Donna Summer’s Estate Sues Ye for Sampling ‘I Feel Love’
When Ye and Ty Dolla Sign asked for permission to sample Donna Summer’s 1977 song “I Feel Love” last month, the disco singer’s estate firmly said no. But when their collaborative LP, ‘Vultures 1’, came out weeks ago, there was a song with strong similarities to The famous tune of the summer was on the track list.
A copyright infringement lawsuit detailing that timeline was filed Tuesday against Ye, the rapper once known as Kanye West, and Ty Dolla Sign by Summer’s husband and executor, Bruce Sudano. Summer, known as the ‘Queen of Disco’, had three consecutive double albums that reached No. 1 in the late 1970s and died of cancer in 2012.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, said Summer’s estate “did not want any association with West’s controversial history.”
Ye, once one of the biggest music stars in the world, lost professional associations with the Creative Artists Agency and Adidas in 2022 after threatening to use “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” in an online post, among other anti-Semitic statements. He apologized in a Hebrew-language post on social media.
The “Vultures 1” song in question, “Good (Don’t Die)”, was played at a listening party at a Long Island arena on February 9 and was initially released on the album the next day, but has since been released by most online music services removed.
The lawsuit against Summer’s estate stated that Ye and Ty Dolla Sign had “recorded almost verbatim the key, memorable parts of Summer’s iconic song, used it as a hook for their own song, and released it to the public, knowing that they had tried and failed to secure it.” legal permission from the rightful owners.”
A representative for Ye and Ty Dolla Sign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Summer song wasn’t the only controversial sample on Ye’s latest album. In a post on social media this monthOzzy Osbourne said Ye had mistakenly used a sample from a 1983 live performance of the Black Sabbath hit “Iron Man” on a song heard at a listening party.
Osbourne said he rejected a sample request from the rapper “because he is an anti-Semite and has caused untold grief.”
About ‘Vultures 1’ that sample was replaced featuring a track from Ye’s 2010 song “Hell of a Life,” which samples “Iron Man” and on which Osbourne is a credited writer.
‘Vultures 1’ has been the top album on the Billboard 200 chart for two consecutive weeks, Ye’s first album to achieve this distinction since ‘Watch the Throne’, a collaboration with Jay-Z, in 2011. It was released independently and earned approximately $1 million in its first week in the United States through sales and streams.