Dr. Dre has served Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green with a formal request to stop using his music to avoid facing further legal action.
According to TMZ, Dre’s attorney Howard E. King sent the formal cease and desist letter on Monday (January 9), giving her two business days to remove all unauthorized use of the song “Still D.R.E.” from her social media accounts.
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The scathing letter, in which King admonished Marjorie Taylor Green for failing to follow laws laid out by the U.S. Constitution, follows a video shared by the controversial lawmaker shared via Twitter on Monday that saw her walking through Congress as Dr. Dre’s 1999 hit played in the background.
Once he caught wind of the post, the multi-platinum artist told TMZ that his music had been used without his prior consent, saying “I don’t license my music to politicians, especially someone as divisive and hateful as this one.”
Howard E. King’s letter reiterated Dr. Dre’s disapproval and accused Marjorie Taylor Greene of “wrongfully exploiting [“Still D.R.E.”] through the various social media outlets to promote [her] divisive and hateful political agenda.”
“One might expect that, as a member of Congress, you would have a passing familiarity with the laws of our country,” King wrote. “It’s possible, though, that laws governing intellectual property are a little too arcane and insufficiently populist for you to really have spent much time on. We’re writing because we think an actual lawmaker should be making laws not breaking laws, especially those embodied in the constitution by the founding fathers.
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He continued: “The United States Copyright Act says a lot of things, but one of the things it says is that you can’t use someone else’s song for your political campaign promotions unless you get permission from the owner of the copyright in the song, a step you failed to take.”
Dr. Dre’s legal team gave Greene until the close of business on Wednesday (January 11) to remove the post and acknowledge their request in writing.
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Prior to sending the cease and desist, Dre’s camp had already contacted Twitter, leading to the post being removed. Marjorie Taylor Green responded by sending the Aftermath boss a message through a statement to TMZ, which she shared on Twitter with the caption, “The next episode..”
“While I appreciate the creative chord progression,” the statement read, “I would never play your words of violence against women and police officers, and your glorification of the thug life and drugs.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene gained national attention in 2021 after Democrats in the House of Representatives demanded that she be removed from Congress over a number of controversial statements made on Facebook between 2018 and 2019.
The move came after a CNN investigation uncovered a number of posts in which Greene advocated for the execution of several prominent Democrats. The Georgia congresswoman, who was elected to the House in 2020, also made a number of antisemitic and anti-Catholic statements, as well as posts supporting the idea that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida had been staged.
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After her Democratic counterparts began working to have her censured, Marjorie Taylor Greene addressed the House Republican Conference in February 2021 and said that her since-deleted social media posts were not an accurate reflection of who she is. That same year, her Twitter account was suspended no less than five times due to violations of the platform’s policies regarding misinformation, CNN reported.
While she remains a Congressional representative for the state of Georgia, House Democrats were able to have Marjorie Taylor Green stripped of all of her legislative committee assignments.