Kanye West Sued Over Another Sample

Just weeks after settling a lawsuit with singer Syl Johnson, Kanye West faces another claim of illegal sampling, AllHipHop.com reports.

Robert Poindexter, singer with the soul band the Persuaders, claims that West used an uncleared sample of the 1972 hit “Trying Girls Out” on his remix of “Girls Girls Girls” featured on the mixtape Freshman Adjustment 2. Poindexter filed the suit in the U.S. District Court in Southern New York on March 27. He is seeking $500,000 in damages. 

Poindexter argues in the suit that West would have known that the sample wasn’t cleared for the track, since he used a cleared version of the same sample for the version of “Girls Girls Girls” on Jay-Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint.

Poindexter says in the suit that although the mixtape came out in 2006, he did not become aware of the sample until years later.

“By chance, I happened to discover the usage of the illegal version on the internet in 2011,” the claim notes. 

Since the mixtape was not commercially released, it is unclear whether Poindexter has much of a case. However, Poindexter argues that West “willfully infringed the copyright for private and financial gain by selling and distributing an untold amount of physical and digital copies of the illegal version (mixed tapes/street albums) to the general public on internet downloads and through the mail.”