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Kanye West settles New Slaves sampling case
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 27 March 2017
Kanye West has settled a lawsuit that claimed he had illegally sampled Hungarian rock star Gabor Presser on his 2013 track ‘New Slaves’.
According to the New York Post, West agreed to an out-of-court settlement two days before he was due to give a deposition in the case. Presser had been seeking $2.5 million in damages, claiming that West had used parts of his 1969 song ‘Gyöngyhajú Lány’ without permission for a large portion of the ‘Yeezus’ track.
Presser apparently became aware of the use of his song when West’s lawyers contacted him after ‘New Slaves’ was used in a promotional campaign for the rapper’s 2013 tour dates. He says that the lawyers offered him a 48 hour deadline to agree to a deal and sent him a $10,000 advance, acceptance of which his lawsuit says would have provided “consent to West’s unlawful use of the original composition”.
Instead, Presser refused the advance or the deal offered and continued to negotiation through to March last year, when he went legal. A trial was due to begin in May.
