Mariah Carey responds to underground artist sampling ‘Shake It Off’
"How about y'all have 24 hours to respond to my lawyers," the "Hero" singer says tongue in cheek
Mariah Carey replied to a tweet featuring one of her hit singles being sampled by a rapper/singer, notifying that they be prepared to hear from her lawyers.
On Friday, Tommy Banks, CEO of music website RNB Radar, posted a video of rapper/singer YTK performing his song, “Let It Off.” The song relies heavily on a sample of Carey’s 2005 number two Billboard 100 single, “Shake It Off.”
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According to his website, YTK is a 20-year-old artist from Baltimore. He refashioned the lyrics of Carey’s original, which is the story of breaking up with an unfaithful lover, and wrote lyrics about gunplay. The visuals, which YTK directed himself, featured the young artist waving a handgun while wearing a ski mask.
Banks, also an A&R consultant, posted a clip of the song on his Twitter account on Friday, with the caption, “Mariah Carey has 24 hours to respond.” The following day, Carey did indeed respond.
She replied writing, “How about y’all have 24 hours to respond to my lawyers.” Accompanying the reply was a gif of Carey with “GTFO,” taken from her video of the same name.
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Although the video and Carey’s response went viral — both Banks’ and Carey’s tweets received of 80,000 likes — Banks insisted to fans who were overreacting to Carey’s seemingly shady reply that she did so with tongue in cheek.
He later tweeted, “I want to reinterate that Mariah was joking, please stop saying rude sh-t to her.” He continued in that tweet that he was put in contact with people who could help get the sample cleared officially.
This was just the latest example of an award-winning artist responding to an underground artist sampling their music without their consent.
Last November, rapper Luke Nasty posted a clip of his song “Rain,” which sampled Gospel artist Kirk Franklin’s “Melodies From Heaven.” The clip went viral with fans questioning if and why Franklin would clear his sample for a song about strippers. Franklin took to his Twitter page to respond to all fans asking questions.
Franklin, notorious for occasionally using samples himself in his Gospel songs, took a video of himself playing “Melodies From Heaven” on piano with three vocalists joining him. He then turned to the camera, while continuing to play, saying “Y’all been knowing me for a long time. Y’all know I do some crazy stuff, but I have not cleared any other version but this version.”
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