There's no mistaking the rip-off, but will.i.am now says he 'accidentally' stole the backing track to his latest release, 'Let's Go' featuring Chris Brown. In case there's any misunderstanding, here's the will.i.am song, then the original by Arty and Mat Zo, side-by-side...
Blatant indeed, though will.i.am says it was just an oversight. "[DJ] Arty is a dope producer," will.i.am told KISS-FM in an on-air interview. "So I wrote this song to 'Rebound' this last year. I got in touch with Arty and asked him to make it newer 'cause I don't just wanna take your song and rap over it."
"But in a year's time, time's gone by and we preferred writing over and using the original. Something happened and the clearance... well hopefully we resolved the issue."
This admission is a big breakthrough for Arty, who launched a Twitter tirade earlier this month to fix the injustice. Arty says his label, which owns full rights, wasn't properly contacted and the track definitely wasn't cleared.
Here's one problem: the track has already been blasted by one of the biggest promotional guns on the planet, and will.i.am is only addressing the issue after the release. Which might explain why the YouTube/VEVO video is now getting murdered by a hail of negative bullets. The track has nearly 800,000 views (as of Tuesday night), though a monstrous 89 percent of thumbs are negative.
This is a comment section icovered in blood, with the vitriol spilling into death threats and endless moderator removals. Here's just a sampling of the angry mob...
Chris Brown's involvement seems appropriate enough, though the miscreant vocalist appeared uninvolved with the track selection. But if there is a silver lining to all of this, it's discovery: outside of a near-certain financial settlement, a lot more people have now heard of DJ Arty. If only combining 'exposure' and a paycheck weren't so complicated.
