In a state­ment, Kes The Band is no longer in­tend­ing to take le­gal ac­tion against Ap­ple, Re­mi Wolf of Is­land Records. This de­ci­sion comes two days af­ter the band’s man­age­ment team, com­pris­ing of Da­mon De­Graff and Evan Vo­gel, claimed in a sep­a­rate state­ment they were prepar­ing to take the nec­es­sary le­gal ac­tion to se­cure the band’s in­ter­est.

The point of con­tention, ac­cord­ing to KTB, “Our fans re­cent­ly alert­ed us to a new Ap­ple iPhone TV com­mer­cial fea­tur­ing the song “Hel­lo Hel­lo Hel­lo” by Re­mi Wolf. Many not­ed that the song’s cho­rus re­sem­bles that of our own track “Hel­lo,” which we first re­leased in 2017.”

In­stead, the band is call­ing for at­ten­tion to the glob­al res­o­nance of so­ca mu­sic. “From ca­lyp­so to steel­pan to to­day’s so­ca, the mu­sic of Trinidad & To­ba­go has long been a source of in­spi­ra­tion for artists, song­writ­ers and pro­duc­ers in the broad­er mu­sic world. While bor­row­ers of our cul­tur­al cap­i­tal have some­times cred­it­ed the orig­i­nal sources, in many in­stances they have not. Sim­i­lar­ly, in­ter­pre­ta­tions of our mu­sic have of­ten gained ac­cess to pro­mo­tion and cor­po­rate in­vest­ment that is sim­ply not af­ford­ed to our own lo­cal mu­si­cians, pro­duc­ers and song­writ­ers.”

KTB’s state­ment con­tin­ued, “It is our hope that peo­ple from all over the world will rec­og­nize the so­ca/ca­lyp­so genre as the trea­sure that it is and, when they hear as­pects and el­e­ments of it in mu­sic from oth­er places, un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate where the in­flu­ences come from. We will al­ways fight for the genre, and the mu­sic of Trinidad & To­ba­go.”