Kanye West’s New Album-Film, ‘Bully,’ Is Loaded With (Possibly Uncleared) Samples and Covers: ‘Close to You,’ ‘Can’t Hurry Love,’ Apparently a Verse From Playboi Carti, More

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Kanye West’s innovative use of samples was one of the hallmarks of his early hits — his slowed-down snippets of songs from Chaka Khan, Ray Charles, Daft Punk and more set a sonic path that countless artists would follow from that point on.

But in recent years, as West’s behavior became more unpredictable and often aggressive, so too did his adherence to the legalities of samples, interpolations and straight covers of copyrighted songs and sounds.

To cite just recent examples, his “Donda” albums and “Vultures,” his joint 2024 effort with Ty Dolla $ign, were beset with copyright infringement lawsuits from Ozzy Osbourne, the estate of Donna Summer, Marshall Jefferson and others.

While some of these suits were settled or dismissed, his response was often defiant: In response to Osbourne’s refusal to clear the sample of Black Sabbath’s song “Iron Man,” West instead replaced it with a sample from his own song “Hell of a Life,” which featured a previously cleared sample of “Iron Man.” On his new film/ album, “Bully,” released via X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday night, it seems that all bets are off: The music features slowed-down or even straightforward interpolations, samples or straight covers of such songs as “Close to You,” written by the late Burt Bacharach and Hal David and made famous by the Carpenters; “You Can’t Hurry Love,” written by the legendary Motown Records team of Holland-Dozier-Holland and made famous by the Supremes; a straight cover of Krautrock legends Can’s 1972 song “Vitamin C.” Other apparent samples and interpolations include lesser-known songs like Cortex’s instrumental “Huit octobre 1971,” Poncho Sanchez’s “Bésame Mamá” and Pomme’s “Soleil Soleil,” although the.