Credit: Alamy

Lloyd Banks hasn’t had too many hit solo singles in his career. The Queens rapper was at his mainstream peak in the 2000s, scoring a few big records across his The Hunger for More and Rotten Apple albums, which reached number one and three on the Billboard 200. What you might not know is that his biggest solo track came about as a result of 50 Cent outright copying another song.

It was 2004 when Banks released his debut album on G-Unit Records. The project was stacked with big-name rappers, including fellow group members 50, The Game, Tony Yayo, and Young Buck, as well as Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and Nate Dogg. The lead single, ‘On Fire’, was produced by Em, K1 Mil, and Luis Resto, and samples the 1986 song ‘The Champ’ by The Mohawks.

Although Slim Shady’s production is a driving force, one of the record’s biggest pulls is the fact that it steals some of the best parts of Nelly’s chart-topping 2002 single, ‘Hot in Herre‘. However, this was completely unknown until recent years. Maybe, without even knowing, listeners were initially drawn to Banks’ track from the similarities between them.

During an interview with Hot 97, 50 revealed that he borrowed the melody of Nelly’s song. He has no shame in admitting it and is actually proud of how he managed to pull it off. It was a trick of his that resulted in a smash record for his artist. The song reached number eight on the Hot 100, with the song boasting 68million Spotify streams and a further 42million YouTube views.

“I would be able to look at someone else’s record and be able to make my version of the record when the right production came around, and it would be a hit again,” he said. “When Nelly was going, ‘It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes’ – that’s how Banks did ‘On Fire’. I wrote the chorus for that. It’s the same record. It’s just new melodies, new production, and let Banks do it.”

The melody is evident throughout the entire hook, even including some of the same lyrics from Nelly’s original. 50 and Banks rap in the chorus, “We on fire/ Up in here, it’s burnin’ hot/ We on fire/ Shorty take it off, if it get too hot, up in this spot/ We on fire/ Tear the roof off this motherfucker, light the roof on fire/ Uh, n*gga, what you say?/ We gettin’ loose in this motherfucker, light the roof on fire, fire, fire.”

In the credits, 50 is rightly credited as a writer. He’s behind some of the biggest singles of the 2000s with his own songs like ‘In Da Club‘, ’21 Questions’, and ‘Candy Shop’, as well as big records for the likes of LL Cool J and The Game. His focus might not be on music nowadays, but his knack for creating anthems will live on. There’s a reason why new rappers still cite him as one of their biggest influences.