Beyonce Takes Stance In Kelis Feud With Another Album Amendment
It seems like Beyoncé's album "Renaissance" has been deemed controversial for the most unexpected reasons. Besides Monica Lewinsky reigniting an old grievance with Beyoncé to the disabled community calling her out for a seemingly ableist lyric in the song "Heated," Bey's latest outcry came from fellow singer Kelis. The fifth track on "Renaissance," "Energy" samples Kelis' 2003 hit "Milkshake," but the latter singer claims she had no prior knowledge before the album's release.
In a nearly three-minute Instagram video, vis PopCrave, Kelis explained she never gave Beyoncé or "Milkshake" producers, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, permission to sample the song. At this time, Williams and Hugo are the owners of the song and is credited as its creators.
"From one artist to another, you should have the decency and the common sense and the courtesy to call, reach out," Kelis explained in the video. Stating bluntly that Williams "does this all the time" to her out of spite, i.e. purposing using her music and not giving her acknowledgement, Kelis also accused Beyoncé of stealing musically from her prior to "Energy."
After multiple videos and comments to fans about the situation from Kelis, Beyoncé has decided to take action in light of her words.
Kelis isn't the only one who has thoughts about Beyoncé's sampling
Beyoncé might be breaking a record for most album amendments in the shortest span of time with "Renaissance." Two days after it was announced that she would replace an ableist-seeming lyric on the track "Heated," Page Six is reporting another major "Renaissance" change. As of August 3, the singer appears to have quietly removed the portion of "Energy" that includes the interpolation of "Milkshake."
In light of the Kelis debacle, the topic of sampling songs became a reawakened conversation thanks to "Renaissance." On August 1, iconic songwriter Diane Warren tweeted her disbelief at the number of songwriters on one of Bey's tracks (assumingly "Alien Superstar") without exactly mentioning the song title. "How can there be 24 writers on a song?," Warren tweeted, followed by, "This isn't meant as shade, I'm just curious."
Among the Bey Hive members who leapt into the conversation to defend their queen was producer The Dream, who pointedly tweeted to Warren, "You mean how's does our (Black) culture have so many writers? Well it started because we couldn't afford certain things starting out, so we started sampling and it became an art form, a major part of the Black Culture (hip hop) in America... U good?" Needless to say, after that reply, Warren seemingly walked back her question and tweeted, "Ok, it's prob samples that add up the amount of writers."