This was posted Monday, March 20, 2017 by Rodney Ho on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Kandi Burruss of "Real Housewives of Atlanta" and Tameka "Tiny" Cottle of "T.I. & Tiny" are receiving retroactive songwriting credit for Ed Sheeran's No. 1 smash hit "Shape of You" because of its resemblance to a No. 1 song they co-wrote from 1999 "No Scrubs."
Burruss posted the news on her Instagram page:
Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs also co-wrote "No Scrubs," which was a huge hit for Altanta-based TLC in 1999.
ASCAP, which tracks songwriters, now has the three "No Scrubs" co writers for "Shape of You" listed along with the original writers Steve Mac, John McDaid and Ed Sheeran.
Listeners noted the similarities between the "Shape of You" pre chorus and the "No Scrubs" chorus:
This means serious bonus cash for Burruss and Cottle without having had to do a thing after the fact.
For "No Scrubs," they get paid for any public performance of the song, plus radio airplay. (Performers do not get paid for radio airplay.) They also get a very small cut of download plays. According to Mediabase 24/7, "No Scrubs" has been spun at least 443,319 times since 1999 although that seems awfully low. (If a station changes formats and a lot of them have since 1999, I suspect their historical numbers disappear.)
Locally, Magic 104.1 and B98.5 both played "No Scrubs" in the past week.
"Shape of You" has already been spun 278,632 times since early January on radio stations nationwide, mostly top 40 and Hot AC formats. Locally, the four pop stations (B98.5, Star 94.1, Power 96.1 and Q100) in town played the song a combined 378 times over the past seven days. It's by far the most popular song in Atlanta, 79 spins ahead of Zahn and Taylor Swift with "I Don't Wanna Live Forever."
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