Beyoncé Removes Kelis Sample From 'Renaissance' Single 'Energy' After Pharrell Controversy

August 02, 2022

Beyoncé has removed the sample of the 2003 Kelis hit “Milkshake” from her recently released single “Energy” featuring Beam. The “la la la” part from the 1:40-minute mark of the song is noticeably absent from the version available on Spotify, TIDAL, YouTube, Apple Music and presumably other digital streaming platforms such as Amazon Music and Pandora.

The move comes after Kelis vocalized how frustrated she was by not being informed it was even used. Taking to Instagram, the 42-year-old referred to it as “theft.”

“My mind is blown too because the level of disrespect and utter ignorance of all 3 parties involved is astounding,” she wrote from her Bounty and Full account. “I heard about this the same way everyone else did . Nothing is ever as it seems, some of the people in this business have no soul or integrity and they have everyone fooled.”



In two follow-up videos, Kelis accused Pharrell of sampling the song out of spite. Kelis and The Neptunes (the production duo of Chad Hugo and Pharrell) have a contentious history that dates back to the 2000s when they were producing a lot of her material. In fact, they were the dream-team behind “Milkshake.”

“There’s a lot of hypocrisy and a lot of nonsense,” she said. “So we’ve got Pharrell who did an interview I think last year talking about artists rights and how how people should be able to rework their deals and artists should be getting credit for what they’ve done and all this stuff.

“When in reality, when I was signed to him, I had  the same manager that he had and he has writing credits on my records, all my singles, and he never wrote a song, a lyric a day in his life. And yeah, that’s a problem.”

She later called it “a direct hit” and referred to Hugo as a “spineless amoeba.” Evidently, her gripes were heard and the sample is gone.

 

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Beyoncé has faced multiple hiccups with Renaissance. Two days before its scheduled release date of July 29, it suffered an online leak. Once the album was finally out, some people took offense to the word “spaz” on the song “Heated,” calling it an “ableist” term.

Subsequently, Beyoncé and her team scrubbed the lyrics from the song, something Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant called a “joke.”

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