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Will.i.am admits using track without permission

By | Published on Wednesday 24 April 2013

Will.i.am

Will.i.am has admitted that he used Arty & Mat Zo’s track ‘Rebound’ as the basis for his new single ‘Let’s Go’ without permission. However, he says it was a simple mix up and he thinks he’s now “resolved the issue”.

As previously reported, the similarity between the two tracks was first noted when Will.i.am’s new album, ‘#willpower’, was previewed on Vevo last week. ‘Let’s Go’ features new vocals by Chris Brown, but the instrumental side uses Arty and Zo’s original almost in its entirety.

Last week Zo said that he and Arty had known that Will.i.am was interested in using their track, but that they had decided not to work with him. There was then some confusion online over whether or not the track had subsequently been cleared for ‘Let’s Go’, but Arty insisted that “there is no official licence agreement, signed contract or anything else between me, Mat Zo, [their label] Anjunabeats and [Will.i.am’s label] Interscope”.

Speaking to Kiss FM on the whole matter this week, Will.i.am said, only slightly confusingly: “Arty is a dope producer, so I wrote this song to ‘Rebound’ last year. I got in touch with Arty and showed it to him, did a different version to it, cos I asked him [to] make it newer, cos I don’t just wanna take your song and rap over it. But we did that, we collaborated. But … time’s gone by [and] we [decided we] preferred writing over and using the [original] ‘Rebound’. Something happened and the clearance… hopefully we resolved the issue”.

He continued: “I’m a fan of Arty; I think he’s great and the world needs to know about how talented those guys are. It’s sad that it’s turned into a fiasco but hopefully it’s resolved because I’m a fan of those guys to the point where I wrote to their instrumental … I heard his ‘Rebound’ and then wrote a song to it and then contacted them last year. A year has passed and we’re fixing it now”.



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