A Texas-based pastor has filed a lawsuit against Kanye West, claiming the rapper sampled his sermon without permission in the song Come to Life.
Bishop David Paul Moten alleges West, who legally changed his name to Ye last year, did not ask to use the religious speech on his Grammy-nominated album Donda, TMZ originally reported.
The pastor is also suing West’s record label UMG Recordings, and subsidiaries Def Jam Recordings and G.O.O.D Music.
In the lawsuit, Moten claims 70 seconds of the just over five-minute song contains his sermon, totalling more than 20 per cent of the track.
As the song Come to Life begins, Morten’s voice can be heard preaching, “My soul cries out Hallelujah, and I thank God for saving me. I thank God,” before West’s own vocals come in.
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Moten said West’s use of his sermon is only the latest example of the music star’s “willfully and egregiously sampling sound recordings of others without consent or permission.”
West has yet to respond to the lawsuit.
This is not West’s first time being sued over sound samples in his music.
The rapper previously settled a lawsuit over the use of a Hungarian singer’s voice on the 2013 song New Slaves.
He also settled a legal claim over the sampling of a child’s prayer on his 2016 hit Ultralight Beam and on his 2018 song with Kid Cudi Freeee (Ghost Town Pt. 2), which sampled a theatre work about Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey.
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