We first broke the full story about will.i.am’s new track ‘Let’s Go‘ two weeks ago, and have constantly been updating to capturing the flurry of social media postings about the Black Eyed Peas leader’s uncanny ability to rip tracks off and claim them as his own. This time, the victim was Arty and Mat Zo‘s beautiful 2011 track ‘Rebound,’ where will.i.am created a version featuring the vocals of Chris Brown.
The new song for will.i.am’s album #willpower elicited many strong emotions from the EDM world, and forced us to seek clarification regarding who did or didn’t have permission to use the track, and which artists and labels knew about the situation. Today, we finally have a statement from Anjunabeats – Above & Beyond’s label on which ‘Rebound’ was originally released.
From Anjunabeats Facebook page:
Anjunabeats is the record label behind Arty and Mat Zo and owns the master recording rights to their collaboration “Rebound.” Mat Zo and Arty have been important members of the Anjunabeats family for a number of years and “Rebound” was one of the label’s most popular releases in 2011.
As has been widely reported, a large section of “Rebound” was sampled on Will.i.am’s track “Let’s Go featuring Chris Brown” and this took place without the permission of Anjunabeats or Arty & Mat Zo.
Although Arty (but not Mat Zo) was credited in the sleeve notes, this is not the same as obtaining permission. To present someone else’s work as your own, you need to seek permission, agree terms and file paperwork, which has not happened in this case.
We’ve remained silent on this issue until now but as a record label it is our obligation to protect our artists’ interests and we felt it was necessary to respond to some of the inaccuracies that have been reported following Will.i.am’s recent comments to Associated Press.
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