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will.i.am Admits to Copyright Infringement on Track Featuring Chris Brown

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Will.i.am admitted to borrowing a beat from the Arty and Mat Zo song “Rebound” during an interview with KIIS-FM today. He sampled it for his own track “Let’s Go” featuring Chris Brown.

A few days ago on Twitter, Arty pointed out that no one had cleared the sample rights with his label, Anjunabeats. Until this morning, Will.i.am remained silent on the subject.

“Arty is a dope producer so I wrote this song to ‘Rebound’ this last year,” Will.i.am said on KISS-FM, USA Today reports. He continued, “I got in touch with Arty and showed it to him, did a different version to it because I asked him [to] make it newer, because I don’t just want to take your song and rap over it. 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.”

“Let’s Go” appears on Will.i.am’s latest solo effort, #willpower, which was released this week on Interscope.

Source: rollingstone.com

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