Sting Continues To Make Crazy Money Off Of "I'll Be Missing You"

After Juice WRLD died, Sting tried to clear up the rumors surrounding Juice's biggest hit "Lucid Dreams", which uses the guitar riff from Sting's  1993 song "Shape Of My Heart."

According to the 68-year-old legend, he never sued Juice for swiping the riff.  In fact, Sting's been listed as a songwriter on the track and likely gets a good chunk (we've heard 85 percent) of the "Lucid Dreams" royalties.

But that's probably a drop in the bucket compared to what he makes off Diddy's Biggie tribute "I'll Be Missing You", which also features a guitar riff Sting owns.

Bad Boy Records notoriously didn't ask Sting if they could sample the 1983 Police track "Every Breath You Take" on their 1997 song.  If they had, Sting would have likely got around 25 percent of the royalties. Since they didn't, Sting's lawyers swooped in and took all of the royalties. 

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Sting makes $2000 a day in royalties from "Every Breath You Take." While the majority of that is from the original song, which was one the biggest hits of all time, Puff's track was also an enormous hit -- selling over 7 million copies worldwide and bringing new attention to "Every Breath You Take".

There's a good argument that Sting doesn't deserve any of the royalties from 'I'll Be Missing You" and it has nothing to do with Biggie or Puff.

Sting didn't write "Every Breath You Take"'s iconic guitar riff, which is the only part of the song that is in "I'll Be Missing You." Police guitarist Andy Summers wrote it. However, the band was fighting (and about to break up) when they recorded the song and Summers didn't push for a credit on it, leaving Sting as the sole songwriter.

Summers has long been bitter about that oversight.

"He actually sampled my guitar," Summers said about "I'll Be Missing You. "That's what he based his whole track on. Stewart's not on it. Sting's not on it. I'd be walking round Tower Records, and the f*cking thing would be playing over and over. It was very bizarre while it lasted."

This should be a lesson to any young artist who wants to sample from Sting. Dude plays hardball and has a history of profiting off dead rappers.