Sting likely doesn't care whether the name on Sean Combs' bank account is "Puff Daddy," "Diddy," "P. Diddy," or plain old "Sean Combs"—he just wants his regular check in the mail from that account. That's because for years, the now-53-year-old rapper and record producer has been shelling out thousands per day to the 71-year-old former Police frontman, thanks to his sample of that group's '80s hit "Every Breath You Take" in his "I'll Be Missing You," released in 1997. Combs had sampled the Grammy-winning Police tune in his tribute song to the Notorious BIG, who'd died earlier that year, without acquiring the proper permissions, and Sting ended up suing him for copyright infringement, with the rights to all royalties from Combs' song, which also won a Grammy, per the Los Angeles Times.
In 2018, Sting appeared on The Breakfast Club radio show and answered in the affirmative when one of the hosts asked if it was true that Combs hands over $2,000 daily to him. "I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds," Sting joked at the time, per Hello! However, that video recently started making the rounds again online, prompting a gentle correction from Combs. "Nope. 5K a day," he wrote Wednesday on Twitter.
Using that new figure, Hello! calculates that Diddy would have forked over nearly $48 million since "I'll Be Missing You," which he recorded with Biggie's widow, Faith Evans, was released on May 7, 1997. Despite the rather large influx of cash passing between the two men, there appear to be no sour grapes over the arrangement. In the 2018 interview, Sting called Combs' song "a beautiful version" and said they were "very good friends now," per Consequence. Combs, for his part, added in his tweet from this week: "Love to my brother @OfficialSting!" (More Sting stories.)
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