Drake Denies Using Ghostwriter on ‘Best I Ever Had’

Drake is putting to bed the rumors alleging a ghostwriter penned his hit single 'Best I Ever I Had.' For months, it was believed that rapper Kia Shine actually wrote the lyrics to the 'So Far Gone' EP's lead single. Drake took to his blog "to clear the air directly."

"I have never met Kia Shine or worked with him," the Canadian rapper wrote. "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 [percent] ownership are false and for [an] artist to brag about splits on a song is distasteful to begin with."

Shine, born Nakia Coleman, fueled the misunderstanding by stating that he in fact wrote the chart-topping single, which peaked at Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100 and landed at the top of both the U.S. R&B and Rap charts. Coleman, however, produced the Lil Wayne song 'Do It For The Boy,' which inspired Drake's 'Best I Ever Had.'

"I gave Wayne the joint back in March of '08," Coleman explained in an interview, "and I had yet to hear the completed version until [DJ] Absolute hit me. I tried to contact [Lil Wayne's record label] Young Money to get paid for the original track before I made a move, but couldn't get anyone to hit me back."

"As a producer," Coleman continued, "it's tough with mixtapes these days. Artist[s] will rap on a [two] track version of a beat & hook you put on a beat CD to shop and the next thing you know your beat is on the radio. It's really impossible for Wayne to do a mixtape track, because if the song is a hit, it's going to touch radio. That's why whenever I produce or perform on a record I immediately send it to my guy, Maani, on the publishing side to handle all the paperwork.

"I get a call from Absolute and he's like, 'Yo, you sold the song to Drake.' I'm like who's Drake??? Absolute sent me the joint in January and I'm like...wooooow! 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."

With that cleared, Drake continues to ready his full-length debut 'Thank Me Later' for a 2010 release.