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Yeasayer’s song-theft lawsuit against Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd dismissed
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 3 June 2020
The song-theft dispute between Yeasayer on the one side and Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd on the other is over, with the former saying they are now satisfied that no copyright infringement ever actually occurred.
The band sued Lamar and The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, back in February over the duo’s 2018 collaboration ‘Pray For Me’. The band claimed that Lamar and Tesfaye had sampled without permission a choral performance that appears on their 2007 track ‘Sunrise’.
The original lawsuit also alleged that Tesfaye and the producers who worked on his record messed around with the ‘Sunrise’ sample in an attempt to conceal the fact they’d used a snippet of the track without permission.
Lawyers for Lamar and Tesfaye hit back at those allegations, insisting that ‘Pray For Me’ was “created independently from and without knowledge of the allegedly infringed work”.
It’s not clear what has gone on behind the scenes since then, but in a new legal filing on Monday the two parties stated: “Plaintiffs Yeasayer LLC and We Are Free LLC having confirmed to their satisfaction that no copyright infringement occurred, plaintiffs and defendants Abel Tesfaye, Adam Feeney and UMG Recordings, through their respective attorneys of record, stipulate to the dismissal of this action in its entirety as to all defendants”.
Both sides also said that they would cover their respective legal costs.
