Legendary house music artist Marshall Jefferson has launched a lawsuit against Kanye West on the basis of alleged copyright infringement.
The complaint, filed in New York’s U.S. District Court, alleges West sampled Jefferson’s 1986 song “Move Your Body” without licensed permission. After producing under the alias Virgo, it was the first track of Jefferson’s career he had released under his own name.
Billboard reports the lawsuit claims West sampled Jefferson’s song 22 times in “Flowers,” a single from his 11th studio album, Donda 2, which released in February 2022. Unlike its predecessor, Donda 2 was released exclusively on West’s own Stem Player platform. The lawsuit notes that West earned a reported $2.2 million in physical Stem Player sales alone just one day following the album’s release.
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“I’ve been sampled thousands of times. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about it,” Jefferson told BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat. “Getting done by another artist, a Black artist, a fellow Chicagoan without acknowledgment is disappointing.”
The suit was filed this week by Ultra International Music Publishing, which maintains copyrights to the track. In total, the suit seeks a decision at trial, or alternatively the maximum monetary damages of $150,000 per infringement.
West nor his label have commented on the lawsuit at the time of writing.
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