Yet another former employee has filed a lawsuit against Kanye West alleging persistent antisemitism and inappropriate sexual conduct during work meetings. West’s “antisemitic tirades and conspiracies were a daily occurrence”, claims the lawsuit filed by aggrieved former worker Murphy Aficionado.
West is currently fighting a stack of litigation, mainly split between lawsuits filed by aggrieved former workers and uncleared sample lawsuits. Another of the latter was also filed last week, though the legal filings from former employees always provide more lurid descriptions of alleged misconduct.
Those ex-worker lawsuits usually include sections covering West’s antisemitism and inappropriate sexual behaviour, before dealing with more specific grievances around how they were treated while working for the rapper.
This time around, the lawsuit claims that West “championed his antisemitism in the workplace” and - slightly bizarrely - also includes two photos, one of Hitler, and one of the entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Those photos are inserted seemingly at random after a section alleging that West told Aficionado that “the Jews are out to get me. They froze my bank account. The Jews got Kim and my kids”. Making no further reference to the presence of the images, or the subjects represented in them, the document simply says “Ye preached this dogma almost daily”.
When it comes to inappropriate sexual behaviour, Aficionado describes how, on two occasions when meeting to discuss business projects, West forced him to wait in a hotel suite while the rapper had sex in an adjacent room, on one occasion with his then girlfriend Bianca Censori, the other with his masseuse.
“Within seconds, Aficionado began hearing loud moaning and clapping, emanating from the room Ye and Censori were having sex in”, the legal filing says. “Disturbed, Aficionado wanted nothing more than to leave”, it adds, however, he “feared further retaliation by one of the most famous, powerful and erratic artists in the world”.
Aficionado worked for West between October 2022 and July 2023. Among other things, he was involved in a plan to move West’s school, the Donda Academy, to a new campus.
Elsewhere in the lawsuit, Aficionado claims his fees went unpaid, and that he was angrily berated by West after he told his employer that permits would be required to convert the ‘decrepit property’ that was due to house the Donda Academy into “a safe and adequate campus for schoolchildren”.
In July 2023, he was abruptly told that the Donda Academy would no longer be operating and that his other assignments for West’s companies were being cancelled.
He is suing for breach of contract, unpaid wages and wrongful termination, and for the violation of laws relating to discrimination and hostile working conditions.
The latest uncleared sample lawsuit against West claims that ‘Fuk Sumn’ - a track on the ‘Vultures 1’ album released by West and Ty Dolla Sign earlier this year - is “riddled” with illegal samples from ‘Drink A Yak (Part 2)’, a 1994 track by Criminal Manne, DJ Squeeky and the late Kilo G.
The lawsuit claims that West’s team tried to clear the samples but that no deal was agreed and ‘Fuk Sumn’ was released anyway. “After numerous unsuccessful attempts at resolving this matter directly with the responsible parties”, the legal filing states, pursuing a lawsuit was the only option left.
