Ye (formerly Kanye West) has reached a settlement in a copyright lawsuit that accused him of using an uncleared sample from the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions in his song “Life of the Party.”
In court documents filed Monday, attorneys for both sides agreed that Ye should be dismissed from the case, with each side to pay their own legal bills. No other terms of the agreement were disclosed publicly, and neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
The Boogie Down lawsuit was one of more than a dozen such cases that have been filed against Ye over claims of unlicensed sampling or interpolating during his prolific career. The controversial rapper has faced nine such infringement cases since 2019 alone, including a high-profile battle with estate of Donna Summer that settled earlier this year.
Filed in November 2022, the current lawsuit was lodged by Phase One Network, the group that owns Boogie Down’s copyrights, over allegations that Ye had used incorporated key aspects from the 1986 song “South Bronx” into “Life of the Party,” which was released on his 2021album Donda.
Echoing several other sampling lawsuits against Ye, Phase One claimed that the rapper’s representatives had reached out to legally clear the use of the Boogie Down song – but then released it anyway when a deal was never struck.
“The communications confirmed that ‘South Bronx’ had been incorporated into the infringing track even though West had yet to obtain such license,” Phase One’s lawyers wrote. “Despite the fact that final clearance for use of ‘South Bronx’ in the infringing track was never authorized, the infringing track was nevertheless reproduced, sold, distributed, publicly performed and exploited.”
Last summer, attorneys for Ye fought back with an unusual argument: That Boogie Down founder KRS-One had publicly promised all future rappers that “you will not get sued” over sampling the group’s catalog. They cited a 2006 documentary called The Art of 16 Bars, in which KRS-One said “I give to all MCs my entire catalogue.”
Phase One later called that a “bizarre argument,” noting that, when the documentary was made, KRS-One didn’t actually own the music he was claiming to place in the public domain: “Movants cite to no law to support such a theory. KRS-One also could not have placed the Work in the public domain as he did not own it.”
Following Monday’s agreement, Ye and his Yeezy LLC will be dropped from the lawsuit but the case will continue against other several defendants, including the company behind the Stem Player platform on which the song was allegedly released.