Kanye West Accused Of Stealing Numero Group Sample For Teyana Taylor’s New Album
Kanye dropped his new album ye, the second of his Wyoming series, earlier this month. Following the release, the Berlin label Pan pointed out an uncleared sample on the album opener “I Thought About Killing You.” It uses Kareem Lotfy’s “Fr3sh” from the compilation album mono no aware, which Pan issued last year. Apparently, Kanye didn’t learn his lesson. Teyana Taylor’s new Kanye-produced album K.T.S.E. features a song with an uncleared sample from a Numero Group box set. No one man should have all those samples.
According to Pitchfork, “Issues/Hold On” samples a track from Numero Group’s 2010 Boddie Recording Company box set. The sampled song is an unknown artist’s cover of Billy Stewart’s 1965 hit “I Do Love You.” Numero Group says West’s team have not contacted them regarding the sample.
“Without getting too nuanced, the Boddie Recording Company owns this master, and we represent their interests in such matters,” label co-founder Rob Sevier told Pitchfork. “I want to be explicit that while we haven’t actually heard anything from Kanye’s team about this sample, we are in the midst of multiple other clearances and I don’t want to imply that they don’t intend to clear it.”
Teyana Taylor hinted at issues with sample clearance in a radio interview with Real 92.3’s Big Boy, “I would probably have to blame a little bit of everybody because of the fact that we set a date and we had the listening party, and then we had clearance issues.”