Music & Musicians

Diddy Was Joking When He Claimed He Pays Sting $5,000 a Day for ‘Every Breath You Take' Sample, He Now Says

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Sean "Diddy" Combs wants everyone to learn a new word: facetious.

That's what the 53-year-old claims he was being last week when he tweeted that he's still paying Police front man Sting $5,000 in royalties every day for sampling the group's hit "Every Breath You Take" in 1997.

Diddy had retweeted a 2018 video on Wednesday in which Sting said that he was getting $2,000 per day from the rapper "for the rest of his life" for using the sample in his Notorious B.I.G. tribute "I'll Be Missing You."

In his tweet, Diddy said "Nope" and corrected the amount: The amount was actually "5K a day. Love to my brother @Official Sting!"

But the three-time Grammy winner has since changed his tune, tweeting on Friday that he was kidding about the whole thing.

"I want y'all to understand I was joking!" he wrote. "It's called being Facetious!"

Diddy now says that he "never" paid Sting any amount of money each day for sampling the song without asking.

"Me and @OfficialSting have been friends for a long time! He never charged me $3K or $5K a day for Missing You," he added. "He probably makes more than $5K a day from one of the biggest songs in history."

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