Everyone’s favourite controversial rapper, Kanye West (also known as Ye) has found himself in some legal trouble.
It emerged just yesterday, that the father-of-four has been sued for allegedly sampling a song illegally, by musician Marshall Jefferson, without permission.
Oh no Mr. Ye
Apparently, Kanye had unlawfully used of a sample from the 1986 Marshall Jefferson house track Move Your Body in his song Flowers on the Donda 2 album that was released in February on Stem Players, allowing listeners to isolate and merge sounds together.
Kanye West sold 11,000 Stem Players for $200 each within just 24 hours of Donda 2’s release, totaling $2.2 million in revenue.
Marshall Jefferson’s publisher, Ultra International Music Publishing stated that the sample is ‘repeated at least 22 times throughout the song’.
The lawsuit states:
“West advocates for artists’ rights with one hand, yet has no shame in taking away rights from another artist with the other.”
According to the lawsuit, “Flowers” is supposedly about Kanye West’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian, who filed for divorce last year and it was finally approved in March of this year.
Jefferson himself spoke out about the legal matter to Billboard and his opinion on how disappointing the matter is:
‘I’ve been sampled thousands of times. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. Getting done by another artist, a BLACK artist, a fellow Chicagoan without acknowledgment is disappointing.”
Not the first time this has happened…
Unfortunately for the Yeezy Founder himself, this is not the first incident in which he has been sued for using samples without obtaining clearance.
He was previously sued for samples used on the Yeezy tracks “New Slaves” and “Bound 2,” which were both settled outside of the courtroom.
Additionally, in a 2019 collaboration between Kanye West and artist Pusha T, the pair were sued for sampling George Jackson’s “I Can’t Do Without You” on Pusha T’s DAYTONA album track “Come Back Baby.”
More recently, in May, a pastor (Bishop David P. Moten) sued the “creative genius” for using a sample from one of his sermons on “Come to Life,” used on Kanye’s Donda album released in 2021.
Surely, with such extensive experience and knowledge of how the industry works, Kanye West should have learnt his lesson by now??
What are your thoughts on the matter? Should Kanye know how things work by now? Let us know on Twitter @itpliveme.