donda
Ye (formerly Kanye West) is facing another lawsuit accusing him of illegal sampling, this time over allegations that he incorporated an instrumental track into two songs from Donda even after he was explicitly denied permission.
The case, filed Wednesday (July 17) in Los Angeles federal court, claims that Ye borrowed elements from a song called “MSD PT2” for his own “Hurricane” and “Moon” — both of which reached the top 20 on the Hot 100 when they were released in 2021.
Filed by a company that owns the rights to the earlier song, the case claims that when Ye was refused a license to use it, he simply “decided to steal it.”
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“This lawsuit is about more than defendants’ failure to pay a fee,” writes Oren Warshavsky and other attorneys from the law firm BakerHostetler, representing the plaintiffs. “It is about the rights of artists, musicians, and songwriters to determine how their works are published and used. 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.”
In an act of particularly “blatant brazenness,” the lawsuit claims that Ye even credited the song’s four creators — Khalil Abdul-Rahman Hazzard, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff and Josh Mease — as songwriters despite their refusal to work with him.
Wednesday’s case was filed not by the artists themselves, but by a company called Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), which owns the copyrights to “MSD PT2.” Lawyers for the company say the four artists turned to ARA after they “unsuccessfully attempted to collect their share of the proceeds from these songs” for nearly three years.
A spokesperson for Ye could not immediately be located for comment on the new case.
The new allegations come less than a month after Ye settled a separate lawsuit filed by the estate of Donna Summer over a very similar accusation. In that earlier case, Summer’s estate claimed the rapper had used her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” in his own “Good (Don’t Die)” despite a similarly explicit refusal.
“Summer’s estate … wanted no association with West’s controversial history and specifically rejected West’s proposed use,” the estate’s attorneys wrote at the time. “In the face of this rejection, defendants arrogantly and unilaterally decided they would simply steal ‘I Feel Love’ and use it without permission.”
Even before the two recent cases, Ye has been sued repeatedly for uncleared samples and interpolations in his music.
In 2022, Ye was hit with a lawsuit claiming his song “Life of the Party” illegally sampled a song by the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions; accused in another case over allegations that he used an uncleared snippet of Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house track “Move Your Body” in the song “Flowers”; and sued in a different case by a Texas pastor for allegedly sampling from his recorded sermon in “Come to Life.”
Before that, West and Pusha T were sued in 2019 for sampling George Jackson‘s “I Can’t Do Without You” on the track “Come Back Baby.” That same year, he was sued for allegedly using an audio snippet of a young girl praying in his 2016 song “Ultralight Beam.” Further back, West was hit with similar cases over allegedly unlicensed samples used in “New Slaves,” “Bound 2” and “My Joy.”
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Ye FKA Kanye West has yet another lawsuit on his hands. A former Donda Academy employee is suing him over his antisemitic behavior and more.
As reported by TMZ, the Chicago, Illinois, native will have to clear his already muddied name in a court of law. A former Donda Academy official is claiming that the “Father Stretch My Hands” performer was doing the absolute most at his children’s school back in 2022. Trevor Phillips says he was hired late that year to help source raw materials for the YZY apparel brand. His responsibilities were soon expanded to oversee the unaccredited private institution during the same time Ye went full antisemite.
On Tuesday, April 2, Phillips filed a lawsuit alleging that not only would Ye be openly bigoted in front of students but also once told them he was going to be build a jail in the school where kids who misbehaved would be locked in cages. “By filing this lawsuit, we hope our injured clients’ rights are vindicated, and that the famous artist Mr. West understands that his messages — which we alleged preach discrimination, antisemitism and Hitler-love — have no place in the world,” Phillips’ attorney, Carney R. Shegerian, explained in a formal statement to People.
This is not the first time Ye has been sued by employees of Donda Academy. According to The Los Angeles Times, in April 2023, two former staffers filed a lawsuit claiming they were unjustly terminated from their positions without warning. Additionally, they revealed the school had very unusual policies including that the kids could not wear clothing from Nike and adidas, outside food was not allowed and there were no janitorial services.
Representatives from Ye’s camp have yet to respond to the matter.
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The build up to Donda was a sight to be seen. A leak of documentary behind the album shows Kanye West threatening to shelve a Jay-Z verse.
As spotted on HipHopDX now the world will get a better idea of his very unique creative process. Earlier this week footage from a film documenting how his tenth album came to be leaked online. While we only got a little over five minutes worth clips the footage did not disappoint. The “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1” rapper is seen in a makeshift recording booth in a room inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Here we see Yeezy reflect on his late mother who the project was named after. Additionally, we see him engage with some of his peers including Playboi Carti, Fivio Foreign, Rick Rubin, Mike Dean, Pusha T, and more. But the most noteworthy moment was footage of him handling business on the phone. Kanye is seen taking a phone call regarding the final features for Donda and makes it clear that if said talent isn’t in attendance for the listening party at Mercedez-Benz Stadium their verse would be removed.
“Everybody that’s not here, I’m taking their verses off,” he explained. “I’m taking JAY-Z verse, I’m taking — if there’s anybody not here on the porch with me, they’re not on this version.” Soon after he hangs up the cellular phone he had what seemed to be a moment of clarity while looking straight the camera. “How do you even describe these kind of conversations, bro?” he said. The JAY-Z feature in question actually did make it to the album on “Jail”.
You can see the leaked footage of Kanye West below.
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At this point, I just need everyone to raise your hand if you’re not currently suing Kanye West.
Seriously, Ye stays drowning in litigation like his big homie Donald Trump drowns in criminal investigations. In the last couple of years alone, Yeezus has been sued by Black-owned companies and other businesses. He’s been sued by ex-employees for severance pay and unpaid wages. He’s even been sued by his ex-business manager.
Now, the Donda rapper is facing yet another lawsuit by a former teacher at Kanye West’s Donda Academy in Chatsworth, California, who claims the school is nothing more than a cesspool of bullying, limited food choices, disorganization, banned Black history books and students who aren’t actually learning much of anything.
From Page Six:
Cecilia Hailey, who is suing West, the Chatsworth, Calif., school and its directors for racial discrimination and wrongful termination, claimed that the rapper banned books — including “The Lost Boys of Sudan,” by Mark Bixler, which focuses on four victims of the brutal Sudanese conflict.
She told Page Six there are now believed to be between just 35 to 40 pupils left at the $15,000-a-year private Christian school, claiming: “Kanye didn’t want anything to do with a lot of black history books.
“There was one book called ‘The Lost Boys of Sudan’ that was banned because one of the parents got shot in the book. But the kids were reading ‘Harry Potter’ and there are murders in [those] books.
“Kanye wanted nothing to do with history, I was told.”
It’s not terribly surprising that the MAGA-humping “white lives matter” advocate who thinks slavery was a choice and brags about not reading has an apparent aversion to Black history being taught at his school. It’s a little more confusing that, according to the lawsuit, the only thing to eat at Ye’s school is chef-prepared sushi.
“There was no breakfast. You had young kids eating raw sushi and cucumber rolls every day,” Hailey said. “A lot of the kids didn’t like it and that’s all they had.
“This is not a nutritional meal,” she continued. “There are state guidelines and nobody paid attention. I thought it was not only rude but cruel.”
Now, look, I love a good California roll as much as the next sushi lover, but, even as an adult, I’m not trying to eat it five days a week fro breakfast and lunch. And we’re talking about young teens and pre-teens here who may or may not be grossed out by the thought of eating rice and raw fish even once, let alone on a daily basis lest they go hungry while trying to receive an education in a safe environment—which Haily claims they’re not receiving either.
More from Page Six:
She alleged that administrators struggled with behavioral issues and disorganization, and that students were not being taught properly.
“The kids had so many changes, so many teachers. I was like the fourth or fifth they had in the third grade, and they had had 10 principals in three years,” Hailey told Page Six.
“It wasn’t that the kids were bad, it was that there was so much disruption.”
Another big issue, Hailey said, is that students were not disciplined and bullying was widespread.
She recounted an incident in which a fifth-grade student slapped an eighth-grader in the face.
“The next day she came back and bragged about it,” Hailey claimed, “and no action was taken.
“The teachers recommended the child be expelled but nothing was done. The explanation was that Kanye wants certain marginalized kids in school, but this was a kid who assaulted people and didn’t need to be around other children. “
Hailey added of the fifth-grader: “She was kind of dangerous and there were kids living in fear of her, nobody did anything about it. I found that incredibly wrong.”
Page Six has reached out to Love for comment and was not able to reach West, who is not believed to have a representative at the moment.
Hailey said she has no clue why parents are leaving their children enrolled at the school, which reportedly offers no grading system, but suggested they could be star-struck by West, whom she has still never met.
‘I believe that, unfortunately, the school needs to shut down,” she said. “The kids need to be home-schooled because it’s so late in the semester—and get actual grades and transcripts so they can transfer to another school. At the moment, they’re making a mess of these children.”
Hailey’s daughter, Chekarey Byers, another Donda teacher, is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Both women, who are Black, claim they were racially discriminated against when they were fired in early March. The suit alleges that they were terminated in retaliation for reporting code violations at the school and that, before they were let go, their wages were illegally withheld.
The big takeaway here is that being educated by Ye might be just as hazardous as working for or with him.
“Kanye would never have sent his own children to Donda, no way, Haily declared, adding that “it was just a luxury day care.”
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