Drake's "Hotline Bling" video has inspired a flurry of memes since it dropped last night, but it's also inspired a lot of discussion around the song's speculated link to D.R.A.M.'s "Cha Cha".
It's a complicated story, as an early low-quality snippet of the song is what initially led fans to assume the song was a "Cha Cha" remix. Many publications (including us) billed it as such when it dropped, but Drake never once acknowledged it having any relationship with the D.R.A.M. song. Also, the sample sources are different; with Drake's song speeding up Timmy Thomas' "Why Can't We Live Together," while D.R.A.M.'s uses Koji Kando's "Super Mario World" theme. Some have suggested that Kando's song is in itself an interpolation of the Thomas song, but so far we haven't seen concrete evidence of that claim.
Either way, the song's do have a similar 'feel,' and D.R.A.M. expressed yesterday that he believes Drake did in fact "jack" him of the song.
FADER has now brought forth a quote which came up during their recent cover story with Drake. While it wasn't included in the original write-up, the publication says that his thoughts were in reference to the "sunnier vibe to some of his summer output" which includes "Sweeterman" (a track he has acknowledged is a remix of Ramriddlz' song) and "Hotline Bling". He compared the approach to dancehall riddims, which are generally passed among artists in Jamaica. What he says could be interpreted as an admission to being inspired by "Cha Cha," but it's all pretty vague.
You know, like in Jamaica, you’ll have a riddim and it’s like, everyone has to do a song on that. Imagine that in rap, or imagine that in R&B. Imagine if we got one beat and every single person—me, this guy, this guy, all these guys—had to do a song on that one beat. So sometimes I’ll pick a beat that’s a bit, like, sunnier, I guess is the word you used, than usual, and I just try my hand at it. And that’s kind of what ‘Hotline Bling’ was. And I loved it. It’s cool. I’ve been excited by that sort of creative process.
What do you think? Does D.R.A.M. deserve credit for "Hotline Bling"?