Report: Kelis Accuses Beyonce Of 'Thievery' Over 'Milkshake' Sample On New 'Renaissance' Album

Kelis: Beefing With Beyonce

BEYONCE's seventh album, "Renaissance," came out last FRIDAY to rave reviews, but there was one fellow musician not chiming in with the accolades.

KELIS, in a series of INSTAGRAM posts, accuses QUEEN BEY of sampling her 2003 hit single, "Milkshake," on the new song "Energy" without her permission.

Writing credits on KELIS' album "Tasty" for the song feature THE NEPTUNES' PHARRELL WILLIAMS and CHAD HUGO, who are also credited as co-writers on “Energy.” which does not include her original vocals. 

Still, that didn't stop KELIS from taking to INSTAGRAM to accuse BEY of "thievery' over her interpolation of the song, making sure to fire back via the verified account for her product line, BOUNTY & FULL. 

“My mind is blown too because the level of disrespect and utter ignorance of all three parties involved is astounding,” she wrote in the comments of the post. “Nothing is ever as it seems, some of the people in this business have no soul or integrity and they have everyone fooled.”

KELIS then posted a pair of videos to her personal INSTAGRAM account, one reading, “The reality is that my real beef is not only with BEYONCE, because, at the end of the day, she sampled a record... She’s copied me before, she’s done this before, so have many other artists. It’s fine, I don’t care about that.

“The issue is that not only are we female artists, okay? Black female artists in an industry [where] there’s not that many of us. We’ve met each other, we know each other, we have mutual friends. It’s not hard. She can contact, right?

“It’s not a collaboration. It’s called thievery because the definition of collaboration means we are working together. There’s no working together if you are not checking in to see if everything’s cool.”

Because KELIS is not a writer of "Milkshake," nor the song's copyright holder, her claims offer little legal recourse. She has long had a beef with co-wroters WILLIAMS and HUGO, saying they didn't properly pay her for her work, an allegation she doubled down on in her INSTAGRAM videos.

Speaking to THE GUARDIAN in 2020, KELIS said she’d been “blatantly lied to and tricked” by THE NEPTUNES during the early days of her career, claiming that WILLIAMS had stolen “all my publishing.”

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