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Kanye West hits back at Life Of The Party sample lawsuit

By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 28 June 2023

Kanye West has formally responded to an unauthorised sample lawsuit filed against him late last year which claimed that his track ‘Life Of The Party’ sampled Boogie Down Productions track ‘South Bronx’ without licence. Seeking to get said lawsuit dismissed, West’s team cite the Bible’s Tenth Commandment before getting down to more routine copyright arguments around fair use and ownership.

West and his business partners were sued by a company called Phase One Network last November, which says that it controls the rights in ‘South Bronx’, the lead single from ‘Criminal Minded’, the 1987 debut album from the KRS-One-led Boogie Down Productions.

The plaintiff claimed that it had been approached by West’s team in July 2021 when the rapper was busy working on his ‘Donda’ album, on which ‘Life Of The Party’ sort of appeared. Talks about licensing a ‘South Bronx’ sample began but were never concluded, meaning that no deal was ever done.

The release of ‘Life Of The Party’ in the summer of 2021 was somewhat complicated. It was initially cut from ‘Donda’ at the request of guest artist Andre 3000. The verse he’d contributed was quite sweary, but then West decided he wanted a swear-free album, and Andre 3000 didn’t feel his verse would work with the swearing edited out.

The track also featured a Drake-dissing verse by West, because he and Drake were doing the feuding thing at the time. Drake then somehow got hold of a copy of the track and played it on his ‘Sound 42’ Sirius XM radio show.

After that unofficial airing, the track popped up on the Stem Player device that West was promoting. And after that, it was added to a deluxe edition of ‘Donda’ and released as a single.

However, West claims in his new legal filing, a different version of the track appeared on ‘Donda (Deluxe)’, and that version doesn’t contain the ‘South Bronx’ sample.

“‘Thou shall not covet’ has been an admonition followed since the dawn of civilisation”, West’s legal filing begins, for some reason. “Unfortunately, in the modern world of business, this admonition is not always followed”.

“Indeed”, it goes on, “the plaintiff in this action for copyright infringement would have this court believe that coveting is rampant in the music business, and for that reason, its legal conclusion here, should be enforced. The conduct of plaintiff herein, however, violates not only the Tenth Commandment, but also the spirit behind the copyright laws of this country”.

The filing then waffles on for a couple of paragraphs about copyright law, which, you know, is at least relevant to the case. And then it confirms that: “Ye defendants will clarify that Ye’s released version of ‘Life Of The Party’ currently appears on his 2021 album ‘Donda (Deluxe)’ and does not sample ‘South Bronx’ at all”.

And while the earlier version or versions did have the sample, West basically says that neither he nor his companies can be held responsible for the leaking of the original version by Drake on his radio show, or the subsequent use of the now-leaked track on social media posts.

He also reckons that he isn’t responsible for the track appearing on the Stem player, even though he was heavily promoting the device at the time.

And yes, he did use the sample, without permission, during the creative process of making ‘Life Of The Party’. However, he argues, such usage is fair use under US copyright law, which means no permission was required.

Elsewhere in the legal filing, West’s team also questions the ownership status of ‘South Bronx’, and whether Phase One Network even has the right to sue for infringement.

In that section, the lawyers also cite the 2006 documentary ‘The Art Of 16 Bars’ in which KRS-One himself says: “I give to all MCs my entire catalogue. You will not get sued if you sample a KRS-One record or do an interpolation of my lyrics, anything. My entire catalogue is open to the public”.

Now, whether or not that would constitute a binding legal agreement is debatable, even if it could be shown KRS-One controlled the copyrights in his musical output and was therefore able to make such a pledge. But, you know, that quote is still much more relevant to the case than the Tenth Commandment.

It remains to be seen how the courts now respond. Phase One Network also named West’s former label partner Universal Music and the maker of the Stem Player, Kano Computing, as defendants in the litigation.

However they, like most of West’s business partners, broke ties with the rapper last year as he started courting ever more controversy through his much-documented series of racist and antisemitic statements.

When the Phase One Network lawsuit was filed in November, Kano Computing told Rolling Stone that: “The Kano and Stem team were assured by Kanye and Yeezy that they would provide music with ‘all intellectual property rights, licences and consents’. This was important to us, because Stem is built from the ground up to be a more fair and immersive medium than the current music business”.