Lawsuit Over Drake's "Janice STFU" Chorus Dismissed

A federal lawsuit claiming that Drake's song "Janice STFU" took its chorus from another writer has been dismissed. The case ended barely 10 days after it was filed, according to a court filing reported by Rolling Stone.

The plaintiff, Aviel Hirschfield, is a producer and rapper from Oregon. He sued Drake and Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the three major record companies, in federal court. He claimed authorship of the song's chorus.

Hirschfield said he wrote the chorus after hearing Lykke Li's 2011 song "I Follow Rivers" while driving to Seattle. He said his finished version came together in January 2026 and that he sent the completed chorus, as a demo, to producers, according to Music Business Worldwide. He alleged that the same chorus appeared word for word on "Janice STFU" less than six months later.

Drake's team called the lawsuit "manufactured and baseless." Hirschfield then formally withdrew the case in court, a few days after Rolling Stone sent follow-up questions to his attorney. The case ended before any judge ruled on whether the chorus was copied.

Billboard describes "Janice STFU" as a chart-topping single from Drake's album Iceman. A chart is a ranking of the best-selling or most-streamed songs each week.

Drake has faced other legal fights in recent years. In October 2025, a federal judge in Manhattan dismissed his defamation lawsuit against UMG over Kendrick Lamar's diss track "Not Like Us," according to Reuters. Defamation means a false statement that damages a person's reputation.

Streaming has brought its own courtroom disputes. A class-action lawsuit, which is a case brought on behalf of a large group of people, claimed that Spotify allows billions of fake streams from bots, meaning automated programs that play songs to inflate their counts. A federal judge has dismissed that suit again, Billboard reported. The suit covered Drake and other stars.

For songwriters, a chorus can be the most valuable part of a song. Claims like Hirschfield's must show that the material was copied, and that is often hard to prove. Both sides in this case have now stepped away from the courtroom, and the chorus remains on the record as Drake's.