Whether Sean Combs’ bank account is listed as “Puff Daddy”, “Diddy”, “P. Diddy”, or simply “Sean Combs”, Sting probably doesn’t care; all he wants is his regular check in the mail from that account.
That’s because the rapper and record producer, now 53, has been paying the 71-year-old former police leader thousands of dollars a day since he sampled the smash hit. 80s band “Every Breath You Take” in their 1997 album. song “I’ll miss you.”
Without getting the necessary permissions, Combs sampled the Grammy-winning police song in his ode to the Notorious BIG, who died earlier that year. Sting ended up suing Combs for copyright infringement and received the rights to all royalties from Combs’ song, which also won a Grammy, according to the Los Angeles Times.
When one of The Breakfast Club hosts asked Sting if it was true that Combs was giving him $2,000 a day in 2018, Sting replied in the affirmative. As reported by Hello! at the time, Sting remarked, “I put a couple of my kids through college on the product.”
However, that video recently started circulating online again, causing Combs to slowly correct himself. “No. 5K a day,” he tweeted Wednesday.
Using this updated amount, Hello! estimates Diddy has paid nearly $48 million since the May 7, 1997 release of the song “I’ll Be Missing You,” which he co-wrote with Biggie’s widow, Faith Evans. Despite the relatively large amount of money being transferred between the two guys, there doesn’t seem to be any animosity towards the arrangement. According to Consequence,
Sting described Combs’ song as “a beautiful version” in the 2018 interview and said the two were “really good friends now.” Combs, for her part, added, “Love my bro @OfficialSting!” in a tweet this week.