Will.i.am has a long time line of ripping off tracks, in 2006 he copied J.J. Fad “Supersonic”, and Groundation’s “Waterfall”. In 2007 and 2009 he ripped off Daft Punk’s “Around The World”, FrankMusik “Yes or No”, and Adam Freeman’s “Mancry”. He then continued his ripping streak with “Boom Dynamite”, “You and I” Deadmau5 remix, Boys Noize “Yeah” and “Scream and Shout”.

However, back in April of 2013 aside from Coachella trending, Will.i.am was featured in Dancing Astronaut , Your EDM, MTV, and even Huffington Post for ripping off EDM drama queen marketing enthusiast Mat Zo & Arty’s “Rebound” and Quintino & Sandro Silva’s “Epic”. Quintino wasn’t shy to share his side of the story on his Twitter, however he forgot to credit one producer… a ghost producer.

It is obviously old news that Quintino & Sandro Silva’s “Epic” was Ghost Produced by Maarten Vorwerk, however what the media forgot to mention when ripping (pun intended) Will.i.am apart and accusing him of stealing the kick of “Epic” for “Bang Bang” is that Maarten Vorwerk was what we call the “CGPD”, Common Ghost Producer Denominator. If you haven’t caught on by now, yes, Maarten Vorwerk ghost produced “Epic” and “Bang Bang” however, Will.i.am took a beating for stealing the kick.

Check out what BMI.com gives us:

%20BMI.com

In Will.i.am’s “Bang Bang” Maarten Vorwerk is given composer credit.

A world wide known professional ghost producer however does not “mistakenly” use the same kick in two tracks, so it opens to deeper questioning. Was the whole scandal of Will.i.am stealing the kick a premeditated marketing stunt to help promote both tracks? Was Mat Zo/Arty’s v.s. Will.i.am/Chris Brown scandal a publicity stunt? We all know thats Mat Zo’s favorite cry baby marketing agenda, from erasing his twitter, to now using it to call out DJ’s who use Ghost Producers (LOL). At the end of the day Maarten Vorwerk took a nice paycheck home, all the credited artists received free promotion, and everyone raised their bookings fee due to their increase of fans during their trending week.