UMG and an attorney for Mr. Moten did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit. Mr. West, who legally changed his name to Ye last year, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mr. Moten claims samples from his sermon comprise over 20% of “Come to Life,” which appeared on Mr. West’s hit albumwent to the top of the Billboard charts and was nominated for a Grammy award for album of the year. Mr. Moten said in the lawsuit that Mr. West has shown an “alarming pattern” of “willfully and egregiously sampling sound recordings of others without consent.”
Mr. West has previously settled lawsuits over samples of a Hungarian singer on the 2013 song “New Slaves,” a child’s prayer on the 2016 song “Ultralight Beam,” and a theater work about Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey on “Freeee ,” a 2018 collaboration with rapper Kid Cudi. —