Hip Hop

Mariah Carey Warns Rapper Sampling Her Classic “Shake It Off”

Mariah Carey has been one of the biggest inspirations in music, and over the past few decades, many talented singers have used her songs to show their own talent.

While Mariah Carey doesn’t seem to mind most of the time, it seems that a remix of one of her biggest hits has rubbed the artist the wrong way. Her song “Shake it Off” peaked No.2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 (behind none other than “We Belong Together,” which didn’t budge at No. 1 on the same chart) after being released in 2005 off of her smash album The Emancipation of Mimi.

Now, a young Baltimore rapper called YTK has sampled her song to release “Let it Off,” and Mariah isn’t happy about it. On Friday, the CEO of RNB Radar, Tommy Banks, shared a one-minute clip of the YTK’s song with the caption “Mariah Carey has 24 hours to respond.”

Mariah, however, being the Queen of comeback, responded with a gif of her song “GTFO” released in 2018, in which she is seen saying “Get the F**k Out.” The gif was also accompanied by a warning from Carey “How about y’all have 24 hours to respond to my lawyers.”

It seems, though, that the interaction was one set up to promote YTB’s song as Mariah has given prior permission to Banks, who was part of the deal, to clear the copyrights of the sample.

“Hey I want to reiterate that Mariah was joking, please stop saying rude s— to her,” Banks said as he shared a screenshot of what looks like a DM with Questlove about clearing the sample.

“She told that same joke to Quest Love hours before she responded to the tweet and put us in contact with the people who can help us clear it! So it’s not a problem on her end,” he said.

It seems that the exchange engineered by RNB Radar was an attempt to create viral news about YTB’s single as RNB Radar boasted about the song getting attention after Mariah’s response.

“In 24 hours: I was able to get YTK 5 million impressions Almost 1 million views 100’s of celebrities retweeting it and Mariah herself responded,” Banks said.