Everybody who's familiar with Desiigner knows that he's accused of being a Future imitator. Last month, the copycat claims were extended to the producer of "Panda," Desiigner's one and only release. Jermaine Dupri had been messing around on his turntables when he noticed a resemblance between the "Panda" beat and that of Future's "Commas."
The man behind the "Panda" beat is a producer from Manchester who calls himself Menace. Like Desiigner, he was virtually unknown before "Panda" became a viral smash, was used in a Kanye West song, and eventually topped the charts. Jermaine Dupri never mentioned the U.K. producer when he tweeted, "This Panda beat is the exact same beat as Commas, wow!" but, of course, Menace caught wind of his observation, which he feels was entirely off the mark.
In a new interview with HipHopDX, Menace maintained that there are "no similarities" between the productions of "Panda" and "Commas." He went into detail with his explanation:
"Because in the song 'Fuck Up Some Commas,' the main sound is a piano, where as mine is a synth sound. And mine keeps going where as 'Fuck Up Some Commas' goes and stops. And my drums as well; that's the main difference you can tell, my drums are more hard-knocking than 'Fuck Up Some Commas.'"
Menace went on to point out that the "Panda" beat was influenced more by U.K. grime than it was by trap music. "Grime is the UK scene," he said, "And grime is an energetic type of form of music that can be 140 BPM but an 'explode-in-your-face' type of music. And the BPM's on both beats, they don't match as well. Mine is faster. Much, much faster."
Also in the interview, the 23-year-old producer revealed that he has given beats to rappers like Lil Wayne, French Montana, Ty Dolla $ign, and Vado.
