Somewhere down the line, Will.I.Am went from being a socially conscious rapper to being the bargain bin of fading social trends clumsily repackaged for the absolute dumbest members of society. So of course, now William (THAT IS HIS NAME. YOU DO NOT GET TO THROW RANDOM PUNCTUATION INTO YOUR NAME JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN) is being accused of ripping off a song by Mat Zo and Arty for his new collaboration with Chris Brown, and you know something is wrong when Chris isn’t the most morally vacuous part of your work. Via HuffPo…
Bad news for will.i.am, who is said to have stolen a track from house producers Mat Zo and Arty. “Let’s Go,” the will.i.am song in question, features Chris Brown and happens to share the same name as a song by house producer Calvin Harris (that one features Ne-Yo, so the rubric is essentially identical).
It also sounds extremely similar to “Rebound,” a dance track produced by Zo and Arty. (Take a listen to the two songs at the bottom of this article.) In a series of tweets, Arty explained that no one had approached Anjunabeats, the trance label run by massive dance trio Above & Beyond, to clear the song. HuffPost has reached out to will.i.am’s label for comment and will update this post if additional information becomes available.
In all fairness, William’s music is so friggin’ derivative, it’s impossible to listen to anything he’s done and not hear a song that’s been done to death a million times before. So who knows? Maybe he didn’t steal the song. Maybe he’s just so homogenized that no one can tell one of his songs from anyone else’s.