This case concerns purportedly uncleared samples from Kanye West’s 2021 album Donda.
A lawsuit was filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 17, according to a report from Billboard. The lawsuit accuses Ye of copying samples from a song named “MSD PT2” for the Donda tracks “Hurricane” and “Moon” despite having been told not to.
The attorneys argue that the main reason for this was that “intellectual property owners have a right to decide how their property is exploited and need to be able to prevent shameless infringers from simply stealing,” rather than the fact that there was no price to be paid.
In an act of “blatant brazenness,” according to the lawsuit, Ye even gave credit as songwriter to the song’s four authors.
However, the business that brought the lawsuit, Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), is the owner of the copyrights of “MSD PT2,” not the artists. After nearly three years of “unsuccessfully attempting to collect their share of the proceeds from these songs,” the four writers turned to ARA.
Donda by Kanye West was a very famous album, however at one point in the recording process, he made a threat to fire JAY-Z and other artists.
A five-minute film that provided a behind-the-scenes peek into Kanye’s unconventional creative process—which included converting Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium into a makeshift recording studio—and occasionally volatile emotional condition was leaked online last month. The documentary focused on the development of Donda.
With previously unreleased video, the documentary follows Ye as he remembers his late mother, Donda West, revisits his Chicago childhood home, experiments in the studio with different songs, gives passionate speeches and prayers to his group, and collaborates with Pusha T, Playboi Carti, Fivio Foreign, Rick Rubin, and Mike Dean, among others.
A standout scene features the Chicago rap mogul on the phone in a locker room, threatening to remove JAY-Z and everyone else from the record if they don’t show up for his listening party.
He declares, “I’m taking their verses off for everyone who isn’t here.” “I’m taking this verse by Jay-Z, and whoever isn’t on the porch with me isn’t on this version.”
Kanye laughs and turns to face the camera after hanging up, saying, “How do you even describe these kind of conversations, bro?”
When Donda eventually made it to streaming sites in August 2021, JAY-Z’s line from “Jail” remained intact. This was the Watch the Throne duo’s first joint release in five years, having followed Drake’s 2016 song “Pop Style.”
