Will.I.Am basically admitted to plagiarism

Will.I.Am

Will.I.Am

Remember how trance artists Arty and Matt Zo pointed out how Will.I.Am ripped off their song for the sake of creating a crappy new collaboration with Chris Brown? Well, turns out Will.I.Am actually did kinda sorta take it without clearing rights or asking for permission. Whoops. Rolling Stone reports …

“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.”

So there you have it: From now on, whenever you wonder whether Will.I.Am’s music is actually an uncleared rip-off of a better song, or if it’s just purposefully reductive because Will.I.Am hasn’t had an original thought in over a decade … the first one. It’s the first one.

About JEREMY FEIST 5002 Articles
Jeremy Feist is an (ahem) entertainer from Toronto, Canada. He writes, acts, and performs on stage, and has been a writer for Popbytes for almost three years now. He lives in Toronto with his boyfriend, his incredibly dumb but cute puppy, and his immortal cat.