The Black Eyed Peas leader clears his name and his new single with Chris Brown over allegation that he stole it from producers Arty and Mat Zo.
- Apr 24, 2013
AceShowbiz - During an interview over at KIIS-FM on Tuesday, April 23, will.i.am explained his side of story in the controversy, which his new single with Chris Brown entitled "Let's Go" has been embroiled in. The collaboration track off his new "#willpower" album was allegedly ripped off by the 38-year-old songwriter/record producer from producers Arty and Mat Zo's dance track "Rebound".
"Arty is a dope producer so I wrote this song to 'Rebound' this last year," will.i.am admitted to writing the song "Let's Go" over the instrumentals of Arty's track. "I got in touch with Arty and showed it to him, did a different version to it because I asked him [to] make it newer, because 'I don't just want to take your song and rap over it.' "
will.i.am then explains what led the two producers to accuse him of copyright infringement, saying, "But in a year's time, time's gone by [and] we preferred writing over and using the [original] 'Rebound.' Something happened and the clearance. . . hopefully, we resolved the issue."
will.i.am says he thought the appropriate licensing issue had been taken care of as he knew well that he sampled the April 2011-released single "Rebound" for his new album track, reassuring the two disgruntled producers that "we're fixing it now." Arty called attention to the oversight last week via Twitter, pointing out that no one from will's team had cleared the sample rights with his label, Anjunabeats.
