Kanye West has claimed that he hasn’t made any money off his Donda 2 Stem Player, despite the device reportedly pulling in over $2million in revenue.
The claim was made in court documents as part of Ye’s ongoing Donda 2 sample lawsuit that was filed on behalf of Marshall Jefferson’s publisher, Ultra International Music Publishing (UIMP).
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UIMP claimed the Chicago rap mogul 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.”
The publisher also assumed Ye profited from the sale of the Stem Players, through which Donda 2 was released exclusively in February 2022.
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In the latest batch of court documents obtained by AllHipHop, Kanye denied all allegations against him through his new lawyer Peter Hawke, and claimed to have never even made a profit from the Stem Players.
“[Kanye] specifically denies that he has received any profits from the sale of Stem Players,” his attorney wrote. “Ye admits that there were sales of Stem Players after February 19, 2022, some of which came with Donda 2 preloaded on them. Ye denies that he received any revenue from those sales.”
The G.O.O.D. Music founder also admitted he sampled “Move Your Body,” but argued his work constituted fair use.
“Ye denies that he personally acknowledged in discussions with representatives for Mr. Jefferson and UIMP that ‘Move Your Body’ was sampled in Flowers’ without authorization or payment,” Ye’s lawyer wrote. “Ye further denies that he personally has not ceased distribution of ‘Flowers.’”
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Kanye has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, but Judge Analisa Torres referred the case for mediation.
The development comes after Mr. West claimed last February that pre-orders of the Stem Player had generated $2.2 million in revenue following his announcement that Donda 2 would drop exclusively on the device.
“To earn the $2.2million we made on the first day on the stem player the album would have had to stream 500 million times,” Ye flexed in a since-deleted Instagram post. “We did more revenue on stem player, without the album even being out, than we would have done with the album being out on streaming.”
Ultra International Music Publishing is seeking $150,000 for each copyright infringed in its lawsuit. Trax Records, the label that released Jefferson’s “Move Your Body,” has also sued Kanye and Kano Computing — the company behind the Stem Player — over the sample.
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Ye was originally represented in this case by New York City law firm Greenberg Traurig, but following his antisemitic tirades last year, their relationship quickly fell apart.
Greenberg sought to end their professional relationship but for the longest time couldn’t locate Kanye.West was finally served the appropriate papers on February 1.
