Kanye West is facing another lawsuit, this time over an alleged unlicensed sample from his 2021 album Donda.
According to Billboard , a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court on Wednesday (July 17) accuses Ye of borrowing elements from a song called “MSD PT2” to cut “Hurricane” and “Moon” for Donda – even after he was rejected license.
That’s not so much a matter of not paying, the attorneys wrote, but rather because “IP owners have the right to decide how their property is exploited and need to be able to prevent unscrupulous infringers from simply stealing.”
The lawsuit states that Ye even credited the song’s four creators as songwriters, an act that was “blatantly brazen.”
However, the lawsuit was not filed by the artist, but by a company called Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), which owns the copyright of “MSD PT2”. The four writers came to ARA after nearly three years of “unsuccessfully trying to recoup their share of the proceeds from these songs.”
Kanye West’s Donda is a star-studded star, but at one point during the album’s production, he threatened to drop several artists from the project — including JAY-Z.
Last month, a mini-documentary about the making of Donda leaked online, a five-minute film that offered a behind-the-scenes look at Kanye’s unorthodox creative process — which included converting Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium into Transformed into a makeshift recording studio – and in a turbulent emotional state.
Featuring never-before-seen footage, the documentary shows Ye reflecting on his late mother, Donda West, during a visit to his childhood home in Chicago, revising various songs in the studio to pay homage to his The team delivered impassioned speeches and prayers, and connected with Pusha T, Playboi Carti, Fivioforeign, Rick Rubin and Mike Dean, among others.
One particularly noteworthy scene sees the Chicago rap mogul on the phone in his dressing room threatening to cut anyone who doesn’t attend his listening party from the album – including JAY-Z.
“Everyone who’s not here, I delete their verses,” he said. “I’m taking JAY-Z’s verses, I’m taking – if somebody’s not on the porch with me, they’re not in this version.”
After hanging up the phone, Kanye looked into the camera and added with a smile: “Man, how do you describe this conversation?”
When Donda finally hit the streaming service in August 2021, the lyrics to JAY-Z’s “Jail” were intact, marking the Watch the Throne duo’s first in five years since Drake’s 2016 song “Pop Style.” cooperate.
