Iconic dancehall trailblazer and deejay, Shabba Ranks, has filed a lawsuit against the publishing arm of Greensleeves Records, in a move to reclaim the rights to several of his crossover hits as well as the 1990 song Dem Bow. 

According to a report in Billboard magazine, Shabba Ranks (born Rexton Gordon) filed the suit on Friday (Sept. 11), and it aims to reclaim compositions including the Billboard Hot 100 hits Slow and Sexy, Housecall, Mr Loverman and Let’s Get It On.

Shabba Ranks’ catalogue also includes the 1990 song Dem Bow, the namesake for reggaetón’s iconic dembow rhythm that is currently at the centre of a long-running copyright infringement lawsuit entangling the entire genre.

Friday’s lawsuit, meanwhile, centres on copyright termination — the provision of United States (US) copyright law that enables authors to claw back their intellectual property decades after signing it away.

Shabba Ranks first notified Greensleeves in 2023 that he wanted to exercise his termination right, but the publisher said no. According to Greensleeves, his 1989 publishing deal stipulated that his compositions were “works made for hire,” which are explicitly excluded from the copyright termination statute.

Shabba, however, is contesting the validity of that work-for-hire provision, and he wants a judge to declare that his copyright termination is effective regardless.

“The compositions are not and could not have been works made for hire under the US Copyright Act, regardless of the language of the assignment,” wrote Shabba Ranks’ attorneys at Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt.

“Gordon was never at any time an employee of [Greensleeves], and musical compositions are not recognised in the US Copyright Act as a type of work that can be deemed a work made for hire simply by agreement between the hiring party and a non-employee author.”

Copyright termination is a hot topic in music law in the United States at present.

Pioneering rap outfit Salt-N-Pepa is battling Universal Music Group (UMG) over the provision in a case that has caught the industry’s attention.

Meanwhile, all three major labels are currently trying to get the Supreme Court to reverse a controversial recent ruling that extended the termination right overseas.

Shabba Ranks, raised in Seaview Gardens, rode high in the late 1980s into the mid-1990s with a steady streak of hit songs. He signed with Epic Records and scored back-to-back wins at the Grammy Awards when As Raw As Ever and X-tra Naked won the Best Reggae Album awards in 1992 and 1993, respectively.

Both albums have been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.