Her (formerly Kanye West) has reached a settlement in a copyright lawsuit in which he was accused of using an unauthorized sample from groundbreaking rap group Boogie Down Productions in his song “Life of the Party.”
In court documents filed Monday, lawyers for both sides agreed that Ye should be dismissed from the case and each side would pay its own legal fees. Other terms of the agreement were not publicly disclosed and neither side immediately responded to requests for comment.
The lawsuit against Boogie Down was one of more than a dozen such suits filed against Ye alleging unlicensed sampling or interpolation throughout his prolific career. The controversial rapper has faced nine such infringement suits since 2019 alone, including a highly publicized dispute with the estate of Donna Summer that was settled earlier this year.
The current lawsuit was filed in November 2022 by Phase One Network, the group that owns the copyright to Boogie Down, over allegations that Ye incorporated key aspects of the 1986 song “South Bronx” into “Life of the Party,” which was released on his 2021 album Donda.
Following several other sampling lawsuits against Ye, Phase One claimed that the rapper’s representatives made efforts to legally authorize the use of the Boogie Down song – but then released it anyway because a settlement was never reached.
“The notices confirmed that ‘South Bronx’ had been included in the infringing title even though West had not yet obtained a license to do so,” Phase One’s lawyers wrote. “Despite the fact that final permission for the use of ‘South Bronx’ in the infringing title was never granted, the infringing title was nevertheless reproduced, sold, distributed, publicly performed and used.”
Last summer, Ye’s lawyers hit back with an unusual argument: Boogie Down founder KRS-One had publicly promised all future rappers that they would “not be sued” for sampling the group’s catalog. They cited a 2006 documentary film titled The art of 16 barsin which KRS-One said, “I’m giving all the MCs my entire catalog.”
Phase One later called this a “bizarre argument,” noting that at the time the documentary was made, KRS-One did not actually own the music he allegedly wanted to release into the public domain: “The applicants cite no law to support such a theory. Nor could KRS-One have released the work into the public domain because he did not own it.”
Monday’s settlement removes Ye and his Yeezy LLC from the lawsuit, but the case will continue against several other defendants, including the company behind the Stem Player platform on which the song was allegedly released.
