Kanye West is on the hook for six-figure damages after a jury found he infringed the copyright of an unreleased demo track by sampling it in an early version of his Grammy-winning song “Hurricane” that he played for 40,000 fans at a sold-out Donda listening concert five years ago.
In a verdict delivered Tuesday afternoon, eight jurors unanimously decided that West, now known as Ye, is personally liable for $176,153, and his company, Yeezy LLC, is liable for $176,153. His retail merchandising companies, Yeezy Supply and Mascotte Holdings, were found liable for $41,625 and $44,627, respectively.
“It’s a victory for working artists, who typically lack the resources to go against someone like Ye, a megastar and celebrity,” Britton Monts, a manager for Artists Revenue Advocates, which sued on behalf of the four musicians who composed the sample, tells Rolling Stone. “The underdogs got their day in court.”
Ye’s lawyers declined to comment after the verdict, but a Yeezy spokesman still spun the outcome as a win for the artist.
“This is a failed shakedown. Six months ago, they wanted $30 million out of Ye,” the spokesman said, claiming ARA spent millions in legal fees for the six-figure outcome. “The moral of the story? There is a cost attached to thinking you can take advantage of Ye.”
Monts, meanwhile, says ARA is appealing a ruling earlier in the case that struck down potentially more lucrative copyright infringement claims involving the final version of “Hurricane” that appeared on Donda with an alleged interpolation, not the sample. “We’ll be appealing the larger part of the case to the Ninth Circuit. We’re hopeful that the case will come back, and then we’ll try the larger damages.”
During the six-day trial that started last week, ARA’s lawyers said Ye raked in $5.6 million from a combination of ticket sales to his July 2021 listening party at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, merchandise sold at the event, and a deal with Apple Music to stream the show. They said their clients deserved a cut because “Hurricane” was the biggest draw among the 15 songs performed that night after Ye previously leaked part of the track online. They noted the final version of “Hurricane” also became the most-streamed song on Donda after the album’s release on Aug. 29, 2021.
The demo track, a one-minute instrumental titled “MSD PT2,” featured guitar, bass, and keyboard run through a crackling vinyl filter to give it a distinctive West Coast hip-hop feel. Lead plaintiff’s lawyer Irene Lee said in her closing argument Tuesday that the sample formed the indisputable “backbone” for “Hurricane.”
The jury of five men and three women heard that musicians Khalil Abdul-Rahman, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff, and Josh Mease composed the beat in March 2018 and shared it with a producer who independently passed it along to Ye. Six months later, the men were shocked when Ye posted a video on Instagram where he prominently sampled “MSD PT2″ in a song snippet titled “80 Degrees,” later released as “Hurricane,” that went viral, they testified.
The musicians posted jubilant reactions on Instagram when they first saw the video, celebrating their connection. When they testified last week, the men said they were hopeful at the time that they would eventually receive compensation, though they left negotiations up to their representatives. Seeff told jurors he believed that because “MSD PT2” provided the instrumental foundation for West’s song, the four musicians should have received 50 percent of “Hurricane’s” composition publishing, with the other half going to any writers of the lyrical melody.
In her closing argument, Lee told jurors that Abdul-Rahman’s manager “pretty much told Ye’s people to take a hike when they offered 10 percent.” She said the artists never met Ye, that Ye didn’t follow the four men on Instagram, and that there was never any implied or express license for Ye to use the sample.
“There was no deal, no agreement, no license, and no clearance,” Lee argued. She called it “remarkable” that Ye admitted in his testimony last week that he knowingly removed the “MSD PT2” sample from “Hurricane” after the listening party in Atlanta. Jurors heard that the final version of “Hurricane” released on Donda incorporated recreated elements of the “MSD PT2” composition rather than a direct sample of the original recording.
According to Lee, Ye “just took” the sample, used it, and then discarded it after monetizing it at the listening event. Citing trial testimony, she said the value of “MSD PT2” lay in that initial use because the sample is “forever going to be associated” with Ye. “We never got a chance to send it to anybody else. No other artist will touch this once somebody like Ye touched it,” she argued.
When it was his turn, Ye’s lead lawyer, Eduardo Martorell, pointed to the men’s celebratory Instagram posts and argued they had been “begging a megastar” to use their demo. “This case makes no sense,” Martorell argued Monday. He said Ye willingly credited the four men as songwriters on “Hurricane” even after the sample was removed and didn’t object when the men’s reps registered them for a combined 30 percent share of composition royalties as a placeholder during the wrangling.
“Ye opened the tent and allowed these guys to become part of his universe, and they sued him,” Martorell argued. “This case is a money grab.”
Martorell suggested that ARA “saw a man struggling with his mental health” and decided to “pounce.” Alternatively, the lawyer said, ARA may have sued as “a personal vendetta.” He did not elaborate.
Ye, 48, has been sued for copyright infringement more than a dozen times. He also faced a crush of lawsuits from ex-staffers in the wake of his October 2022 social media tirade in which he tweeted his now-infamous plan to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” Last year, he again posted inflammatory messages on X, formerly Twitter, writing, “IM A NAZI,” and “I LOVE HITLER.” Last May, he released a single titled “Heil Hitler,” which was quickly removed from most digital streaming services.
In January, Ye took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, apologizing for his antisemitic remarks and attributing them to untreated bipolar disorder allegedly linked to a brain injury suffered in a car crash in 2002. “I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness,” Ye wrote in the letter published Jan. 26. “I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
ARA said in court filings that the four musicians who created “MSD PT2” tried for three years to collect their share of the proceeds from “Hurricane” before they eventually assigned their rights to ARA so the organization could file the lawsuit and “seek justice.”
In February, the judge overseeing the case dismissed the men’s potentially more lucrative claims that Ye infringed on their copyrights with the alleged interpolation of “MSD PT2” on the final version of “Hurricane.” The judge found that the musicians had previously signed contracts assigning away their composition royalty rights under agreements that remained in effect. The musicians tried to argue those agreements had been waived through oral deals with former business partners, but the judge ruled any such changes had to be made in writing.
Britton Monts, an ARA manager, testified last week that ARA was formed to “acquire copyrights from working musicians” who are “unable to enforce their rights” because “they can’t afford it.” He said ARA hoped to pursue additional cases, but he acknowledged the lawsuit against Ye was the company’s only one so far.
Ye’s lawyer, Martorell, suggested ARA was financed by a backer trying to hide their identity. “Who’s behind it?” Martorell asked during his opening statement last week. “We don’t know who owns Artist Revenue Advocates, because they won’t tell us. Why wouldn’t the artists sue in their own name if they felt so strongly about this?”
Ye’s spokesperson and legal liaison, Milo Yiannopoulos, was the final witness called at the trial. He walked jurors through more than 20 invoices tied to the July 22, 2021, listening event. The defense called him to the stand in an effort to show Ye did not profit from the Atlanta show, though the judge barred Yiannopoulos from offering opinion testimony because he was not qualified as an expert witness.
Asked whether he considered himself “a fixer” for Ye, Yiannopoulos said he was unsure what the term meant. “I know what it means for maybe the mafia. If you’re asking if I’m a kind of consigliere, minus the crime bit, then maybe,” he said.
