Over the summer, it was accusations that he used ghostwriters for his raps that bedevilled Drake. Now it’s the claim that his latest hit, Hotline Bling, has taken its beat from another song.
D.R.A.M. performed in Drake’s home city of Toronto on Monday night and took the opportunity to note on Twitter that the experience had been “bittersweet”. Sweet, he said, because he was sharing his music; bitter because “after my performance, all I’m seeing is Cha Cha/Hotline Bling comparisons on my timeline”.
“Yeah, I feel I got jacked for my record,” he said. “But I’m GOOD.”
Drake himself has acknowledged the similarity between Hotline Bling and Cha Cha, but has said it’s just because he’s trying to do what reggae and dancehall artists have long done, and take the backing track from one song to create something new. The Fader dug out an unused quote from its recent interview with him in which he made that point.
“You know, like in Jamaica, you’ll have a riddim and it’s like, everyone has to do a song on that,” he said. “Imagine that in rap, or imagine that in R&B. Imagine if we got one beat and every single person – me, this guy, this guy, all these guys – had to do a song on that one beat. So sometimes I’ll pick a beat that’s a bit, like, sunnier, I guess is the word you used, than usual, and I just try my hand at it. And that’s kind of what Hotline Bling was. And I loved it. It’s cool. I’ve been excited by that sort of creative process.”
