10 Radio Friendly Songs About Dying
7. Puff Daddy - I'll Be Missing You
Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy, aka P Diddy, aka Puffy, aka Diddy, aka Brother Love, is a man of many names and many talents. The 50-year-old is a rapper, a singer, a songwriter, a record producer, an entrepreneur, a record executive, and an actor, and yet somehow still manages to find time to piss off Sting.
The chorus of this 1997 chart smash was a direct copy of The Police’s 1983 hit, Every Breath You Take, but Sean, being the little scamp that he is, never asked for permission to sample the melody. Infuriated by this, Sting took Combs to court and was subsequently awarded 100% of the song’s royalties. Word on the street is it still earns him $2,000 a day.
Legal controversies aside, Combs recorded the song with Faith Evans as a tribute to Christopher ‘The Notorious B.I.G’ Wallace, who was murdered on March 9th 1997. Evans had been married to Biggie before his death, and the single, which has gone on to become one of the best selling hip-hop releases of all time, felt like a fitting acknowledgement of the contribution of a larger than life talent who the world was robbed of far too soon.