Kanye West Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged Unlicensed Samples on Donda Album.
Kanye West is facing another lawsuit, this time over allegations of using uncleared samples on his 2021 album, Donda. According to reports from Billboard, a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 17, accusing Ye of borrowing elements from the song “MSD PT2” for his Donda tracks “Hurricane” and “Moon” even after being denied permission.
The lawsuit, filed by Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), which holds the copyright for “MSD PT2,” claims that Kanye West used the samples without proper authorization. The lawyers argue that the issue is not about unpaid fees but about the intellectual property owners’ right to control how their work is used and to prevent unauthorized use.
In a “blatant attempt to disguise,” the lawsuit notes, Ye even credited four songwriters as the song’s composers. This action, however, did not come from the artists themselves but from ARA after the four songwriters’ failed attempts to collect their share of the earnings from these songs for nearly three years.
Donda, Kanye West’s star-studded album, has been surrounded by controversy since its release. At one point during the album’s creation, Kanye threatened to remove some artists from the project, including JAY-Z. Last month, a short documentary about the making of Donda was leaked online, offering a behind-the-scenes look at Kanye’s unconventional creative process. The five-minute film showed him turning the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta into a temporary recording studio and revealed his emotional state during the process.
The documentary includes previously unseen footage of Kanye reflecting on his late mother, Donda West, visiting his childhood home in Chicago, working on various songs in the studio, delivering passionate speeches and prayers to his team, and interacting with Pusha T, Playboi Carti, Fivio Foreign, Rick Rubin, and Mike Dean, among others.
One particularly noteworthy scene shows Kanye in a locker room, threatening to remove anyone who didn’t attend his listening party from the album, including JAY-Z. “Anyone who’s not here, I’m taking their verse off,” he said. “I’m taking JAY-Z’s verse off, I’m taking — if you’re not here on the porch with me, you’re not on this version.”
Despite the threat, JAY-Z’s verse on “Jail” remained intact when Donda finally appeared on streaming services in August 2021, marking the first collaboration between the Watch the Throne duo in five years since Drake’s 2016 track “Pop Style.”
The new lawsuit adds to the ongoing drama surrounding Kanye West’s Donda album. As the legal proceedings unfold, it remains to be seen how these allegations will impact Kanye and his work. The Donda album continues to generate buzz, both for its musical content and the controversies that accompany it.
