It started with a 2022 album that rewrote the global music industry’s rules. It escalated into a transatlantic copyright battle that pitted Latin music’s biggest star against one of Africa’s most prominent independent labels. And now, after nearly two years of legal manoeuvring, missed deadlines, abandoned claims, and a judge’s dismissal order, Bad Bunny is sending emPawa Africa the bill and it is not cheap.
Bad Bunny’s lawyers say emPawa Africa, the independent music company founded by Nigerian artist Mr. Eazi, should cover their fees after dragging the Puerto Rican superstar into failed copyright litigation over a track on his chart-topping album Un Verano Sin Ti.
Bad Bunny is asking a federal court to order emPawa Africa to cover $465,612 in legal fees after successfully defeating the copyright lawsuit tied to his Un Verano Sin Ti track “Enséñame a Bailar.”
The motion, filed on March 23rd and obtained by Rolling Stone and Billboard, is a document of controlled fury lawyers describing a label that they say knew it could not win, stalled until it couldn’t stall anymore, and then abandoned the case rather than face the evidence. “This case was meritless from the beginning and should never have been brought,” the motion reads. “Instead, emPawa filed and aggressively litigated it, apparently hoping that Bad Bunny’s wealth, prominence and desire to avoid attorneys’ fees and bad publicity would enable emPawa to extract an undeserved, multimillion-dollar settlement.”
To understand the legal battle, one must first understand the music and the album that made this dispute inevitable.
The dispute centred around material from Un Verano Sin Ti, the 2022 album that cemented Bad Bunny’s global dominance. The project debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, spent 13 weeks atop the chart, and became the first Spanish-language album to lead the year-end ranking. Among its many tracks was “Enséñame a Bailar” a sun-drenched, Afrobeats-inflected record that immediately caught the attention of Mr. Eazi and his team at emPawa Africa.
The reason was unmistakable to anyone who had heard Joeboy’s 2019 track “Empty My Pocket.” Back in February 2023, Mr. Eazi publicly accused Bad Bunny of copyright infringement, stating that “Enséñame a Bailar” both interpolated and sampled “Empty My Pocket” without permission. For nine months after the release of the Grammy-nominated album, Mr. Eazi lobbied for proper accreditation without success, before taking his demand public. “The team at emPawa Africa have attempted to sort this issue amicably since May of last year with our mutual legal teams,” he said publicly.
Bad Bunny’s team had a ready response from the start and it never changed: the sample had been properly cleared. Bad Bunny’s team argued that the sample was obtained with permission from Lakizo Entertainment, which had served as a distributor on the original song at one point — a fact complicated by what was described as a prolonged battle between Lakizo and emPawa over the ownership of “Empty My Pocket,” which had even caused the song to disappear from streaming services at various points.
When months of private negotiations produced nothing, the dispute went legal. The legal dispute formally began in May 2024 when Nigerian producer Dera, whose real name is Ezeani Chidera Godfrey, filed a lawsuit claiming “Enséñame a Bailar” included an uncleared sample. According to the complaint, the song allegedly used elements from “Empty My Pocket,” a 2019 track he produced for Joeboy.
The lawsuit sought $25 million in damages a figure that reflected not just the alleged copyright violation but the extraordinary commercial success of Un Verano Sin Ti and everything it had generated.
Dera’s attorney Robert A. Jacobs stated at the time: “It is not very often that a musical artist of Bad Bunny’s caliber and sophistication uses someone else’s music without permission, and then ignores the person’s efforts to resolve the problem. Such a response is especially surprising when the unauthorized use pervades the entirety of the musical artist’s work. Unfortunately, these are the circumstances here.”
Bad Bunny and co-defendants Rimas Entertainment and The Orchard denied all wrongdoing and prepared for a fight.
What followed over the next several months was not a legal battle in the traditional sense. It was, according to Bad Bunny’s lawyers, an elaborate exercise in delay one that ultimately collapsed under its own procedural weight.
The breakdown began at the end of 2025, when the attorneys representing emPawa Africa dropped out of the lawsuit, citing “irreconcilable differences” over legal strategy. This immediately created enormous pressure on the plaintiffs to secure new representation and comply with pending court obligations obligations they never met.
The case collapsed earlier this year after missed court deadlines and procedural failures. On March 9, a judge dismissed the lawsuit after Godfrey failed to attend a February 5 discovery hearing and did not submit a required filing by March 6 to continue the case.
emPawa Africa itself had already been dismissed as a plaintiff from the case in February for also missing deadlines — meaning the label that had backed and financed the lawsuit was no longer even technically a party to it by the time the judge pulled the plug.
Judge Otis D. Wright II dismissed the lawsuit on March 9 with prejudice meaning it cannot be refiled. The case was not decided on its merits. It was decided on its absence of prosecution. But for Bad Bunny and his team, the manner of the dismissal was itself a vindication and proof of everything they had argued from the beginning.
The fee motion filed by Bad Bunny’s legal team Florida firm Gray Robinson, led by heavyweight music lawyer Jeff Goldman does not merely ask for money. It tells a story of institutional bad faith, painting emPawa Africa as a label that used the court system as a pressure tactic rather than a genuine legal remedy.
Bad Bunny’s lawyers said emPawa dragged out the case even though it was clear from the beginning that the “Enséñame a Bailar” sample was properly licensed from Lakizo. emPawa allegedly used various tactics to “stall and delay” the litigation, then bowed out when it came time to hand over evidence through the discovery process.
“When faced with an imminent court order that would require it to explain how it owned ‘Empty’ and Lakizo did not, emPawa chose instead to abandon its claims altogether,” reads the motion. “That it did not find a replacement counsel to prosecute its claims after its original counsel withdrew speaks volumes.”
The lawyers further argued that the label attempted to “confuse the public about Bad Bunny’s integrity and the true ownership of ‘Enséñame.'” They argued that without an award of the requested attorney’s fees, emPawa Africa will “suffer no consequence and the defendants will have been penalised substantially as a result of emPawa’s decision to file and pursue this meritless lawsuit in disregard of the facts.”
The prestigious Gray Robinson law firm invested hundreds of hours of work in Bad Bunny’s defence, with rates exceeding $600 per hour for senior attorneys. Three senior lawyers on the case billed hourly rates of $555, $615, and $680 respectively.
One of the most revealing aspects of Bad Bunny’s legal strategy is who he is and is not going after.
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Despite seeking fees from emPawa Africa, Bad Bunny is not requesting payment from producer Godfrey personally. In a footnote, the filing explains that the artist believes Godfrey “was not primarily responsible for the prosecution of the lawsuit, nor did he finance the lawsuit.”
This distinction suggests a strategic focus on institutional accountability rather than individual blame, particularly when financial backing and legal direction may have come from the label itself rather than the individual Nigerian producer.
The message is pointed: Bad Bunny’s team believes Dera was a vehicle a name put on a lawsuit that emPawa Africa conceived, financed, and directed, apparently in the hope that the reputational and financial cost of defending it would force a settlement. The $25 million demand that was never going to be awarded in court could still, the theory went, produce a multi-million-dollar nuisance payment from a superstar anxious to protect his brand.
It didn’t work. And now the label that devised that strategy faces a legal bill for nearly half a million dollars.
At the heart of this entire dispute one that neither the lawsuit nor its dismissal has fully resolved is the question of who actually owned the rights to “Empty My Pocket” and who had the authority to license it.
Bad Bunny’s team maintained consistently that the sample was obtained with permission from Lakizo Entertainment, which had at one point distributed the original song. The battle between Lakizo and emPawa over the song’s ownership has been extensively reported, with the track disappearing from streaming services at various points due to that internal dispute.
If Lakizo legitimately held distribution or licensing rights to the track as Bad Bunny’s team claims then the sample clearance was valid and emPawa’s lawsuit was fundamentally misconceived from the outset. When the label was asked to present evidence during the discovery process demonstrating that it, rather than Lakizo, owned the rights to “Empty My Pocket,” it responded with what Bad Bunny’s lawyers described as “frivolous objections” and then fled the case entirely when a court order compelled direct answers.
The unresolved ownership battle between emPawa and Lakizo remains the ghost in this machine the foundational question that the lawsuit was supposed to answer and never did.
Beyond the legal technicalities, this case carries cultural weight that neither side can fully escape. “Enséñame a Bailar” was itself a product of the Afrobeats-Latin music fusion that has come to define global pop in the 2020s Bad Bunny reaching into West African rhythms and sounds to create something that crossed every continental divide.
That the song then became the centre of a legal battle pitting Latin music’s biggest label ecosystem against one of Africa’s most prominent independent music companies with a Nigerian producer’s 2019 track at the centre speaks to the deeper, unresolved tensions around credit, ownership, and compensation as African sounds increasingly power global charts.
Mr. Eazi built emPawa Africa as a vehicle to ensure African artists are properly credited and compensated when their music travels the world. That mission is legitimate and important. But the manner in which this particular case was pursued filed, litigated aggressively, then abandoned at the moment of evidential reckoning has done significant damage to the credibility of that mission.
Under U.S. law, the winners of copyright litigation can get their legal fees covered by the losers if they can show that the claims were frivolous or unreasonably handled a provision specifically designed to deter unscrupulous actors from abusing the court system with meritless lawsuits. Musical artists who prevail over copyright accusers frequently turn to this remedy in the aftermath. Mariah Carey, for example, is currently seeking $1 million after defeating a copyright infringement lawsuit over her holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
emPawa Africa has not responded to requests for comment. The court has yet to rule on the fee motion.
The federal court must now decide whether Bad Bunny’s $465,612 fee demand is justified under the Copyright Act’s fee-shifting provisions. Given the manner in which the case collapsed abandoned by its own lawyers, dismissed with prejudice for lack of prosecution, with the label fleeing at the moment discovery would have forced it to prove its ownership claims legal analysts suggest the motion has a strong factual foundation.
For emPawa Africa, the potential consequences extend beyond the dollar figure. A federal court finding that the label pursued “frivolous” copyright litigation would be a significant reputational blow to an organisation that has positioned itself as a champion of African artists’ rights. It would also set a precedent that labels backing sampling claims against major international artists cannot simply use the threat of litigation as leverage and walk away cost-free when the evidence fails them.
For Bad Bunny, the outcome would close a chapter that has followed one of his greatest artistic achievements a shadow over Un Verano Sin Ti that he has consistently insisted was undeserved. His lawyers put it simply: “This case was meritless from the beginning and should never have been brought.”
The court will have the final word. But in the court of public opinion where artists, labels, lawyers, and fans across two continents have watched this drama unfold the verdict is already becoming clear.
