No, Sting Did Not Charge Diddy $5K A Day For ‘I’ll Be Missing You,’ Says Diddy

For years now, there’s been this rumor about Diddy and Sting. Diddy famously sampled The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” on the hit 1997 single “I’ll Be Missing You,” but the rumor goes he didn’t get proper permission for the sample. Therefore, Diddy apparently has to pay Sting $2,000 per day over the song.

Charlamagne Tha God asked Sting about this in a 2018 interview and Sting answered, “Yeah, for the rest of his life. If it’s on the radio, then it must be true!” A clip of that conversation circulated on Twitter recently and Diddy shared it, writing, “Nope. 5K a day. Love to my brother @OfficialSting!”

As far as the $5K claim, though, turns out Diddy was just messing around. In fact, the whole story at any dollar amount seems to be a fallacy.

On Twitter today (April 7), Diddy offered some clarification, writing, “I want y’all to understand I was joking! It’s called being Facetious! Me and @OfficialSting have been friends for a long time! He never charged me $3K or $5K a day for Missing You. He probably makes more than $5K a day from one of the biggest songs in history.”

So there we have it: “Every step I take / Every move I make / Every single day, every time I pray / I won’t be paying you.”