Ye (formerly Kanye West) has settled a lawsuit that accused him of sampling a song by German singer-songwriter Alice Merton even though she had rejected clearance due to the rapper’s history of antisemitism.
A Nov. 6 court filing, obtained by Billboard, stated that Ye and Merton have reached a settlement “conditioned on the parties’ completion of certain performance obligations.” Deal terms were not disclosed, and reps for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment.
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Merton sued Ye last year, alleging his 2024 track “Gun to My Head” sampled her earlier song “Blindside” without permission. Merton said she had expressly denied Ye’s clearance request months earlier because, as a direct descendant of Holocaust survivors, she did not want to be associated with the rapper’s past antisemitic remarks.
Ye’s lawyers argued in response that Merton did not have the proper evidence for a copyright claim. They also pointed out that “Gun to My Head” has never been available on streaming; it was released on a digital deluxe version of Vultures 2, which was only available for purchase during a two-day period in 2024.
Merton’s case had been scheduled to go to trial this coming March. In October — a month before the settlement was reached — a judge denied Ye’s request to remove all references to the Holocaust and antisemitism from the lawsuit.
Ye has been sued more than a dozen times over the course of his career for allegedly using unlicensed samples and interpolations in his music. The rapper has settled many of these claims. He took one to trial for the first time earlier this year, and a jury ultimately held him liable for infringing an instrumental track on an early version of his chart-topping 2021 album Donda.
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Meanwhile, Ye’s career has been mired in controversy around his antisemitism since 2022. He issued a lengthy apology in the Wall Street Journal this past January for years of public hate speech, including praise of Hitler and selling swastika T-shirts. Ye wrote in this apology, which preceded the release of his latest album Bully, that these controversial comments had stemmed from a 2002 car crash that caused severe brain damage and bipolar disorder.
“I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment and meaningful change,” Ye wrote. “It does not excuse what I did, though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.”
Ye has since worked to mount a comeback, playing to huge crowds at an ongoing run of stadium shows this year. But the rapper’s past is still haunting him, and shows in the U.K. and Poland have been canceled due to government concerns about his previous antisemitic statements. Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) also ran a public, though unsuccessful, campaign to stop Ye from performing at Tampa, Fla.’s Raymond James Stadium in June.
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