Have you heard? Bappi Lahiri now claims that A.R. Rehman’s “Jai Ho” was inspired by his ludicrous “Ramba Ho” song from back in the day. I think he really believes it too. For the longest time I’ve been on the fence about him. His (literally) larger than life personality and outrageous fashion sense are almost endearing but now I’m beginning to think he may be a little nuts.
Ironically enough he won his lawsuit against hip hop producer Dr. Dre for uncredited use of his song “Thoda Resham Lagta Hai” for the Truth Hurts “Addictive” mix. “Addictive” was released as a single and became a top 10 hit. Truth Hurts, whose real name is Shari Watson, told MTV last year that Dre had remixed Addictive, “He really took it to another level,” she said at the time. “He took another part of the Indian sample and added it to the beginning and to the middle.” Turns out Dre at the time was flipping channels on his TV and happily getting high when he chanced open this wicked riff on a random Indian channel broadcasting in the US and decided to make a mash up with it. (One even his brilliantly trained music research crew couldn’t source origins for.) Oops I guess!
But it gets bigger (of course) and better. Whil Shari Watson’s career faded into total oblivion and Dr. Dre just shook his head in disbelief, Bappi Da then decided to make his own remix on an album called UMI 10, a la Dr. Dre, calling it “Kalion Ka Chaman” and voila a coincidentally similar video later he was on his way to becoming the new remix raja.