Kanye West released a lot of new material in 2019, but another narrative that was going on behind the scenes all year was his legal dispute with publishing company EMI. Kanye sued the publisher in an effort to get out of his contract (and they then countersued), and it was reported as far back as March that the two sides were trying to settle out of court.
In September, it was reported that the two parties had reached a settlement, but in December, EMI pulled a 180 and reopened their lawsuit because “the parties have been unable to finalize the terms of the settlement agreement.” Now, though, it appears that everything has been worked out: Pitchfork reports that documents say Kanye and EMI notified the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on January 13 that they had “reached an agreement in principle resolving all issues.” Assuming there are no more hiccups, the suit will be officially closed on February 14.
Meanwhile, Kanye recently spoke about his relationship with merch, saying in a recent interview, “When I wanted to get into fashion, everyone would bring up The Row and how they started with t-shirts. I didn’t want to start with a t-shirt. Love merch, but we did merch as a punk answer to us being told we can’t work at Louis Vuitton, Versace, Nike. Merch started as one of the only things we could control.”
