Sting has a message in a bottle about one of his biggest hits. Twenty-seven years after Sean "Diddy" Combs sampled The Police 's 1983 single "Every Breath You Take" for his own 1997 song "I'll Be Missing You," Sting weighed on if the rapper's recent legal troubles have changed the way he views his original hit. "No.
I mean, I don't know what went on [with Diddy]," Sting told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Nov. 11. "But it doesn't taint the song at all for me.
It's still my song." Combs, 55, used a sample of the Sting-written classic for his 1997 song, which he recorded alongside Faith Evans as a tribute to her husband "The Notorious B.I.
G." Christopher Wallace . The rapper had been signed to Combs' Bad Boy Records label at the time of his murder in March 1997 .
"I'll Be Missing You" spent eleven weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in 1998. At the time of the song's release, Combs had not reached out to Sting for permission to use "Every Breath You Take," according to a 2018 interview with Sting on The Breakfast Club , and only secured usage rights after the fact, which also included payments to the "Message in a Bottle" singer that are still ongoing. "I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds," Sting joked to Rolling Stone in 2003, "and me and P.
Diddy are good pals still." Sting said he made about $2,000 a day from the song; however, Combs disputed the number in 2023, writing o.
