On Tuesday of this past week, Kia Shine posted a photo of himself holding up 3 BMI Awards for Drake’s hit song “Best I Ever Had” sparking the rumors that he was a ghostwriter for Drake. According to Kia Shine, he owns 25% publishing for the “Best I Ever Had” record because it samples a record he gave to Wayne called “Do It For The Boy”.
Drake sampled the melody, some of the words, cadence, etc. So because I had already registered the original record, my business was in order. I sent in the Drake record and let my legal team handle it from there. We were able to settle at 25% of the “Best I Ever Had” publishing. It’s a blessing, but the moral of the story is to “follow up to get your dollars up” and always be prepared and on top of your business

However, Drake took to his blog the next day and denied Kia Shine’s claims:
There have been questions posed to me the last few days about the writing of Best I Ever Had and I figured I’d take the time to clear the air directly. I have never met Kia Shine or worked with him. I wrote the entire composition in Toronto and I borrowed one line from a Lil Wayne song that he produced the BEAT for. The claims of 25% ownership are false and for a artist to brag about splits on a song is distasteful to begin with.

I normally don’t get into this Hip Hop back and forth but I just had to know the truth, especially after checking BMI’s database and noticing that Kia Shine was not credited for the song. I reached out to Hanna Pantle over at BMI who straightened the whole situation out. According to Hanna, The song was sampled and there are copyright laws that state if you sample another persons work, you must get permission for that and typically they also get a credit on that song. It is negotiated. Kia Shine is legitimately listed as a songwriter on the record (because of his sample) and that is why he received the BMI Awards as well as Drake - whose song Kia’s sample appears on. The only reason Kia’s credits for “Best I Ever Had” is not listed in the BMI database yet is because the updates for the song registration takes a while, however, it will be listed over time.
The bigger question is how did Drake not know that Kia Shine would be getting a percentage of the publishing on the record? I’m assuming this would be something he’d have to inquire about within his management team.
So The moral of the story is this: Drake wrote “Best I Ever Had” however, since he sampled the beat from “Do It For The Boy”, Kia Shine is given songwriting credit on the record. That doesn’t mean that Kia Shine was a ghostwriter on the song as reported on a blog nor has he ever claimed he wrote it. He handled his business on the legal side and now owns a percentage of the publishing.

Updated to say: The song “Best I Ever Had” was on Drake’s “So Far Gone” mixtape. It’s common for songs on mixtapes to use samples but rarely do mixtape records become huge radio hits. This was one of those rare cases…

All I have to say about this is, Drake needs to get his legal team together and find out how someone was getting a percentage off of his song without him knowing, or his money will be like the title of his mixtape..."So Far Gone" lol