Should Beyonce Have Told Kelis She Was Sampling Her Song?

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIn the past 48 hours, the only noise louder than the Beyhive has been coming from R&B singer Kelis, who is outraged that Beyonce sampled her 2000 song “Get Along With You” without informing her.

The sample appears in “Energy” from Beyonce’s just-released album “Renaissance”; the officially credited writers and producers of “Get Along With You” are the Neptunes, a.k.a.

Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo.In a long string of Instagram posts, Kelis writes, “It’s not a collab it’s theft. My mind is blown too because the level of disrespect and utter ignorance of all 3 parties involved is astounding… I heard about this the same way everyone else did.

Nothing is ever as it seems, some of the people in this business have no soul or integrity and they have everyone fooled.” There’s a lot to unpack here, professionally, personally and on a macro level.From a legal standpoint, two veteran music-business attorneys tell Variety that it is possible but unlikely that Beyonce’s team would be contractually required to inform Kelis of the sample, even though she is the performing artist on “Get Along With You”: She is neither the credited writer of the work (which is Williams and Hugo) nor the copyright holder (Virgin Records, which is owned by Universal Music Group).