Every Breath You Take is one of the most famous songs in music history and also one of the most successful by the band The Police, which also has songs like Roxanne or Message in a bottle. Years after its publication, dated May 1893, rapper Sean Diddy Combs, who at the time called himself Puff Daddy, would use a large part of that theme for his song I’ll Be Missing You, also very popular on major radio stations. radio. The producer used the music of the singer Sting without his permission. A reason why he has to pay a large sum of money to the lead singer of The Police.
The story is old, but it has gone viral again when a video of an interview with Sting, singer of The Police, resurfaced on social networks. In said interview, conducted in 2018, the singer reveals the money he earns at Diddy’s expense. The host of The Breakfast Club asked the British musician during the interview if it is true that Diddy pays him $2,000 every day for the unauthorized use of Every Breath You Take, something to which he replied, revealing the great consequences it had. the making of the hit single for the rapper.
“Yes, for the rest of his life,” Sting replies in the viralized video. “It’s not fake news,” he says. During the interview, the musician also clarifies that the rapper did ask him for permission to release his song, although only after I’ll Be Missing You was published. “Now we are very good friends. It was a beautiful version of that song,” said the singer.
The viralization of the video on social networks has reached Diddy, who five years after the interview has been in charge of throwing a nuance at Sting’s words through his Twitter profile. “No”, corrects the also producer along with a tweet in which he links to the video of the interview. “There are 5,000 a day. Love for my brother Sting”, says the interpreter of Creepin’.
Diddy used one of the most famous fragments of the well-known song by the British group, and managed to turn his own song into one of the most successful hip hop songs of the late 1990s. I’ll Be Missing You, a song that the rapper released together with the singer Faith Evans and the group of R
The reason for the topic did not prevent a complaint from Sting for copyright infringement; claims that the artist won and forced him to pocket 100% of the song’s profits. Of course, both showed that their differences were resolved when at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards they sang it together on stage. The two artists understood the other.
In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2003, Sting claimed that the money he had earned from I’ll Be Missing You was enough to put several of his children through college. “Those guys just take your shit, put it on a registry and deal with the legality later,” he told the magazine. “Elton John told me: ‘You have to listen to her, you’re going to be a millionaire!’ I told him: ‘I’m a millionaire!’ And he replied: ‘You’re going to be a millionaire twice!’ I sent a couple of my kids to college with the proceeds, and P. Diddy and I are still good friends,” the Police singer said.
It is estimated that Sting would be pocketing about 1.8 million euros a year. Diddy, however, wouldn’t do too badly either, as his song was one of his biggest hits: the song peaked at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 in June 1997, it went to number one on the charts. in 15 countries and earned him the first Grammy of his career (it should be noted that Sting’s original song won two). He also has a great fortune. According to the Forbes list, it is estimated that in 2022 he earned a total of 90 million dollars, making him one of the highest paid artists of the past year.
