Kanye West has been hit with yet another lawsuit, this time from a German singer/songwriter whose song was sampled by Ye without her permission.
TMZ reports that Alice Merton filed suit on Tuesday (March 25), accusing Ye of using an unauthorized sample of her 2022 song “Blindside” on the Vultures 2 bonus cut “Gun to My Head,” which also features Ty Dolla $ign and Kid Cudi.
Merton says in her suit that BMG Rights Management reached out to clear the sample in February of last year (despite the song already being out), but that she denied it because “the artist’s values are contrary to our values” and that Kanye’s “anti-sematic [sic], racist remarks which were made publicly and continue to be made publicly.”
Ye has not yet responded.
Meanwhile, Kanye just dropped an unfinished version of his new album Bully on select streaming services, but only as a 45-minute music video on YouTube and Apple Music.
AD LOADING...
Titled “BULLY V1,” the video is the same short film that Kanye leaked last week in the midst of yet another explosive rant on social media.
The black-and-white visual, shot by Ye and edited by Hype Williams, follows the rapper’s nine-year-old son Saint as he takes on waves of wrestlers with a mallet in the ring.
Where the streaming version differs, however, is in the music itself.
BULLY V1 features nine songs instead of 10, with the Playboi Carti and Ty Dolla $ign-assisted “Melrose” being cut from the tracklist due to Kanye’s issues with the two artists.
AD LOADING...
The sequencing is largely reworked as well as several tracks appear in a different order. The only guest on this version is Mexican star Peso Pluma who features on “Last Breath,” which finds Ye partly rapping in Spanish.
Production credits have yet to be revealed, but Yeezy previously said that he had “chopped every beat with my bare hand” for his 11th LP.
Rich with vintage soul samples, emotive loops and dusty, boom bap drums that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Griselda record, it features some of the Chicago native’s best production in years.
AD LOADING...
However, the same effort wasn’t put into the vocals, with AI technology being used to record roughly half of the singing-heavy album, as Kanye himself admitted.
