Kanye West sued for alleged copyright infringement over use of sample in Flowers on Donda 2 album

Kanye West has been sued for alleged copyright infringement over use of a sample on a track from his Donda 2 album.

Ye, 45, was accused in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York federal court of using a sample from the 1986 Marshall Jefferson house track Move Your Body, aka The House Music Anthem, without prior permission or paying compensation in his song Flowers, according to an article on Thursday by Billboard.

The sample is ‘repeated at least 22 times throughout’ the song, according to a complaint filed by Jefferson’s publisher Ultra International Music Publishing in US District Court in New York.

Copyright lawsuit: Kanye West, shown in May in New York City, has been sued for alleged copyright infringement over use of a sample on a track from his Donda 2 album

Jefferson, 62, wrote and performed Move Your Body that peaked at number 34 on Billboard’s Dance Singles Sales chart in August 1986.

Move Your Body first became popular in Jefferson’s hometown of Chicago before it was released by Trax Records in July 1986.

‘I’ve been sampled thousands of times. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. Getting done by another artist, a BLACK artist, a fellow Chicagoan without acknowledgment is disappointing,’ Jefferson said in a statement to Billboard.

The lawsuit filed by attorneys Christine Lepera and Bradley J. Mullins of the firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp also named English entrepreneur Alex Klein, 31, as a defendant along with his company Kano Computing Limited.

House anthem: Ye, shown in July 2021 in Atlanta, was accused in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York federal court of using a sample from the 1986 Marshall Jefferson house track Move Your Body, aka The House Music Anthem, without prior permission or paying compensation, according to an article on Thursday by Billboard

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House father: Jefferson, shown in July 2012 in Ibiza, Spain, wrote and performed Move Your Body that peaked at number 34 on Billboard’s Dance Singles Sales chart in August 1986

Klein is a co-founder of Kano Computing and co-created the Stem Player that Ye self-released Donda 2 with in February.

The Stem Player allows users ‘to isolate so-called ‘stems’ and then ‘customize’ songs by altering how those stems are used’ with the Move Your Body sample among the ‘stems’ available to isolate with the device, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also cited Ye’s alleged ‘hypocrisy’ for claiming ‘to be an outspoken advocate for artists’ rights.’

Lawsuit co-defendant: The lawsuit filed by attorneys Christine Lepera and Bradley J. Mullins of the firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp also named English entrepreneur Alex Klein, shown in May 2015 in New York City, as a defendant along with his company Kano Computing Limited

‘West advocates for artists’ rights with one hand, yet has no shame in taking away rights from another artist with the other,’ the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit claimed that Ye and his representatives during discussions with reps for Jefferson and UIMP acknowledged that Move Your Body was sampled in Flowers without either prior authorization or compensation.

UIMP was seeking a ‘preliminary and permanent injunction enjoining and restraining Defendants’ from using Move Your Body, as well as damages and attorneys’ fees.

Ye claimed in February to have sold 11,000 Stem plays for $200 each with 24 hours of the release of Donda 2.

The rapper met Klein in a chance encounter at the CES technology show in Las Vegas in January 2019 and invested in the company while also becoming a collaborator.

Awards appearance: Kanye is shown speaking onstage on Sunday at the BET Awards in Los Angeles