Diddy has stated that he was joking when he stated that he pays singer Sting $5,000 per day to sample Every Breath You Take on his 1997 hit song Missing You.
The rapper and producer recently tweeted that he pays Sting $5,000 per day in royalties for sampling his 1997 hit I’ll Be Missing You from the 1983 single Every Breath You Take.
Diddy was responding to a clip from a 2018 interview with The Breakfast Club that Black Millionaires shared on Twitter on Wednesday.
Sting, 71, estimated in the video that royalties from the song earned him about $2,000 per day.
That’s when Diddy re-posted the video with the caption, ‘Nope. 5K a day. ‘I love you, @officialsting!’
The post quickly went viral, and on Friday April 7, the Grammy-winning artist tried to set the record straight.
‘I want y’all to understand I was joking!’ the Bad Boy For Life artist wrote. ‘It’s called being facetious! Me and @OfficialSting have been friends for a long time! He never charged me $3K or $5K a day for Missing You. He probably makes more than $5K a day from one of the biggest songs in history,’ the repentant rapper wrote.
Sting sued after Missing You was released, admitting in the original interview that Diddy asked for permission to use the sample only after the song had been released.
He then added, ‘We’re very good friends now.’
Sting confirmed the rumors after host Charlamagne Tha God asked him about the daily payment, with the British rocker replying, ‘Yeah, for the rest of his life.’
He also praised the tune: ‘It was a beautiful version of that song.’
I’ll Be Missing You was a tribute to iconic New York rapper The Notorious B.I.G., who was murdered at the age of 24 in 1997.