Diddy says he was 'joking' when he tweeted he pays Sting $5,000 per day for sampling 'Every Breath You Take' without his permission: 'It's called being Facetious!'

• Diddy said he doesn't pay Sting $5K daily for sampling "Every Breath You Take" without his permission.
• The rapper sampled the song on his 1997 tribute to The Notorious B.I.G., "I'll Be Missing You."

Diddy said he was joking when he said that he pays legendary rocker Sting a whopping $5,000 per day for sampling The Police's song "Every Breath You Take," which Sting wrote, without permission.

"I want y'all to understand I was joking! It's called being Facetious! Me and @OfficialSting have been friends for a long time! He never charged me $3K or $5K a day for Missing You," Diddy explained in an April 7 tweet. "He probably makes more than $5K a day from one of the biggest songs in history."

The Bad Boy Records founder sampled the song on his 1997 tribute to The Notorious B.I.G. with Faith Evans, "I'll Be Missing You," which spent 11 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100.

In a 2018 interview with The Breakfast Club, Sting confirmed Diddy did not seek his permission to sample his song and as such has to pay him $2,000 per day for the "rest of his life."

Diddy shared resurfaced footage from the interview on Twitter and took the opportunity to correct Sting's figure.

"Nope. 5K a day," he wrote on April 5. "Love to my brother @OfficialSting!"

It's unclear how much Diddy has paid Sting over the years, but in a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone, The Police frontman said he'd taken enough money from the rapper to put some of his six children through college.

"Those guys just take your shit, put it on a record and deal with the legality later," he said when asked how Diddy came about sampling "Every Breath You Take."

"Elton John told me, 'You gotta hear ["I'll Be Missing You'"], you're gonna be a millionaire,'" he added.

"I said, 'I am a millionaire!' He said, 'You're gonna be a millionaire twice over!' I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds, and me and P. Diddy are good pals still."

Diddy isn't the only rapper Sting has profited from after they sampled one of his songs.

The late Juice WRLD sampled Sting's "Shape of My Heart" on his 2018 hit "Lucid Dreams," which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and to date has sold over 10 million units in the United States alone.

Sting is said to own 85% of Juice WRLD's song because of the sample, according to a 2018 tweet from the song's producer, Nick Mira.

"Fuck @OfficialSting and his WHOLE team," the producer wrote. "After taking 85% of Lucid Dreams (for interpolating Shape of My Heart, NOT EVEN sampling) he threatened to take us to court for trying to get any %."

Sting told Billboard in 2018 that the money he's made from the "Lucid Dreams" will put his "grandkids through college."