Amongst the various Kanye West-produced projects emerging in recent weeks was an album from Teyana Taylor entitled K.T.S.E.. It has emerged that one track on that album, ‘Issues/Hold On’, features a sample of a soul song featured on the Numero Group label’s 2010 box set collecting music from the Boddie Recording Company.
However, as Pitchfork reports, the sample for that, which is a cover of Billy Stewart’s ‘I Do Love You’ recorded by an unknown artist, was not actually cleared with Numero Group before the release of K.T.S.E.. You can hear Teyana Taylor’s track just above.
Speaking to Pitchfork, Numero Group co-founder Rob Sevier said: "Without getting too nuanced, the Boddie Recording Company owns this master, and we represent their interests in such matters." He adds that while the label has not yet heard from Kanye or representatives about the sample, they are in the midst of clearing various samples and may be open to doing so in this case also.
This isn’t the first time Kanye has been caught up in a sample clearance issue recently. PAN’s Bill Kouligas earlier this month claimed that a track by Kareem Lofty from the label’s 2017 ambient compilation Mono No Aware was not cleared before being used on ‘I Thought About Killing You’, the opening track for Kanye’s latest album Ye. "It’s sadly another case of an artist who capitalises on culture without any original ideas," Kouligas told Pitchfork at the time. That issue now appears to have been resolved between the relevant parties however.
