Mike Will Made-It and Sonny Digital both had to get something off their chest.
"Sick of hearing remakes, nothing like original shxt," Mike Will wrote on X, following it up by asking people to not "feature on your classic remake," explaining that "it's a pet peeve of mine."
The Georgia native revisited the topic later when responding to someone who pointed the finger at labels for "signing off and clearing these lazy sample remakes." The 35-year-old argued that labels are not the ones to blame since their sole responsibility lies on the business side of the music industry.
"A major record label don't care what is made & not supposed to either," he tweeted. "Their mission is to get it on the shelf and come with marketing to get it to sell off the shelf."
Fellow ATL superproducer Sonny Digital, 33, agreed.
"I swear I don’t respect anybody remaking a song that’s already a hit and then ACT like they made a hit from a song that was ALREADY a hit," he tweeted. "lol 😂 ITS LAME."
The type of "remakes" in question could include hits like DJ Khaled and SZA's "Just Us," built around an extensive sample of OutKast's "Ms. Jackson"; Nicki Minaj's "Super Freaky Girl," which leaned on Rick James' "Super Freak"; Jack Harlow's "First Class" (Fergie's "Glamorous"); Latto's "Big Energy" (Mariah Carey's "Fantasy"/Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love"); and Burna Boy's "Last Last" (Toni Braxton's "He Wasn't Man Enough"). Ye and Ty Dolla Sign's buzzy "Everybody," presumably appearing on Vultures 2 or 3, is built on the Backstreet Boys song of the same name.
It's unclear if Mike and Sonny are making a blanket statement about the current state of hip-hop or directing the message at specific artists. Nearly everybody seems to be feuding these days—from Kendrick and Drake, to Drake and at least a dozen other people, to The Game and Rick Ross, to Nicki and Megan, to Quavo and Chris Brown, to Soulja Boy and 21 Savage (and maybe Meek Mill)—so it can't be ruled out that another conflict is brewing.
If Mike Will is commenting on a widespread concern within the hip-hop community, then he's not alone. Complex's Insanul Ahmed published a piece last year that investigated the role of sampling in the genre and whether the approach is lazy or an artform.
Mike Will Made-It and Nicki Minaj were named in a copyright infringement lawsuit last year alleging the beat for 2014's Pinkprint track "I Lied" was stolen. Julius Johnson claims everything from the instrumentation to the beat itself was lifted from his song "onmysleeve," which was uploaded to YouTube in September 2011.
