I'm A Celeb star Tulisa reveals exactly what she said to will.i.am after he stole her hit song

Tulisa sued the Black Eyed Peas star for stealing her single Scream & Shout, which she originally wrote to be included on her solo album The Female Boss in 2012

I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! star Tulisa Contostavlos has revealed exactly what she said to will.i.am after he stole her hit song.

The former N-Dubz singer penned the hit, originally titled I Don't Give A F**k for her debut solo album The Female Boss, and had planned to release it in 2012 as a follow up to her song, Young. However, she was approached by the Black Eyed Peas star who begged her to let him give the track to Britney Spears, but she refused.

Tulisa reflected on the five-year legal battle in an interview on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, and revealed she ended up with 10 percent of the worldwide publishing rights and income from the song, which was renamed Scream & Shout and released in November 2012, after she won the lawsuit. The singer said she holds no grudge against will.i.am, and said she wasn’t “a***d” about the lengthy legal battle she endured to get her song back.

“I've seen him out and just been like, ‘you alright mate?’ I'm not a**ed. I've been paid, my name's on the record. It is what it is,” she admitted. Tulisa said the legal drama began when will.i.am called her and asked her to “give him” her track as he planned on using it for Britney Spears and it would be “released around the world ”. She said no, but later discovered the song had been taken from her despite refusing will.i.am’s request.

“I was just casually sitting at home and there it was on the telly! Britney's just singing, I'm like is that my voice on the record that she's singing over? You know when you hear this, ‘in the club all eyes on us, all eyes on us’, you can, you can hear it. My vocals are on the record, so she's singing on top of me. That's why she's got the British accent. I was just like 'what the hell is this?” Tulisa recalled. She then discovered her songwriting credit had been erased, and the song’s lyrics had been attributed to will.i.am, Jef Martens and Jean Baptiste.

“So yeah I started the long process of another legal case which you know amazingly thankfully turned out in my favour,” the former X Factor judge explained. “Actually now I don't complain about it because royalties are good. will was initially right when he was saying to me, ‘this would be huge for you, you can make so much money out of it... it can be number one... someone like Britney can do that.’”

Tulisa said she was “just hard-headed” when asked by the rapper and music producer to give him her track, and wanted to make the song her own. “I was like 'no it's my single I don't care about the bigger picture, it's my song, I'm not not giving it to anyone',” she fumed. Looking back on the legal drama, she told Fearne she wished will.i.am would have “just put my name down on the publishing to make sure that I was going to get paid either way”.

Despite the lawsuit, she has “no bad blood” with the rapper, and was deeply proud of herself for standing up for her songwriting. At the time, will.i.am admitted there was a fallout over the track, and claimed: “Tulisa wrote that song before I did – this is the truth. But the producers of the beat… didn't want her to have it.”

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