Diddy still pays Sting ‘$5,000 a day’ for sampling his hit song ‘Every Breath You Take’ 26 years ago
Sean “Diddy” Combs is still paying the price for sampling The Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” and it’s not cheap.
The mogul, who sampled the smash hit for his 1997 “I’ll Be Missing You” tribute to the late Notorious B.I.G., tweeted this week that he’s still paying Police frontman Sting $5,000 in royalties each and every day.
Diddy made the revelation after a 2018 clip from “The Breakfast Club” was recirculated on Twitter in which Sting said that the rapper was paying him $2,000 every day “for the rest of his life” for using the song.
“Nope,” Diddy wrote in a quote tweet of the video. “5K a day. Love to my brother @Official Sting!”
It’s not the first time that the payment deal between the two artists has made headlines. In 2003, Sting told Rolling Stone that when Elton John heard “I’ll Be Missing You” he told him “You’re gonna be a millionaire!”
“I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds,” Sting said at the time. “And me and Diddy are good pals still.”
Even if Diddy is writing a $5,000 check 365 times a year, for a total of $1,825,000 annually, it’s unlikely that it’s hurting his wallet too much.
Forbes estimated that he earned $90 million in 2022 alone, thanks in part to his partnership with Ciroc vodka, and in 2019 pegged his net worth at $740 million.
