janice STFU’ chorus came from his demo

GoodbyeCalev sued Drake and Universal in federal court, claiming the hook copies a demo he sent around in January. Drake’s team calls the suit a baseless cash grab.

Published

2 days ago

October 21, 2026

Massih Shahbazi

A studio microphone with a pop filter, in black and white, beside the headline Whose chorus is it?

A hit song has a lot of parents. There’s the artist whose name is on it, the producers who built the beat, the writers who get credited and, sometimes, a person who says they were there first and nobody wrote them down. That last person has now filed a federal lawsuit against Drake.

Songwriter Aviel Calev Hirschfield, who records as GoodbyeCalev, sued Drake, OVO Sound, UMG Recordings and Universal Music Publishing in federal court in California on Oct. 16, alleging that the chorus of “Janice STFU” was taken from a demo he made earlier this year, Billboard reported. Drake’s team says the claims are false. None of the allegations have been tested in court.

What the lawsuit claims

According to the complaint as described by Billboard, Hirschfield says he wrote and recorded the chorus in January 2026 and sent it to people in Drake’s circle, including producers that reporting identifies as FnZ. The suit describes the two choruses as “literally identical” in lyrics, melody and cadence, according to Billboard and Complex.

He’s asking for damages, a share of the profits and songwriting credit, Billboard reported. The stakes aren’t small: the track has passed 300 million streams on Spotify, according to the same report.

AllHipHop identified Hirschfield as a songwriter with a credit on Beyoncé’s “Heated,” which, if accurate, means he isn’t an anonymous outsider. He’s someone who has worked inside the same industry he’s now suing.

Drake’s answer

Drake’s camp didn’t stay quiet. A representative called the filing a “manufactured and baseless attempt” to cash in on Drake’s fame, Complex reported, and said Drake “has no connection or knowledge of this person.” According to HotNewHipHop, Drake’s representatives maintained that the chorus was written independently and suggested the metadata on the demo files had been manipulated.

That’s a pointed accusation, and it goes to the heart of how these cases are won and lost. A demo’s value as evidence depends on proving when it was made and who heard it. If the file dates hold up, the songwriter has a story. If they don’t, the case gets very hard.

The song inside the song

There’s a complication both sides will have to deal with. “Janice STFU” interpolates Lykke Li’s “I Follow Rivers,” and Hirschfield says his demo was built on that same idea, according to Billboard. When two songs borrow from the same earlier song, part of what sounds alike may belong to neither of them.

Courts have spent years trying to draw the line between copying a specific piece of expression and sharing a common idea, a familiar melody or a borrowed hook. Interpolation makes that line harder to see. A jury, if it ever gets that far, would have to separate what came from Lykke Li, what came from the demo and what came from Drake’s own writing sessions.

Why songwriters keep suing

The economics explain the anger, even when the claims don’t hold up. In streaming-era hits, a songwriting credit is one of the few ways a writer outside the star’s circle gets paid over the long run. Demos travel through producers, managers and studio contacts constantly, often with no paper trail beyond an email or a shared folder. When a finished song sounds like something a writer sent around months earlier, the only route to credit or money is often a lawsuit.

That system also creates incentives for opportunistic claims against the biggest names, which is exactly what Drake’s team says is happening here. Both things can be true across the industry at once: real writers get left off credits, and famous artists get targeted by people hoping for a settlement. The work of a court is to figure out which one this is.

From the fan’s chair

Some outlets report that an alleged demo has leaked online, and listeners are split on what they hear, according to one report. That’s the internet doing what it does: running its own trial before any real one begins. Leaked audio of uncertain origin isn’t evidence of anything until someone establishes where it came from and when it was made.

For fans, none of this changes how the song sounds. What it might change is whose name appears in the credits, and who gets paid each time someone presses play.

What happens next

No ruling or settlement had been reported as of this writing. Cases like this often turn on early fights over evidence: the demo files, the emails that sent them and the timeline of when Drake’s producers worked on the track. Many settle quietly. A few go to trial and become precedents.

Hirschfield says he got there first. Drake says he’s never heard of him. Somewhere in a hard drive’s metadata, there’s an answer to which of them is right.