The debate that Drake jacked D.R.A.M’s hit ‘Cha Cha’ to create ‘Hotline Bling’ (watch the video here) has been raging on with the Virgina native accusing Drizzy of jacking his song.
The comparisons have always been there, especially when OVO Sound radio had originally premiered ‘Hotline Bling’ termed as a “Cha Cha remix” on Beats1 radio. Both songs interpolate Timmy Thomas’ ‘Why Can’t We Live Together‘ — ‘Hotline Bling’ using the sample directly while D.R.A.M. recreated the Thomas instrumentation using a sample from Super Mario.
Turns out, Drake had actually addressed the similarities between the songs in his interview with Fader but the magazine had withheld that part, until now. Responding to the similarities, Drake says that the concept is like Dancehall, where multiple artists record over one common riddim.
“You know, like in Jamaica, you’ll have a riddim and it’s like, everyone has to do a song on that,” Drake 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.”
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