Kanye West hits back at Life Of The Party sample lawsuit
completemusicupdate.comKanye 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.
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