Ye reaches agreement in copyright dispute with Donna Summer over the song “Vultures 1”

Her (formerly Kanye West) has reached a settlement with the estate of Donna Summer regarding a copyright lawsuit that accused him of “shamelessly” using her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” in his song “Good (Don’t Die).”

In court filings Thursday, lawyers for both sides said they had “reached an agreement that represents a complete and final settlement of all claims in the lawsuit” and that each side would pay its own legal fees from the dispute.

After filing the settlement, Larry Stein, lead attorney for Summer Estate, Billboard that the agreement did not include permission for Ye to use Summer’s material in the future. “We did not license the song,” Stein said. “As part of the settlement, they agreed not to distribute or otherwise use the song. So we got what we wanted.”

Stein declined to comment on other terms of the agreement, including whether Ye had already paid any money to compensate for past violations. Ye’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment on the agreement.

The final settlement, first announced in court documents last month, comes less than four months after Summer’s estate sued the rapper for allegedly interpolating her song into “Good,” which he released on his chart-topping single “Good.” Vulture 1 Album.

The estate’s lawyers made good on the legal threats they had made public weeks earlier, claiming that the rapper had shamelessly used “immediately recognizable parts” of her song in his track, even though her estate had already “expressly denied” him permission to do so.

“Summer’s estate … did not want to make any connection to West’s controversial past and specifically opposed West’s proposed use,” her lawyers wrote. “In the face of that opposition, the defendants arrogantly and unilaterally decided that they would simply steal ‘I Feel Love’ and use it without permission.”

Lawyers for Summer’s estate say Ye re-recorded key parts of her song “almost word for word” and then used them as a hook for his own song. The estate claims the songs were so similar that fans and critics “instantly recognized his song as a blatant rip-off.” The lawsuit also names album collaborator Ty Dolla $ign (Tyrone William Griffin Jr.) as defendant.

Even before the case was filed, “Good” was removed from streaming platforms and removed from digital download versions of the album. As of Friday, the song is still not available on Vulture 1 on Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music, although it is available on YouTube through unofficial accounts.

Under the terms of the settlement, Ye’s song will no longer be in circulation, according to Stein, which is the result the estate sought in the February lawsuit, which argued that the suit was not simply about demanding an ongoing royalty payment from the controversial rapper.

“This lawsuit is about more than just the defendants’ failure to pay the appropriate royalties for the use of others’ musical property,” Summer’s estate administrators wrote at the time. “It is also about the right of artists to decide how their works are used and presented to the public, and the need to prevent anyone from simply stealing creative works if they cannot secure the right to use them legally.”

Ye has been repeatedly sued for unauthorized samples and interpolations in his music.

In 2022, he faced a lawsuit claiming his song “Life of the Party” illegally sampled a song by the groundbreaking rap group Boogie Down Productions. In another case, he was sued for allegedly using an unapproved snippet of Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house track “Move Your Body” in the song “Flowers.” In yet another, he was sued by a Texas pastor for allegedly sampling from his recorded sermon in “Come to Life.”

Previously, West and Pusha T were sued in 2019 for sampling George Jackson’s “I Can’t Do Without You” on the track “Come Back Baby.” That same year, he was sued for allegedly using an audio clip of a young girl praying in his 2016 song “Ultralight Beam.” Previously, West faced similar cases over allegedly unlicensed samples used in “New Slaves,” “Bound 2” and “My Joy.”