So Drake’s “Hotline Bling” is kind of a big deal. The song is Drake’s highest grossing single and surged to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 list – not to mention that its video has turned into a meme maker’s playground.
Drakes old-man dance moves deserve the massive attention; however, another rapper D.R.A.M. claims Drake stole his song “Cha Cha” to make “Hotline Bling.”
According to a Facebook video posted by Insider, the two songs sound very similar. The chord progression shown in the video for the two songs matches but is just in a different key and the rhythm in both drum beats match exactly.
In fact the songs are so similar that when “Hotline Bling” debuted on Apple’s radio station Beats 1, the station called Drake’s song a remix of “Cha Cha.”
D.R.A.M. did what he could to refute this, but the damage is already clear. “Cha Cha” is getting left in the dust as “Hotline Bling” becomes one of the biggest hits of the year.
It seems like this happens all too often between artists in the music industry, as one person makes some sort of beat or riff that gets taken from them without permission.
Stealing people’s songs isn’t the same thing as sampling. When artists properly credit and compensate other artists to use their work on tracks it can become an incredible final product. Kanye West’s hit “Blood on the Leaves” wouldn’t have been nearly as effective without including Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.”
However, Kanye also credited the artist that sang on the version he sampled in the song, which means he compensated them in some way. Many artists don’t even get permission when they use samples in their tracks.
This kind of thing happens all the time. Robin Thicke’s huge 2013 hit “Blurred Lines” was very similar to Marvin Gaye’s song “Got to Give It Up,” so much so that they sued Thicke and he and co-songwriter Pharrell Williams had to pay the Gaye family $7.3 million.
In another case, Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” was accused of sampling Queen’s 1981 song “Under Pressure,” which also resulted in a lawsuit where Vanilla Ice had to eventually pay Queen and give Bowie and Freddie Mercury a writer’s credit.
And these all are instances of major players in the music industry. If an up-and-coming rapper makes a song that a famous rapper decides to sample without attribution, those people usually don’t have the means to afford a major lawsuit with the record label and they lose a lot of potential earnings.
I get that sampling is great, and when the proper legal measures are used it can give a song that extra piece to make it really special.
But artists work just as hard as everyone else, and they need to be compensated for their work. Especially during a time where streaming music royalties don’t pay musicians enough and piracy is hurting them too, artists should be supporting each other instead of acting as enemies.
One thing is for sure though. These Drake memes are absolutely hilarious.
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