Brian May reveals why Queen blocked "gangster rap" artist from sampling them

3 April 2025, 11:00

Queen's Brian May in 2023. Picture: Scott Legato/Getty Images

By Jenny Mensah

The legendary Queen guitarist explained that the band refused to let an artist use one of their biggest tracks during the "heydey" of the genre.

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Queen once banned a gangster rap artist from sampling one of their songs.

Speaking to MOJO Magazine, the legendary guitarist revealed how an artist once wanted to use one of their hits in their song, but it didn't align with their beliefs.

Talking about lending their music to others, the Bohemian Rhapsody rocker told the outlet: "We have stopped them being used to promote violence or abuse, during the heyday of gangster rap when someone wanted to sample it in a song, we thought was abusive to women.

"But otherwise, our songs are for everyone. All art is theft."

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It's not just other people's ideas that Queen didn't agree with, as May recently revealed the one "grand idea" that their frontman Freddie Mercury had that the band wasn't too keen on.

"Deep down Freddie was one of the shyest people I've ever met," he recalled to the outlet. "But he was so full of bluster, you'd forget. Freddie would always be excited, and his excitement would take over. He'd be so full of excitement he could hardly speak.

He went on: "Freddie’s ideas were off the wall and cheeky and different — and we tended to encourage them. Sometimes the idea he brought in was brilliant, and sometimes not brilliant."

May went on to describe one such occasion where Mercury wanted to call what was to be Queen's 1989 album The Miracle something with far less gravitas, but the rest of the band - completed by bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor - steered him away from the idea.

“He came in one day and announced, ‘I’ve got this amazing idea. You know Michael Jackson has just put out this album called Bad? Well, listen… What do you think about us calling our next album Good?’

"We all looked at each other and said, ‘Well, maybe we should think about it, Freddie'," the guitarist recalls. "It wasn’t one of his world-shattering ideas, but looking back, maybe we were wrong..."