More trouble is heading Kanye West’s way. A freelance producer who worked for him on his Vultures 2 and Bully albums is suing him for unpaid wages and has alleged that – contrary to West’s claims – AI was used in the Bully album.
Days before the album was released online in March, West wrote on Twitter/X (all in caps and without punctuation) that: “BULLY ON THE WAY NO AI”.
The unnamed producer said that he was hired “on an emergency basis” for Vultures 2, but still has not been paid for his contributions to that album, nor to a number of tracks on Bully.
The action claims that “despite nearly two years of demands, (the) defendants have refused to compensate plaintiff for plaintiff’s services, have failed to provide any written contracts as required by law, and have failed to credit plaintiff on digital streaming platforms for his creative contributions.”
Apparently West hired the producer at the last minute for Vultures 2, just two days before the album dropped in August 2024. The plaintiff says he performed extensive vocal production services “under extreme time pressure,” creating at least 13 custom AI voice models, more than 400 individual vocal generations, and source material using his own voice.
Just a couple of months later, he says that he started work on Bully, which included more AI vocal production. The producer is seeking $110,000 in compensatory damages for his work on the tracks, as well as a similar amount under the Los Angeles Freelance Worker Protections Ordinance.
It’s only a week ago that the news broke that West, who now goes by the name of Ye, had reached a settlement with Lauren Pisciotti, an assistant to the 49-year-old rapper who had accused him of sexual assault, sex trafficking and wrongful termination of employment.
Earlier this year, he had to pay £200,000 to the composers of a track that was illegally sampled on Hurricane a track from his 2021 album Donda, the most recent of more than a dozen cases of copyright infringement that have been taken out against West over the years. He also had to contend with a flood of lawsuits from ex-employees after his infamous anti-semitic social media postings of 2022.
Maybe he just likes paying lawyers?
