R&B/Hip-Hop

Lil Yachty‘s song with Drake, “Super Soak,” continues to cause controversy.

First, Soulja Boy took issue with some of Drake’s lyrics that mentioned his record label Stacks on Deck. Then, during an appearance on the podcast Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant With Akaash Singh in late July, Yachty revealed the reason why he sent the song to streamer Kai Cenat to begin with.

“I sent a song to Kai to leak. We couldn’t get the sample cleared, so I just let Kai play it,” he said. When asked why the sample wasn’t cleared, Boat said the social media personality “went down a Christian path.”

The social media personality that he’s referring to is Mr. Hotspot. He’s mostly active on Instagram, and his posts are generally of him dancing and telling people to smile. He’ll also make songs like “Smiling Good Like” and the song Yachty and Drake sampled “Goodness Gracious.”

Over the weekend, Mr. Hotspot hopped on IG Live to tell fans his side of the situation, saying he’s open to clearing the sample if they make a clean version of the song. “We recorded them a clean reference and we sent it into them, so hopefully they rerecord the clean reference and we come out with the clean ‘Goodness Gracious’ altogether,” he said. “So I said it’s a process, but it’s … it’ll be good for both of their brands like that, and I’m blessed to work with children, so we just gotta make it clean for them.”

He added, “We don’t need no children getting whooped ’cause they said this or that, you understand? And if you look at the backside, it’s the children who really runnin’ these views up. So, if we make sure both verses clean, everybody coming clean, everybody gonna benefit for sure. It’s a process, but we appreciate you being patient. We sent it in, they got it today and them boys about to turn up. We ain’t tryin’ to hold them back from nothin’, but we just need the morals correct, that’s all.”

This wasn’t the only drama Yachty found himself in.

During the same podcast interview, he also mentioned Drake was “unfazed” after his rap battle with Kendrick Lamar, which, of course, became a topic of discussion on social media. But, that’s not all. A couple weeks ago, he went viral for saying people from New York couldn’t dress when he had Cash Cobain on his podcast A Safe Place.

“Everyone used to just kinda copy Atlanta. You said it yourself,” Boat told the Bronx rapper. “You just said even like the influence was extremely heavy from Atlanta. … As far as style goes, I don’t think it’s s–t going on when it comes to New York fashion.”

This, too, caused a stir on social media, which leads us to what the the rapper said Thursday (Aug. 1). Yachty to took Instagram Live and announced that he was going to stay quiet going forward. “I’m not doing no more talkin’,” Yachty said. “I don’t got s—t else to say. I’m gone off this internet s—t. I think I’m gone for the rest of the year. I swear to God. I ain’t got s—t else to say.

He added, “Contracted to do this podcast s—t, unfortunately contracted to, but I ain’t posting no more hs—t. I ain’t posting no fits. I’m deleting the apps off my phone. I swear to God … I’m not tweeting, I’m minding my f–king business.”

After a series of release dates that came and went, Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Ty Dolla Sign’s Vultures 2 album finally dropped on Saturday. And, like its predecessor, the second volume from the two MCs is getting criticized for allegedly not clearing some samples.

In a tweet from producer/DJ Geoff Barrow, the Portishead member wrote “FFS [for f–ks sake] Not Again [shrug emoji],” along with a screen shot of the Vultures 2 track “Field Trip.” The song seems to very prominently sample the instantly recognizable drum pattern from the 2008 Portishead track “Machine Gun,” though at press time neither Spotify nor Apple Music listed any production or sample credits for the song also featuring Don Toliver, Kodak Black and Playboi Carti and attributed to the rap duo’s joint name, ¥$.

At press time a spokesperson for Barrow confirmed that the tweet was from Barrow, but it was unclear if the musician or the group were planning to take official legal action for the alleged unlicensed sample; legal representatives for Ye and Ty (born Tyrone William Griffin Jr.) had not returned requests for comment.

Back in February, the estate of Donna Summer filed a copyright lawsuit against West in which they accused the rapper/producer of “shamelessly” using Summer’s 1977 hit “I Feel Love” without permission on the Vultures 1 song “Good (Don’t Die).” The estate’s attorneys said at the time that West “shamelessly used instantly recognizable portions” of Summer’s song in his track, despite her estate having already “explicitly denied” him authorization to do so. After the Summer estate’s public statements regarding the song before the filing, “Good (Don’t Die)” was pulled from streaming platforms and appeared to be pulled from digital versions of the album; at press time it was still not available on major streaming platforms.

In addition, after Ozzy Osbourne denied West’s request to sample one of his songs on Vultures 1 — a solo Ozzy version of the Black Sabbath song “War Pigs” recorded at the 1983 US Festival — the metal icon lashed out at Ye in February after the sample turned up during a listening party at Chicago’s United Center for the serially delayed first Vultures album.

“REFUSED PERMISSION BECAUSE HE IS AN ANTISEMITE AND HAS CAUSED UNTOLD HEARTACHE TO MANY,” Osbourne wrote at the time. “HE WENT AHEAD AND USED THE SAMPLE ANYWAY AT HIS ALBUM LISTENING PARTY LAST NIGHT. I WANT NO ASSOCIATION WITH THIS MAN!” Osbourne’s comment about Ye was a reference to the barrage of antisemitic comments and insults from Ye in late 2022 that caused the downfall of his once billion-dollar music and fashion empire and led to pariah status in the music and business world.

This is not the first time that West has been sued for illegally sampling or interpolating other artist’s songs into his tracks. In 2022 he was served with a lawsuit claiming his song “Life of the Party” illegally sampled rap group Boogie Down Productions. In another case he was tagged for using an uncleared snippet of Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house track “Move Your Body” in the song “Flowers” and another case claimed he allegedly sampled a sermon by a Texas pastor on “Come to Life.”

This also isn’t the first time Barrow has called an artist out for allegedly sampling his band’s song “Machine Gun” without permission. In 2013, he accused The Weeknd of sampling the track from Portishead’s Third album on “Belong to the World” without asking first. “When someone asks to sample you and you refuse they should have the respect as a fellow artist to not use it,” Barrow tweeted at Abel Tesfaye at the time.

See the tweet from Barrow below.

A$AP Rocky has released the lead single from his upcoming album Don’t Be Dumb.

Produced by Greg Kurstin, Jordan Patrick, Zach Fogarty, Hitkidd and Rocky himself, “Highjack” shows the Harlem rapper getting back in his bag of being one of the most confident rappers out. With bars like “Don’t compare that p—y boy to me (I don’t like that)/ Feelin’ like I’m Sosa, Chiefie Keef (I don’t like that)/ Tired of them n—as sleepin’ on me, I don’t like naps/ N—as f— around and stole the flow and y’all like that?,” he’s leaving things up to interpretation, and we’re sure fans will speculate online about whom he’s referring to exactly.

Those aren’t the only lines packed with subliminals.

“Before we dropped ‘Peso’ on you n—as, you ain’t like Raf/ N—as want a feature from me? This ain’t a life raft” and “These n—as want my wife bad, the people want my next track/ The coppers want my Black a–, f—ed up, but it’s like that” shows Rocky reminding the game about his influence.

Rocky spoke with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe recently and he talked about his new music and fatherhood.

About his new single, Rocky had this to say: “I feel like the real is back, man, and it’s just like, this sh– is for the taking. It’s a highjack. Not only that, it’s just we coming with a whole new aesthetic on everything, especially with German expressionism and the whole ghetto futurism grim thing. So that’s just what the sound sounds like and whatnot. The sonics of it.”

About tapping Jessica Pratt and Jon Batiste for a couple unlikely features on “Highjack,” he said this: “I just love alternative. I love just different sounds and whatnot. [Jessica Pratt] kind of gave me this kind of Portishead meets Stevie Nicks vibe a little bit. … So I always f—ed with her as a artist, and so I figured it was necessary to get her, Jon Batiste on this one and kind of make it feel soulful to bring it on home in the outro.”

And on fatherhood influencing his new music, he told Lowe: “I got more personal vulnerable things to talk about and whatnot, and it’s just, I think the trick is having that fine balance of just entertaining and telling a story or giving something, telling somebody listening and view something informative about you and whatnot.”

Don’t Be Dumb is set to release Aug. 30.

You can watch the Zane Lowe Apple Music interview below.