Renaissance woes: Kelis cries ‘theft’ after Beyonce samples her track

Kelis, the R&B/hip-hop superstar of the early 00s, has slammed Beyonce for sampling her 1999 song Get Along With You on Energy. It is the fifth song on the singer’s much-anticipated album Renaissance.

In a reply to a post from fan account @kelistrends on Instagram, Kelis used her cooking account @bountyandfull to address the sample. Renaissance is the seventh studio album by Beyoncé set to release July 29.

“My mind is blown too because the level of disrespect and utter ignorance of all 3 parties involved is astounding,” she wrote. “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.”

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In a response to a fan who said the two should collaborate, she said, “it’s not a collab it’s theft.”

According to Uproxx, Beyonce’s upcoming album is full of sampled artists, including Donna Summer, Big Freedia, and Kelis.

Some social media users pointed that Kelis’ real beef is Pharrell Williams, who she accused of stealing profits from her in the past. She opened up about the feud in an interview last year: “Their argument is: ‘Well, you signed it,’” she told a journalist. “I’m like: ‘Yeah, I signed what I was told, and I was too young and too stupid to double-check it.’”

In the past, Kelis has opened up about not gaining ownership of her past work. While celebrating the 20th anniversary of her debut album Kaleidoscope, in which “Get Along With You” is taken, the singer told The Guardian that she did not receive any money from her first two albums. Both the albums were produced by The Neptunes.

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The singer also had no songwriting credits on the albums. 

“I thought it was a beautiful and pure, creative safe space, but it ended up not being that at all,” she said in an interview with The Guardian in 2020. “I was told we were going to split the whole thing 33/33/33, which we didn’t do,” she said, adding that she was “blatantly lied to and tricked” by “the Neptunes and their management and their lawyers and all that stuff.”