For those of you who associate Timbaland with Nelly Furtado or Justin Timberlake, here's something new.

As the resident MIA-obsessed Campus Progress staffer, I encourage you to check out MIA and Timbaland's Come Around (sadly, not on the US-release - just UK... Americans never get the cool stuff).  I love MIA (in an almost creepy sort of way, but oh well).  But, though I also love Timbaland as a producer, I have heard a lot of interesting things about how and where he gets his beats and samplings from, without giving credit to independent artists (which he, and a ton of other record producers, have done in the past).

For this song, in particular, there's a good minute, spliced up, that's been ripped from an older Bollywood song (another thing you should know about me is my completely irrational obsession with Bollywood).  I wouldn't be surprised if they're not getting any portion of the profits - the same thing happened with Dr. Dre-produced Addictive by Rakim and Truth Hurts (oh, and don't even get me started on the obnoxious exoticizing of India in that video).  The Indian producer got wind of it (with it being an internationally successful song, playing obviously on MTV India... idiots), and sued Dr. Dre, accusing him of "cultural imperialism." 

The lawsuit wasn't publicized at all, and I wonder how many people just think Dre is so creative and came up with it all by himself.  I only heard about the whole lawsuit because my best friend's grandfather was the director of the Bollywood film (Jyoti) that the song (Kaliyon Ka Chaman) was originally in, and he was involved in the lawsuit.  (And, weird tidbit - the huge popularity of Addictive led Indian music producers to remix the song into catchy, but strange and confusing turnaround of the song with American beats in the back and a horribly embarrasing rip-off of the video - sort of the opposite of Addictive.  Maybe it's just a music industry thing across the world.  They just love ripping-off each other?)

Anyway, maybe the MIA song is a different case.  I just can't imagine her ripping off her people like that.  But, maybe it's just my starry eyes that blind me from the corruption of giant music industries and record production.  What's original anymore?