Ye & French Montana Face New Sample Lawsuit

Ye is facing a new copyright lawsuit over the infamous 2013 video of him screaming “don’t take no photos” at a paparazzo outside a Los Angeles restaurant.

Celebrity photo agency Bauer-Griffin filed the suit on Wednesday in federal court, naming Ye, French Montana, and several others as defendants.

The agency says defendants copied the audio straight from that viral clash and built it into a hit record without ever asking permission.

The 45-second clip shows Ye, then still going by Kanye West, charging at the photographer and shouting a string of profanities.

It ends with Kim Kardashian walking through a parking garage surrounded by paparazzi. Bauer-Griffin holds the copyright and says the footage was widely covered at the time, according to Billboard, which first reported the new filing.

The audio became the intro to French Montana’s 2024 track “Where They At,” featuring Westside Gunn, from the mixtape Mac & Cheese 5. Producers Dem Jointz and BoogzDaBeast built the sample into the record, and label Gamma released it through distribution platform Vydia. The suit claims every party involved knew samples need clearance and used it anyway.

This isn’t Ye’s first fight over an uncleared music sample. He recently lost a jury trial and was ordered to pay six figures over unlicensed audio used on his Grammy-winning song “Hurricane.” Bauer-Griffin’s lawyers point to that history as proof he understood exactly what clearance means.

Bauer-Griffin wants a court order blocking further use of the clip, along with actual damages and any profits tied to the song’s streams. Court filings say the mixtape reached the Top 15 on the Billboard 200, and the song pulled in millions of streams on Spotify alone. The complaint also names distributor Vydia and accuses Ye and French Montana of having the power to stop the infringement and doing nothing about it.

TMZ first posted the clip back in 2013, and its report at the time already carried Bauer-Griffin’s watermark on the footage. That original video came just minutes after Ye had accidentally walked into a metal sign outside the same restaurant, still trying to dodge photographers.

Ye signed a distribution deal with Gamma for his album Bully this year, putting him in business with the label he’s now suing.

Nolan Strong

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