A viral video says two Jamaican producers are “about to own every reggaeton song.” The real story is a landmark copyright case that a Los Angeles judge has just handed to a jury, and the outcome is anything but settled.
Caribbean Music · Copyright
The Jamaican Riddim That Built Reggaeton Is Headed to a Jury, Not a Coronation
A viral video says two Jamaican producers are “about to own every reggaeton song.” The real story is a landmark copyright case that a Los Angeles judge has just handed to a jury, and the outcome is anything but settled.
A clip racing across Caribbean social media this month opens with a bold promise: a Jamaican act is “about to own every reggaeton song.” It is a great hook. It is also, in two important ways, wrong. Steely & Clevie are a production duo, not a band, and far from owning reggaeton, they have just been told by a federal judge that the biggest question in their case will be decided not by a headline but by twelve strangers in a jury box.
Behind the clip sits a real and genuinely historic lawsuit, one that reaches deep into the shared musical DNA of the Caribbean. At its centre is “Fish Market,” a 1989 instrumental recorded by Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and the late Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson, two of the most important architects of Jamaican dancehall. That single B-side is the seed from which the “dembow riddim” grew, and the dembow riddim is the rhythmic engine of nearly all modern reggaeton.
From a Jamaican B-side to a global genre
The chain of custody is pure Caribbean riddim culture. “Fish Market” first surfaced as the flip side of Gregory Peck’s “Poco Man Jam.” It was then licensed to Shabba Ranks, who voiced his 1990 hit “Dem Bow” over it, giving the rhythm the name it carries today. Jamaican producer Dennis “The Menace” Halliburton reworked the pattern into his “Pounder” riddim, and when reggaeton took shape in Puerto Rico and Panama in the 1990s, producers built the new genre on samples drawn from a version of that Pounder track.
That is how a rhythm born in a Kingston studio ended up under “Gasolina,” “Despacito,” “Taki Taki” and, by the plaintiffs’ count, more than 1,800 recordings from over 150 artists. The defendant list reads like a Latin and pop hall of fame: Bad Bunny, Daddy Yankee, Karol G, J Balvin, Drake, Justin Bieber, Luis Fonsi and Pitbull among them, alongside all three major record companies. The suit, filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California and known as Browne v. Donalds, has been grinding through the courts since 2021.
This case boils down to a battle of the experts. Judge André Birotte Jr.
What the judge actually decided
Here is where the viral clip is out of date. The screenshots circulating are pulled from reporting published months ago, when a ruling was still described as looming. That ruling has now arrived. In an order made public in early July 2026, U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. refused to grant a win to either side, denying both the artists’ and the producers’ motions for summary judgment across a 44-page decision.
His reasoning was narrow and important. The two sides had filed duelling musicologists: the plaintiffs arguing that the specific arrangement of kick, snare, hi-hat and other percussion in “Fish Market” is an original, protectable creation, and the defence arguing that it is simply the centuries-old habanera pattern, cousin to the Jamaican Pentecostal “Poco” beat, which no one can own. Faced with credible experts pointing in opposite directions, Birotte concluded that this is a dispute of fact, not law, and that a jury, not a judge, must resolve it.
That is a long way from ownership. It means the case survives, and that the question of whether a rhythm can be copyrighted will go to trial, a prospect legal observers say is still potentially years away. It does not mean Steely & Clevie have prevailed, and even a future verdict in their favour would not automatically brand every reggaeton track as theft.
What the July ruling did and did not do
It did: keep one of the largest copyright cases in modern music alive, and confirm that a jury will decide whether the dembow rhythm is an original, protectable work.
It did not: hand the rhythm to Steely & Clevie, declare any song infringing, or award a single dollar. No trial date has been reached, and either side could still settle.
Why it matters to the Caribbean
For readers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, this is not a distant American courtroom drama. It is a case about who gets credited and paid when a Caribbean sound conquers the world. The riddim tradition, one backing track voiced by dozens of artists, is common heritage across the region, from Jamaican dancehall to Vincentian soca and dancehall. Our music economy runs on the same logic of shared rhythms and endless versions.
A jury that rules a distinctive riddim arrangement can be owned would hand Caribbean originators a powerful new tool to demand recognition and royalties from the global industry that has long borrowed their sound. A jury that rules the opposite would affirm that rhythm is common property, free for anyone to build on. Either way, a beat that began on a Kingston B-side is about to help define, in a Los Angeles courtroom, how the world values Caribbean creativity.
This article concerns active litigation. Nothing in Browne v. Donalds has been finally decided, no party has been found liable, and the claims described remain contested. Details reflect court filings and reporting available as of publication and may change as the case proceeds. Vincypowa News is a news publisher and this piece is not legal advice.