Entertainment mogul Steve Harvey is doling out advice to singer/songwriter Kelis on how she should have handled the battle over her song “Milkshake” being sampled by Beyoncé on track “Energy” from her new “Renaissance” album. Rule #1: Don’t start fights with Beyoncé.
After Kelis accused Bey songwriter-producers Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of “thievery,” Beyoncé deleted the entire sample.
On his morning radio program “The Steve Harvey Morning Show,” broadcasted in markets across the nation, he spoke about the recent uproar about a sample from Kelis’ 2003 hit song “Milkshake” used in a track on “Renaissance.”
The Making of Kelis
The interpolation appears in the song “Energy,” and features Kelis’ infamous “La, La, La, La.” The problem is, she does not own the rights to the song — having signed them away to the Neptunes when she was green in her career.
“Milkshake” made it to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts thirteen weeks after its release. As a single, the song went gold, selling over 500,000 but less than 1,000,000 copies, according to RIAA, becoming one of the biggest songs of Kelis’ career.
Harvey: Kelis Made A Bad Business Move
The Harlem singer, who shares a son with her former husband rapper Nas, took to social media to blast Beyoncé, claiming she did not give her the professional courtesy of calling before she and Pharrell used the clip from her chart-topper in the new creation.
Harvey’s co-host Shirley Strawberry believes Kelis is fumbling a future bag, worrying about a publishing bag fumbled years ago, saying she was missing out on a “check.”
“I don’t even understand,” Harvey said about Kelis’ decision, before saying he doesn’t believe Queen Bey participated in securing the sample or making the beat for the song.
He continued, “Sometimes we don’t make the right decision. Sometimes a rant could have turned into a phone call and a business decision.”
He continued, “I don’t even think it was Beyoncé [who put the sample in the song]. But you know what Beyoncé did was ‘OK, cool, take it out. I don’t want to hear nothing.’”
From Kelis’ comments, she believes that Beyoncé did know what was going on and conspired with Pharrell and Chad to stick the piece in the song to antagonize her, claiming Beyoncé has been copying her for years.
Though she doesn’t own the rights to her song, Kelis insinuated that as Black women in music, the multi-Grammy winner should have picked up the phone and called her.
Not Drinking The Milkshake
Variety magazine reported, Beyoncé opted to remove the piece from the song altogether. Taking Kelis’ seconds-long voice off the song, was a part of the post-release edits made that also removed the word “spazz” from the song “Heated.” The “Crazy in Love” singer received pushback from the differently-abled community for using the derogatory word.
Harvey said he heard about the disagreement “the same way everyone else did,” through Kelis’ series of rants posted on social media.
The business-savvy O.G. shared with his millions of listeners, “Nothing is ever as it seems. Some of the people in this business have no soul or integrity and they have everyone fooled.”
Kelis Not Sorry
Kelis, who is worth an estimated $4 million, doesn’t think she did the wrong thing. She believes it moved the accountability needle to consider next time to respectfully reach out before using her work. In a post on social media where Ms. Knowles-Carter’s fan army the beehive was swarming, Vibe Magazine reports, Kelis said she was “actually [happy]” about the decision, proclaiming she “won.”
Kelis left behind her music career to focus on becoming a professional chef. She even released a popular cookbook, “My Life on a Plate.”
