Muni Long Reveals Atlantic Records Gave Pitbull 'Timber' Without Her Consent and Made Adjustments to Fit Kesha

"Timber" by Pitbull and Kesha became one of the biggest hit songs of the mid 2010s, however, it was not always a smooth road to release.

Songwriter and singer Muni Long shared the difficult backstory of the song in a video posted to her TikTok account. It has since gone viral, and in it, she alleges that Atlantic Records gave Pitbull the song without her permission and forced her to rework parts of the song to fit Kesha's vocal range.

"I write a song, it is called Timber, they call in love with it. Me and Breyan [the person she wrote the hook, post chorus and bridge with] had a great time in the studio writing the song," she began.

Long then shared that the original rapper for the song was Flo Rida and that she doesn't know how the song made its way to Pitbull.

"About two weeks before the song is supposed to come out they hit me up, Ben, called me and said 'Hey we need you to come cut some vocals.' In my mind that means you need my voice on the song," she continued.

Long said that she noticed some different vocals on the song.

"'Well you know, she couldn't sing it like you so we had to switch it to woo. Now we want you to go in and sing the woo underneath her because your vocals are underneath her on the whole song, so if you don't sing the woo it is going to sound different and we need to have the same feel,'" she recalled being told.

"That's the problem I have. You wanted it to feel a certain way, but you wanted it to look that way," Long shared.

She also revealed that she did not get paid despite charging up to $5000 for just showing up.

That was not the only problem she had with the song as she revealed that Kesha's mom allegedly put a copyright claim on the song in order to get a percentage of publishing rights for the song.

"Said artist's mother was trying to get publishing on the song and she didn't write it, not one word," she concluded.

"Timber" would go on to be a huge smash hit and went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2014 and has since been certified Diamond for the sales equivalence of 10,000,000 units in the Untied States.

Since then, Long has gone on to forge her own solo career and scored hits like "Hrs Hrs" as well as "Made for Me."

Tags

Kesha, Pitbull