With almost a million copies sold of “Harlem Shake“, Diplo’s Mad Decent label have experienced a windfall of success from Baauer’s mainstream hit. Things seemed to good to be true however, and sure enough, the threat of a lawsuit reared its head in the end of February, when a retired reggaeton artist, Héctor Delgado, claimed that Baauer had used an uncleared sample of his previous recording. which became the “con los terroristas” line in the track. It has now come to light, however, that Mad Decent have resolved the issue, despite the fact that Baauer had initially guaranteed the label that there were no uncleared samples in the track. Through his own network, Diplo was able to settle the issue:
We didn’t know there were any samples in the song to begin with. But when it came to clear the samples — because otherwise he would make negative money — we wanted to help him out…The Puerto Rican guys, they kept calling me because I know everyone in Puerto Rico, so I just sorted that out. It wasn’t even them, it was Universal Publishing…But we had enough clout that we sorted it out,
Another issue that arose was the use of “and do the Harlem Shake” phrase, which came from “Miller Time“, a song by rap group, Plastic Little. Luckily, Mad Decent’s head honcho was able to squash problem as well.
Jayson [Musson] was in a band called Plastic Little and he hit us up and said the album never got licensed or published, so we just cut a deal where he could make some money off that.
Of course, it’s unlikely that all this stemmed from Diplo’s altruistic whims. Mad Decent has benefited enormously from “Harlem Shake’s” success. the label was in danger of folding last year due to lack of funds.
via Huffington Post
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