Kanye West Fires Back at Class Action Lawsuit over 'The Life of Pablo' Exclusivity

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Jul 19, 2017

Not long after releasing The Life of Pablo last year, Kanye West was hit with a class action suit over claims the album would remain exclusive to the streaming service Tidal. Over a year later, West has hit back at the suit.

As Billboard reports, West and his team are looking to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that alternate versions of the album were rolled out on rival services, with the version on Tidal being entirely separate and different than those that followed on other streaming sites.

As previously reported, West was sued in U.S. District Court in San Francisco last year by Justin Baker-Rhett. The class action suit argued the rapper and Tidal engaged in "deceptive conduct" and lured in subscribers to Tidal on the false claim that Pablo would remain exclusive to the streaming service. The lawsuit references a tweet from West claiming, "My album will never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal."

His defence now also references West's tweets, where he called Pablo a "living breathing changing creative expression," It adds that West "altered lyrics, changed vocals, added new beats, and remixed songs" when it came to versions of the record hosted on Apple Music, Spotify and more.

"In other words, the original version of The Life of Pablo, which debuted on Tidal in February 2016, was always exclusive to it," documents from West's legal team read. "The versions of The Life of Pablo that are available on other streaming services are different from the original, Tidal-only version. Plaintiff does not dispute that there are differences between the versions of the album available on the different streaming services, and therefore he has not shown that Mr. West's tweet about the exclusivity of The Life of Pablo on Tidal was false."

West is currently at work on new music in a truly unique location, when he isn't feuding with big brother Jay-Z, of course.

Kanye's previous albums My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, 808s & Heartbreaks, Late Registration and The College Dropout are available on vinyl through Umusic.

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