Chris Brown Settles Lawsuit Over ‘Sensational’ and ‘Monalisa’ Songwriting Royalties
The R&B star and his publisher had been accused of withholding compensation from a lyricist on both tracks.
Black News 
Chris Brown has reached a settlement to exit a lawsuit that accused him of withholding royalties from a co-writer on two tracks.
A Monday (June 8) court notice, first obtained and reported by Billboard, says Brown and his publisher Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) have “reached a settlement in principle” with songwriter Steve Chokpelle. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, and lawyers for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment on Tuesday (June 9).
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Chokpelle sued Brown and UMPG this past February, alleging he’d been paid “no revenues whatsoever” for helping craft two of the R&B star’s hits: “Monalisa,” which hit No. 8 on the Billboard U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart in 2022, and “Sensational,” a single off Brown’s 2023 album 11:11 that topped Billboard‘s Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart.
“Defendants sustained a tremendous benefit, and shall continue to receive tremendous benefit, by [earning] millions in revenues, acclaim, accolades and goodwill from the commercial exploitation of ‘Monalisa’ and ‘Sensational,’” read the lawsuit. “As a result of defendants’ failure to acknowledge plaintiff’s authorship and copyright ownership interests, and by their failure to compensate plaintiff, defendants have been unjustly enriched.”
Specifically, Chokpelle claims he wrote the “Monalisa” lyrics during a 2020 session with Brown and fellow singer Sean Kingston at Brown’s Los Angeles-area home. Later, he alleges that he penned the lyrics for “Sensational” in 2023 alongside producer Onyekachi Emenalo, who goes by the moniker Krazytunez.
In court papers responding to the lawsuit last month, attorneys for Brown and UMPG argued that the claims should be dismissed due to the statute of limitations and other legal deficiencies. That motion was still pending when the settlement was reached.
Chokpelle also sued Kingston in his original lawsuit, and Brown’s settlement has not resolved those claims. The “Beautiful Girls” singer, who has not yet answered Chokpelle in court, is currently serving a federal prison sentence for defrauding luxury goods vendors of more than $1 million.
