Will.i.am apologises for plagiarising DJ Lag's 'Ice Drop'

Yesterday Megan Ryte was accused of plagiarising DJ Lag in her new track ‘Culture’ featuring will.i.am and A$AP Ferg.

will.i.am has since posted a video apology to Megan Ryte and DJ Lag, taking full responsibility for the lack of credit to DJ Lag.

Read this next: DJ Lag is the South African Gqom artist making an Impact

South African DJ Lag, who produced the track ‘My Power’ from Beyoncé’s ‘The Lion King: The Gift’ album, quoted a post of the American DJ and radio host sharing the video to ‘Culture’ with footage and a link to the video of his 2017 track ‘Ice Drop’.

Many fans commented on the similarity between the tracks, and fellow artists expressed solidarity with Lag, including SHERELLE, Kush Jones and Shyboi.

The video for ‘Culture’ opens by displaying the definition of a ‘Culture Vulture’: “a person or an organization making profit using honorable practices from a culture they do not care for.” It currently has more than 17,000 dislikes on YouTube compared to just over 1,000 likes, and the comments have been turned off.

Read this next: Gqom is the explosive South African sound bursting into Europe

DJ Lag’s artist management agency Black Major posted on Twitter, writing: “We are handling it…”.

In will.i.am's video apology he says: “I wanna take the time to apologise to Megan Ryte from the bottom of my heart: Megan, I am truly sorry for putting you in this situation. And I want everyone to know that Megan doesn't deserve the hate you're throwing at her because Megan didn't do anything wrong."

He adds: “The person that’s at fault is myself. When the song was turned in, I turned in the credit information to Megan. And I obviously got the credit information wrong. And when I realised I made a mistake, I tried to fix it. And at that point in time it was already too late. So to that, I apologise to DJ Lag ... I’m so sorry for getting the information wrong.”

Listen to the two tracks below.

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Digital Features Editor, follow him on Twitter

Read this next: Get the best of Mixmag direct to your Facebook DMs