Kanye West Sued Over Illegal Used Of Samples On ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’

It was not a good week for Kanye West, first this story about not one but two sex tapes shopped around by tabloids – celebrities are still that stupid? – then, he got sued!

Billboard reports that the rapper is sued by record label TufAmerica because of samples used on his album ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’. It seems that West sampled soul singer Eddie Bo’s song, ‘Hook and Sling, Part 1’ in two songs, ‘Lost in the World’ and ‘Who Will Survive in America?’, as well as in his short movie ‘Runaway’.

TufAmerica is saying that Kanye West's labels, Roc-A-Fella and Universal, paid a license fee of $62,500 but ‘failed and refused to enter into written license agreements that accounted for their multiple other uses of ['Hook and Sling']’. I wonder why, Universal can’t afford to pay $62,000? And did they think they could get away with it?

It’s crazy, how many times did this happen before? Aren’t rappers always sampling other artists' songs? Last August, rapper Mac Miller was sued for $10 million because he used a song entitled ‘The World Around You’ without the author’s permission or knowledge, last April, 50 cents was sued for $600,000 by the R&B band The Persuaders for sampling one of their tracks and not paying a dime, and it’s not the first time it happens to Kanye West, as he and Jay-Z got sued by blues man Syl Johnson for their use of his song in their 2011 album ‘Watch the Throne’. And these are just a few examples.

I mean, it’s impossible to mention rap and hip hop without sampling and lawsuits, so can they find a way to do it legally? West is obliviously sampling other artists on his albums, so why is he crediting some and not others? It’s always the same story, when they sample Michael Jackson or someone as famous, rappers know they have to ask the permission and pay the fee, but when it is some unknown 50s-60s artist, they think they can get away with it,… who still knows about Eddie Bo indeed? But after all, it may have been the same line of thought Bob Dylan had when using the work of obscure Japanese author Junichi Saga.

Here is the Eddie Bo's song in question, but can you recognize it in Kanye West's work?