Sean “Diddy” Combs clarified that he was joking when he claimed to pay Sting 5K in royalty payments per day. The rapper said he and Sting were good friends and that the rocker never charged him $3K or $5K a day for using a sample of his song. It was previously reported that Diddy paid Sting $2,000 a day “for the rest of his life” for sampling “Every Breath You Take” in his hit tribute song “I’ll Be Missing You.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs clarified that he was joking when he said he pays $5,000 a day in royalty payments to Sting for the use of “Every Breath You Take” in his 1997 hit “I’ll Be Missing You.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs recently caused a stir on social media when he retweeted a 2018 interview in which Sting confirmed that the rapper was paying him $2,000 a day “for the rest of his life” for sampling one of his songs. Diddy jokingly tweeted, “5K a day. Love to my brother [Sting],” sparking rumors that he was paying the musician $5,000 daily in royalty payments. However, Diddy later clarified that it was all in jest and that he and Sting have been friends for a long time.
According to Diddy, Sting never charged him $3,000 or $5,000 a day for “I’ll Be Missing You,” the rapper’s 1997 hit tribute song to the late Biggie Smalls that heavily sampled The Police’s 1983 track “Every Breath You Take.” Diddy noted that Sting probably makes more than $5,000 a day from one of the biggest songs in history.
While on The Breakfast Club radio show in 2018, Sting confirmed that Diddy paid him $2,000 a day for the sample. However, he also revealed that Diddy only requested permission to use the track after it hit the airwaves. The two musicians have been “very good friends” for some time, per Sting.
If the now-debunked deal had been put in place in 1997, Diddy would have paid Sting roughly $47.4 million dollars to date for the sampling. While the royalty payments were a misunderstanding, it’s clear that Diddy and Sting’s friendship hasn’t waned over the years.