Marshall Jefferson sues Kanye West over alleged unauthorised Move Your Body sample

Marshall Jefferson is suing Kanye West for sampling his 1986 hit Move Your Body at least 22 times, allegedly without a licence, on the song Flowers, from West’s 2022 album Donda 2.

The Chicago house progenitor’s publisher Ultra International Music Publishing filed the complaint at New York’s US District Court on 29 June, the BBC reports.

“I’ve been sampled thousands of times. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about it,” Jefferson told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat. “Getting done by another artist, a Black artist, a fellow Chicagoan without acknowledgment is disappointing.”

The suit says that West and his team previously admitted to representatives for Jefferson that they had sampled Move Your Body, but it claims that West did not take out a licence for the song, meaning Jefferson has not been paid for use of the sample.

“West advocates for artists’ rights with one hand, yet has no shame in taking away rights from another artist with the other,” the suit states.

Jefferson is seeking profits and damages to be determined at a trial, or maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringement.

West is yet to comment on the lawsuit. Also named in the suit are West’s label, Universal Music Group, and Kano Computing Ltd, the British company that developed the Stem Player on which West exclusively released Donda 2, neither of which have commented.

The Guardian has contacted representatives for all parties.

Jefferson originally released Move Your Body on Trax Records in 1986. Produced while he was working at the US Postal Service, it was the first house record to use a piano. In 2021, Rolling Stone named it the 335th greatest song of all time.

Jefferson was previously in dispute with Trax over ownership of the rights to the trailblazing record. In 2019, the label entered into a settlement agreement with Jefferson regarding his music publishing catalogue.