Making time for a hot take on a Friday, because news popped today that the jazz gospel a cappella group Take 6 has evidently (I’m not certain) filed an infringement suit because the Grammy-nominated H.E.R. (featuring Bryson Tiller) track “Could’ve Been” sure sounds like it relies heavily on a sample from Take 6’s “Come Unto Me.” Take a listen.
This is H.E.R. “Could’ve Been” ft. Bryson Tiller.
And this is the Take 6 track, Come Unto Me.
Those guys are good, right? To find the part of the song that we’re focused on, click ahead to 0:52 in “Come Unto Me.” Right after they sing, “It’s easy” they move into some “ooohs.” And that sounds like this…
“Come Unto Me” is a little faster tempo than “Could’ve Been,” and it’s in a different key. So to get a bit more apples-to-apples we can pitch shift and time stretch those four measures of ooohs, and then loop it once. That get us to this…
Learn about retaining a forensic musicologist to evaluate potential sampling issues.
I did this quite quickly. I might’ve “drawn in” some volume faders to get the more dramatic swells that “Could’ve Been” has. But even those little woo-woo things at the very end of the phrase are in the Take 6 track. They’re tell-tale of something, I’d say.
And here’s “Could’ve Been” one more time.
Very interesting similarities, to be sure.
