Following accusations of theft, will.i.am admitted to using Arty and Mat Zo's track "Rebound" for his own song "Let's Go" featuring Chris Brown.
Arty slammed will.i.am via Twitter after hearing the jacked beat for the first time on YouTube. After a period of silence, the Black Eyed Peas member told KIIS FM, "Arty is a dope producer so I wrote this song to 'Rebound' this last year." he said, "I got in touch with Arty and showed it to him, did a different version to it 'cause I asked him [to] make it newer 'cause I don't just wanna take your song and rap over it," he said. "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."
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It is unclear at this point whether the two artists have settled the dispute. Arty has clammed up since his original claim that the two labels never discussed the usage of his music. While Chris Brown told the world that he doesn't care either way via his Twitter account.
Copyright infrignement is nothing new in music, especially hip-hop. Back in 1990, Vanilla Ice (remember him?) sampled Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure" without their consent. The case against the baseline used in his hit "Ice, Ice Baby" was so egregious that it never even made it to court. Ice settled on his own for an undisclosed cash settlement.
Akon's 2007 smash "Don't Matter" used the Melody from R. Kelly's hit, "Ignition," from 2002. "Don’t Matter" reached the top of the singles chart in the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. There are no documents showing a contract between the two artists, so either Kelly was compensated under the table, or he simply decided that it "don't matter."