Kanye West and Snoop Dogg have both been sued, separately, over the use of uncleared samples and beats. West is accused of using the same sample on two tracks on his 2021 album ‘Donda’, despite being explicitly denied permission from the owners of the sampled track. Snoop has been sued over two tracks on his 2022 album ‘BODR’ which used beats that had been provided for studio use but were not cleared for commercial release.
West’s team allegedly sought permission to sample a song called ‘MSD PT2’ on ‘Donda’ tracks ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Moon, but that permission was denied. Having failed to get a licence - says Artist Revenue Advocates, which controls the earlier track - West “decided to steal it”.
“This lawsuit is about more than defendants’ failure to pay a fee”, ARA’s legal filing states. “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”.
The four creators of ‘MSD PT2’ - Khalil Abdul-Rahman, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff and Josh Mease - are among the 24 co-writers credited on ‘Hurricane’, though only Abdul-Rahman gets a credit on ‘Moon’. According to the database of US collecting society the MLC, Abdul-Rahman also seems to have a small share of the ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Moon’ copyrights, though it’s not clear whether the other three creators of ‘MSD PT2’ have been allocated anything.
The fact the ‘MSD PT2’ creators are credited, despite them declining to grant West permission to use their track, is “blatant brazenness”, the lawsuit goes on. Because, after all, even if they are credited, and even if they have been granted a share of the ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Moon’ copyrights, their explicit permission was still required before the sample was used.
Plus, it seems that the creators of ‘MSD PT2’ have not earned anything from West’s tracks. ARA says the artists turned to them for help after they “unsuccessfully attempted to collect their share of the proceeds from these songs” for nearly three years.
Snoop has been sued by a musician called Trevor Lawrence Jr. He says he provided two backing tracks “on spec” so that Snoop could experiment with them in the studio. However, he says he was clear that if those beats were used in any finished tracks, they would need to be licensed. Lawrence’s work appeared in two tracks on ‘BODR’, ‘Pop Pop’ and ‘Get This Dick’.
He claims that he provided his beats to Snoop in 2020 and was then told two years later that they would be used on ‘BODR’. He asked for a $10,000 fee and a 50% interest in the publishing rights. A representative for Snoop said those terms were acceptable, but then no licensing deal was formally put in place. According to the lawsuit, “To date, defendants have refused to properly license the Lawrence tracks or compensate Lawrence for their use”.
The two tracks were also part of an NFT campaign that Snoop instigated and which generated “tens of millions of dollars”, the lawsuit adds. “At no point in time did defendants communicate to Lawrence any intention to exploit the Lawrence tracks in connection with a bundled offering” such as the NFT sale, it states, “nor did Lawrence authorise any such exploitation of his work, which was never within his prior contemplation”.
