Kanye West and his companies must pay $438,558 in damages after a jury found he infringed the copyright on an unreleased demo track. He sampled the track in an early version of his Grammy-winning song “Hurricane” – and played that version to 40,000 fans at a sold-out Donda Listening concert five years ago.
The plaintiffs had sought $564,046 but still celebrated the verdict in the courthouse hallway, calling it a victory for artists.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers had argued that West, now known as Ye, grossed $5.6 million from the listening event on July 22, 2021 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta – through ticket sales, merchandise and a deal with Apple Music to broadcast the show. Her clients deserved a share because “Hurricane” was the biggest magnet among the 15 songs played that evening after Ye had previously leaked part of the track online. They also pointed out that “Hurricane” became the most streamed song on “Donda” after the album release on August 29, 2021.
The demo track as the foundation
The demo track, a one-minute instrumental titled “MSD PT2,” combined guitar, bass and keyboard blasted through a crackling vinyl filter that gave the piece a distinctive West Coast hip-hop feel. In her closing argument Tuesday, plaintiffs’ lead attorney Irene Lee called the sample the undeniable “backbone” of “Hurricane” – a song that was played repeatedly to jurors in a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles throughout the six-day trial.
The eight-person jury – five men, three women – learned that musicians Khalil Abdul-Rahman, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff and Josh Mease composed the beat in March 2018 and gave it to a producer, who forwarded it to Ye on his own initiative. Six months later, the four were shocked when Ye posted a video on Instagram in which he prominently sampled “MSD PT2” in a song then called “80 Degrees” – later “Hurricane”.
When the video was released, the musicians celebrated their connection to the snippet with gushing Instagram posts. They testified in court that at the time they had hoped to receive compensation at some point, but left the negotiations to their managers. Seeff told jurors that he believed that because “MSD PT2” was the instrumental foundation of West’s song, the four musicians should have received 50 percent of the composition rights to “Hurricane” – the other half to the authors of the sung melody.
No deal, no license
In her closing argument, Lee told jurors that Abdul-Rahman’s manager “more or less gave Ye people the finger when they offered 10 percent.” The artists never met Ye in person, Ye does not follow the four men on Instagram, and there was neither an implied nor an express license to use the sample.
“There was no deal, no agreement, no license and no release,” Lee argued. She called it “remarkable” that Ye admitted in his statement last week that he knowingly removed the “MSD PT2” sample from “Hurricane” after the Atlanta listening event. The jury learned that the final version of “Hurricane” released on “Donda” contained recreated elements of the “MSD PT2” composition rather than a direct sample of the original recording.
According to Lee, Ye “simply took” the sample, used it and then threw it away after making money from it at the listening event. Citing testimony, she explained that the value of “MSD PT2” lay in that very first use, because the sample would be “forever associated with Ye.” “We never had the chance to offer it to anyone else. No other artist will touch it once someone like Ye has touched it,” she argued.
Ye’s chief lawyer Eduardo Martorell pointed to the men’s celebrating Instagram posts and argued they had “begged” a megastar to use their demo. “This case makes no sense,” Martorell said Monday. He stressed that Ye voluntarily listed the four men as songwriters on “Hurricane” even after the sample was removed, and did not protest when the men’s representatives registered them as placeholders for a combined 30 percent share of the composition rights during ongoing negotiations.
“Ye opened the tent”
“Ye opened the tent and let these guys become part of his universe – and they sued him,” Martorell argued. “This case is a complete rip-off.”
Martorell suggested that Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), the company founded specifically in 2024 that sued Ye on behalf of the musicians, “saw a man in a mental health crisis” and decided to “strike.” Alternatively, the lawyer said, the lawsuit could arise from a “personal vendetta.” He didn’t elaborate.
Ye, 48, has been sued for copyright infringement more than a dozen times. Additionally, he faced a barrage of lawsuits from former employees following his social media tirade in October 2022, when he posted his now-infamous tweet announcing his intention to declare “death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” Last year he again posted inflammatory messages on X, the former Twitter: “IM A NAZI” and “I LOVE HITLER.” In May, he released a single titled “Heil Hitler,” which was shortly thereafter removed from most digital streaming services.
Apology and court ruling
In January, Ye took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal apologizing for his anti-Semitic comments and blaming them on untreated bipolar disorder, which he said was related to a brain injury from a 2002 car accident. “I do not ask for pity or a free pass, even as I strive to earn your forgiveness,” Ye wrote in the letter published on January 26. “I am writing today only to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
ARA said in court filings that the four musicians who created “MSD PT2” spent three years trying to collect their share of the proceeds from “Hurricane” before finally assigning their rights to ARA so that the organization could file the lawsuit and “seek justice.”
In February, the judge in charge dismissed the men’s potentially more lucrative claims – namely that Ye had violated their copyright by allegedly interpolating “MSD PT2” in the final version of “Hurricane.” The judge noted that the musicians had previously signed contracts assigning their composition rights and that these agreements remained valid. The musicians tried to argue that these agreements were overridden by verbal agreements with previous business partners – but the judge ruled that such changes should have been made in writing.
Who is behind ARA?
Britton Monts, an executive at ARA, testified last week that ARA was founded to “acquire copyrights from creators” who “can’t enforce their rights” because “they can’t afford it.” He said ARA hopes to pursue additional cases, but acknowledged that the lawsuit against Ye is the company’s only case so far.
Ye’s lawyer, Martorell, suggested that ARA was funded by a donor who was hiding his identity. “Who is behind this?” Martorell asked in his opening statement last week. “We don’t know who owns Artist Revenue Advocates because they won’t tell us. Why wouldn’t the artists have sued under their own name if it was so important to them?”
Yes spokesman and legal liaison Milo Yiannopoulos was the final witness in the trial. He walked the jury through more than 20 invoices related to the July 22, 2021 listening event. The defense called him to the stand to prove that Ye did not make any money from the Atlanta show – although the judge prohibited Yiannopoulos from expressing opinions because he was not certified as an expert witness.
When asked if he considered himself a “fixer” for Ye, Yiannopoulos said he wasn’t sure what the term meant. “I may know him from the Mafia context. If you ask if I’m something like a consigliere – only without the criminal part – then maybe,” he said.
