Sting said he got $2,000 a day off a rap sample. Diddy took five years to correct him
Thanks to “Every Breath You Take,” Diddy is paying Sting every day he wakes — generously.
Rapper and music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs confirmed that he’s been sending the English rocker thousands of dollars daily for sampling the Police’s 1983 hit in his 1997 song “I’ll Be Missing You.”
In 2018, the former Police frontman told the “Breakfast Club” that it’s true he makes “two grand a day” for that sample, pulled from a song he wrote. Responding to the resurfaced clip Wednesday, Diddy tweeted that is not exactly the case.
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“Nope,” he said, “5K a day.”
If that figure is to be believed, that’s more than $1.8 million in annual payments. For some Twitter followers, the billionaire hip-hop mogul’s cheeky correction was “lowkey the biggest unintentional flex.”
“Puff money different,” one user said.
While it seems the daily rate has significantly increased since Sting’s 2018 claim (inflation much?), Diddy doesn’t seem to mind.
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“Love to my brother @OfficialSting!” the rapper wrote.
Diddy released “I’ll Be Missing You” to honor his friend and collaborator Notorious B.I.G., who was killed in March 1997 in Los Angeles. The slow-paced tribute, which featured Biggie’s widow Faith Evans and 112, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 on June 14, 1997, and earned Diddy his first Grammy Award. (The Police won two Grammys for the original track, including song of the year in 1983.)
But the rapper and his Bad Boy Records label reportedly never got the rights — or forgot to ask for permission — to use the sample before releasing the remix. Had they done so, Diddy could have been on the hook for a much smaller payout over the last couple of decades. Sting sued for copyright infringement and eventually got the right to claim to 100% of royalties on the remix.
In the 2018 interview, Sting told “Breakfast Club” hosts Charlamagne tha God, Angela Yee and DJ Envy that he’s “generally” open to letting other musicians sample his music with permission.
Charlamagne Tha God defended Mississippi news anchor Barbie Bassett, who was taken off the air after she quoted some Snoop Dogg slang.
“I just want to make sure that they’re not saying some dumb s—,” he said. A sample for former President Trump, though, seems off the table.
Even after the success of “I’ll Be Watching You,” Sting said Diddy’s on the hook for daily payments “for the rest of his life.” Diddy eventually asked for permission to sample the Police song, Sting added, and the two have since become “very good friends.”
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