Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Cardi B’s chart-topping hit “I Like It” is known for its integral sample of Pete Rodriguez’s 1967 song “I Like It Like That,” but the sample isn’t actually lifted from the original. Cardi’s mix engineer Leslie Brathwaite told The Verge that the sample was replayed by musicians hired by Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman in order to save money and retain publishing ownership.
Brathwaite worked on Cardi’s debut Invasion of Privacy, and has also mixed for Future, 2 Chainz, and TLC in his lengthy career. In his interview, Brathwaite revealed the surprising news about “I Like It.”
“A lot of people think that’s the actual sample [from Pete Rodriguez’s “I Like It Like That”], but it was actually replayed,” said Brathwaite. “Craig [Kallman] hired people to replay every aspect of that sample, and it turned out to be like, 60 tracks worth of stuff!”
He went on to explain the reasoning, which was to avoid paying the full cost of the sample. It’s more expensive to sample directly than to replay a portion of a song. He said:
When you physically sample somebody else’s work, they are now a part owner of that song. And so anything that happens with that song, they have to also approve. That just makes it convoluted. So if they used the original sample, and the NFL came to them and said, “Hey, we want to use ‘I Like It’ as our promo for the Super Bowl,” now they have to go to all the songwriters or whoever owns the copyright to get things sorted. But if you replay it, you don’t have to. You just have to make sure there’s compensation and credit for their songwriting, but you don’t have to clear the actual use.
The strategy of replaying instead of sampling is popular, but not always foolproof. Producer Nick Mira interpolated “Shape of My Heart” by Sting on Juice WRLD’s hit “Lucid Dreams,” but because he failed to clear it was still put in an unfavorable financial position. Mira wrote on Twitter that Sting took 85 percent of the song, though he could have demanded 100 percent.
The owners of “I Like It Like That” clearly did approve the use beforehand, and Rodriguez himself is a fan. He spoke to Entertainment Weekly about Cardi’s song, saying that though he didn’t know she sampled him until his family told him, he supports the Bronx rapper.
I’ve been out of the loop for a while, but I’ve watched some of her videos now and my favorite is definitely ‘I Like It,‘“ he said.
In the week Cardi’s “I Like It” debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, Rodriguez’s song saw a staggering 2,520 percent increase in streams.
“I Like It” was nominated for Record of the Year at the 61st Grammys, in which Cardi became the first solo female MC to win the Best Rap Album award.
Genius explored the sample on “I Like It” in the video below.
Read the full lyrics to “I Like It” and the rest of Cardi B’s discography on Genius now.
