Skip to content
News

Drake Isn’t About to Pay Off Drunk-Dial Girl Suing Over ‘Marvin’s Room’

Drake

Drake wants the world to know that he never promised a single penny to the girl who famously asked him, “Are you drunk right now?” TMZ reported over the weekend that the MC had filed his official legal response to a lawsuit brought by Ericka Lee, the woman whose voice recording is used in a dramatized drunk-dial phone call on Take Care single “Marvin’s Room.” That statement: “[Lee] consented to the use of her voice in the song ‘Marvin’s Room’ for no compensation.” Furthermore, he wants to make it clear that at no point were the two in a romantic relationship, as Lee claims in her suit (he’s busy coming on to GQ interviewers, anyway).

As SPIN previously wrote, Lee is suing the rapper because he had (apparently only verbally) promised her songwriting credits and 50 percent of the song’s profits — what would have been an awfully generous deal for a successful Young Money rapper putting out the debut single off a highly anticipated sophomore record. (His first LP sold 447,000 copies its first week, so it’s not like the 631,000-copy first week success of Take Care was any big surprise.) Drake’s legal response is virtually identical to the public statement his reps issued, which reads: “This claim is entirely without merit and our client has not engaged in any wrongful conduct. Ericka Lee consented to the use of her voice in the song ‘Marvin’s Room’ prior to its release. Lee asked only for the credit she received as ‘Syren Lyric Muse,’ and she did not ask for any compensation. It was only after she retained a lawyer that there was a demand for payment.  Drake tried for months to resolve the matter amicably, and he now looks forward to being vindicated in court.”