{"id":481687,"date":"2026-05-13T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T00:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481687\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T00:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T00:00:10","slug":"kanye-loses-at-trial-must-pay-for-uncleared-sample-on-hurricane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481687\/","title":{"rendered":"Kanye Loses at Trial, Must Pay for Uncleared Sample on ‘Hurricane’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tKanye West<\/a> 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 \u201cHurricane\u201d that he played for 40,000 fans at a sold-out Donda<\/a> listening concert five years ago.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a victory for working artists, who typically lack the resources to go against someone like Ye, a megastar and celebrity,\u201d Britton Monts, a manager for Artists Revenue Advocates, which sued on behalf of the four musicians who composed the sample, tells Rolling Stone. \u201cThe underdogs got their day in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYe\u2019s lawyers declined to comment after the verdict, but a Yeezy spokesman still spun the outcome as a win for the artist.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is a failed shakedown. Six months ago, they wanted $30 million out of Ye,\u201d the spokesman said, claiming ARA spent millions in legal fees for the six-figure outcome. \u201cThe moral of the story? There is a cost attached to thinking you can take advantage of Ye.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMonts, 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 \u201cHurricane\u201d that appeared on Donda with an alleged interpolation, not the sample. \u201cWe\u2019ll be appealing the larger part of the case to the Ninth Circuit. We\u2019re hopeful that the case will come back, and then we\u2019ll try the larger damages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the six-day trial that started last week, ARA\u2019s 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<\/a>, merchandise sold at the event, and a deal with Apple Music to stream the show. They said their clients deserved a cut because \u201cHurricane\u201d 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 \u201cHurricane\u201d also became the most-streamed song on Donda after the album\u2019s release on Aug. 29, 2021.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThe demo track, a one-minute instrumental titled \u201cMSD PT2,\u201d featured guitar, bass, and keyboard run through a crackling vinyl filter to give it a distinctive West Coast hip-hop feel. Lead plaintiff\u2019s lawyer Irene Lee said in her closing argument Tuesday that the sample formed the indisputable \u201cbackbone\u201d for \u201cHurricane,\u201d which was played over and over for jurors in a federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles throughout the six-day trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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 \u201cMSD PT2\u2033 in a song then-titled \u201c80 Degrees,\u201d later released as \u201cHurricane,\u201d they testified.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe musicians posted jubilant reactions on Instagram when they first saw the video, celebrating their connection to the snippet. When they testified last week, the musicians 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 \u201cMSD PT2\u201d provided the instrumental foundation for West\u2019s song, the four musicians should have received 50 percent of \u201cHurricane\u2019s\u201d composition publishing, with the other half going to any writers of the lyrical melody.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn her closing argument, Lee told jurors that Abdul-Rahman\u2019s manager \u201cpretty much told Ye\u2019s people to take a hike when they offered 10 percent.\u201d She said the artists never met Ye, that Ye didn\u2019t follow the four men on Instagram, and that there was never any implied or express license for Ye to use the sample.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was no deal, no agreement, no license, and no clearance,\u201d Lee argued. She called it \u201cremarkable\u201d that Ye admitted in his testimony last week <\/a>that he knowingly removed the \u201cMSD PT2\u201d sample from \u201cHurricane\u201d after the listening party in Atlanta. Jurors heard that the final version of \u201cHurricane\u201d released on Donda incorporated recreated elements of the \u201cMSD PT2\u201d composition rather than a direct sample of the original recording.<\/p>\n

According to Lee, Ye \u201cjust took\u201d the sample, used it, and then discarded it after monetizing it at the listening event. Citing trial testimony, she said the value of \u201cMSD PT2\u201d lay in that initial use because the sample is \u201cforever going to be associated\u201d with Ye. \u201cWe never got a chance to send it to anybody else. No other artist will touch this once somebody like Ye touched it,\u201d she argued.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it was his turn, Ye\u2019s lead lawyer, Eduardo Martorell, pointed to the men\u2019s celebratory Instagram posts and argued they had been \u201cbegging a megastar\u201d to use their demo. \u201cThis case makes no sense,\u201d Martorell argued Monday. He said Ye willingly credited the four men as songwriters on \u201cHurricane\u201d even after the sample was removed and didn\u2019t object when the men\u2019s reps registered them for a combined 30 percent share of composition royalties as a placeholder during the wrangling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYe opened the tent and allowed these guys to become part of his universe, and they sued him,\u201d Martorell argued. \u201cThis case is a money grab.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMartorell suggested that Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), the company formed in 2024 to sue Ye on the musicians\u2019 behalf, \u201csaw a man struggling with his mental health\u201d and decided to \u201cpounce.\u201d Alternatively, the lawyer said, ARA may have sued as \u201ca personal vendetta.\u201d He did not elaborate.<\/p>\n

\n\tYe, 48, has been sued for copyright infringement <\/a>more than a dozen times<\/a>. He also faced a crush of lawsuits from ex-staffers in the wake of his October 2022 social media tirade in which he\u00a0tweeted his now-infamous plan<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cgo death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.\u201d Last year, he again posted inflammatory messages on X, formerly Twitter, writing, \u201cIM A NAZI,\u201d and \u201cI LOVE HITLER.\u201d Last May, he released a single titled \u201cHeil Hitler,\u201d which was quickly removed from most digital streaming services.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn January, Ye took out a full-page ad in\u00a0the Wall Street Journal,\u00a0apologizing for his antisemitic remarks<\/a> and attributing them to untreated bipolar disorder allegedly linked to a brain injury suffered in a car crash in 2002. \u201cI\u2019m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness,\u201d Ye wrote in the letter published Jan. 26. \u201cI write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tARA said in court filings that the four musicians who created \u201cMSD PT2\u201d tried for three years to collect their share of the proceeds from \u201cHurricane\u201d before they eventually assigned their rights to ARA so the organization could file the lawsuit and \u201cseek justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn February, the judge overseeing the case dismissed the men\u2019s potentially more lucrative claims that Ye infringed on their copyrights with the alleged interpolation of \u201cMSD PT2\u201d on the final version of \u201cHurricane.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tBritton Monts, an ARA manager, testified last week that ARA was formed to \u201cacquire copyrights from working musicians\u201d who are \u201cunable to enforce their rights\u201d because \u201cthey can\u2019t afford it.\u201d He said ARA hoped to pursue additional cases, but he acknowledged the lawsuit against Ye was the company\u2019s only one so far.<\/p>\n

\n\tYe\u2019s lawyer, Martorell, suggested ARA was financed by a backer trying to hide their identity. \u201cWho\u2019s behind it?\u201d Martorell asked during his opening statement last week. \u201cWe don\u2019t know who owns Artist Revenue Advocates, because they won\u2019t tell us. Why wouldn\u2019t the artists sue in their own name if they felt so strongly about this?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tYe\u2019s spokesperson and legal liaison, Milo Yiannopoulos<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked whether he considered himself \u201ca fixer\u201d for Ye, Yiannopoulos said he was unsure what the term meant. \u201cI know what it means for maybe the mafia. If you\u2019re asking if I\u2019m a kind of consigliere, minus the crime bit, then maybe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kanye West is on the hook for six-figure damages after a jury found he infringed the copyright of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[20705,21209,187254,18,117,19,17,12553,210672,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-481687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-controversy","9":"tag-courts-and-crime","10":"tag-donda","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-kanye-west","16":"tag-milo-yiannopoulos","17":"tag-music"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116564330342975607","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}