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City of Suits: Why Kanye West is being sued over Donda 2 sample
- Kanye West has been sued by a famed house musician
- He is accused unauthorised sampling of a song on his song Flowers
- Kanye and his label have not responded to the suit
Kanye West has been sued for unauthorised sampling of a song by a famed house musician on Donda 2.
The rapper is accused of sampling at least 22 times from Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 hit Move Your Body on his song Flowers.
On Wednesday, Jefferson’s publisher, Ultra International Music Publishing, filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Kanye and his label have not responded to the suit.
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Jefferson, a house music pioneer from Kanye’s hometown of Chicago, appeared at Glastonbury last weekend.
Trax Records published his single Move Your Body in 1986, and it peaked at No. 34 on Billboard’s Dance Singles Sales list.
“I’ve been sampled thousands of times. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about it,” he told BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat, adding, “Getting done by another artist, a black artist, a fellow Chicagoan without acknowledgment is disappointing.”
According to the lawsuit, Kanye and his crew met with Jefferson’s counsel and acknowledged sampling Move Your Body in Flowers.
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However, it alleges that the rapper did not obtain a licence, which would have meant that Jefferson was compensated for leveraging his material.
“West advocates for artists’ rights with one hand, yet has no shame in taking away rights from another artist with the other,” the lawsuit reads.
According to the lawsuit, Flowers is reportedly about Kanye’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian, whose plea to terminate their marriage was approved in March.
A spokesperson for Ultra International, which owns the rights to Jefferson’s song, said the case spoke for itself.
They are requesting a trial to assess profits and damages, as well as statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement.
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Kanye, who has officially changed his name to Ye, released Donda 2 exclusively on his Stem Player, a mobile gadget that allows users to collect and recombine song parts, in February.
According to the lawsuit, he claimed to have generated $2.2 million (£1.8 million) from Stem Player sales just one day following its release.
Kano Computing Ltd, a British business that collaborated with Kanye on the player and is also implicated in the complaint, has not spoken publicly on the matter.
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Kanye’s representatives and Universal Music Group, which is not mentioned in the lawsuit, have likewise not issued a statement.
A Texas preacher named David Paul Moten sued the rapper in May for allegedly copying one of his sermons without permission.
He has earlier been sued over samples used for the Yeezus tracks New Slaves and Bound 2, though both instances were settled out of court.
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