Kanye West is being sued for copyright infringement over his 2021 album Donda again, according to Billboard. This time, the songs at issue are “Hurricane” and “Moon,” which rights management company Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA) claims illegally interpolate samples of a song called “MSD PT2.”
Intriguingly, ARA admits that Kanye credited the original songwriters — Khalil Abdul-Rahman Hazzard, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff, and Josh Mease — in the liner notes, but only after the creators initially refused to grant him a license to use the song in the first place. While the lawsuit was prompted by ARA’s inability to collect fees for the past three years, lawyers for ARA wrote, “This lawsuit is about more than defendants’ failure to pay a fee. 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.”
Donda has already been the subject multiple lawsuits for copyright infringement, as Bishop David Paul Moten filed suit in May 2022 over the use of one of his sermons on “Come To Life,” and a few months later, Boogie Down Productions filed suit in November 2022 over the song, “Life Of The Party,” which apparently interpolates “South Bronx” from Criminal Minded. That same year, Kanye was also sued for a song from Donda‘s follow-up, Donda 2, that sampled Marshall Jefferson’s “Move Your Body.”
