dr Dre and his legal team have taken action against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after she used the “Still DRE” instrumental in a self-promotional video shared on Monday, January 9th.
The objectively goofy clip pairs the “Still DRE” beat – which Dre produced with Mel-Man and Scott Storch – with some slo-mo clips of Greene not exactly working hard but walking the halls of Congress. There’s also some footage of Greene taking a call from “DT” (yeesh) and celebrating the end of Kevin McCarthy’s abject humiliation when he was finally elected Speaker of the House on the 15th try.
After the video surfaced on Twitter, attorneys for Dr. Dre extracted a letter received by Rolling Stone, accusing them of “falsely exploiting this work through various social media channels to further their divisive and hateful political agenda.” The letter added that Dre (real name Andre Young) “has not and will never give them permission not to broadcast or distribute any of his music.”
After claiming that the clip’s use of “Still DRE” constituted copyright infringement, the letter continued, “One might expect that as a member of Congress you would have only passing acquaintance with the laws of our country. However, it’s possible that laws governing intellectual property are a little too secretive and not enough populist to really bother with them. We write because we believe that an actual legislature should make laws, not break laws, especially those enshrined in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers.”
Dre’s attorneys then ordered Greene to refrain from “any further unauthorized use” of the musician’s work. It also called for Greene to confirm before 5:00 p.m. ET on Jan. 11 that she has “complied with those demands.”
It doesn’t appear that Dre’s team had to wait that long: at the time of publication, the video was there removed from Greene’s Twitter accountwith the message “This media has been taken down due to a notice from the copyright owner.” (Mediaite has retained a copy for those willing to submit.)
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In a statement first shared with TMZ, Greene claimed she was locked out of her Twitter as a result of the complaint – although she was able to at 3:50pm post a screenshot her statement.
Turning to Dre, Greene said, “While I appreciate the creative chord progression, I would never play your words of violence against women and cops and your glorification of thug life and drugs.”