Kanye West has defaulted after failing to respond to a lawsuit that accused him of sampling a Boogie Down Productions track without permission.
The suit involved the pioneering Hip Hop group’s 1986 song “South Bronx,” which was sampled on the Donda bonus track “Life of the Party” featuring André 3000.
Phase One Network, which owns the copyright for “South Bronx”, sued West, Kano Computing (the company behind the Donda-affiliated Stem Player), Def Jam Recordings and others for copyright infringement last year.
The company claimed Ye never cleared the “South Bronx” sample, and said a clearance agent sent a request to Phase One in July 2021 before retracting it in November 2021. Ye reportedly went ahead and released the track on the Stem Player anyway.
According to documents obtained by AllHipHop, the Clerk of Court for the Southern District of New York submitted an entry of default in the case on Wednesday (March 8). Phase One requested an entry of default in January.
“I, Ruby J. Krajick, Clerk of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, do hereby certify that this action was commenced on November 7, 2022 with the filing of a summons and complaint, a copy of the summons and complaint was served on defendant Ye … by delivery of a true copy of each to Defendant Ye, and proof was therefore filed on January 26, 2023,” the filing read.
“I further certify that the docket entries indicate that Defendant Ye has failed to plead or otherwise defend the action. The default of Defendant Ye is hereby noted.”
Phase One’s attorneys additionally wrote in the lawsuit, “The West parties retracted the licensing request despite having already incorporated ‘South Bronx’ into the Infringing Track, distributed the infringing track through the Stem Player and its associated website, and incorporated the Infringing Track into the Infringing Advertisements.”
Kanye West’s “Life of the Party” was leaked by Drake in September 2021 during their high-profile feud, before being added to the deluxe edition of Donda later that year.
This isn’t the only lawsuit Ye has been embroiled in as a result of improper sampling. He also has an ongoing Donda 2 sample lawsuit that was filed on behalf of Marshall Jefferson’s publisher, Ultra International Music Publishing (UIMP).
UIMP claimed West acknowledged that he sampled Jefferson’s 1986 house hit “Move Your Body” on his Donda 2 track “Flowers” without authorization, yet “continue[d] to willfully infringe in blatant disregard of UIMP’s rights of ownership.”
Kanye has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, but Judge Analisa Torres referred the case for mediation.
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