When Kanye West released his eleventh album, "Donda 2," earlier this year, he shed his usual business infrastructure.
He didn't release it under Def Jam Recordings, the Universal-owned label he's called home since his first album, "The College Dropout," in 2004. He didn't even use GOOD Music, the record label he personally founded.
Instead, he released it himself. West — who also goes by the name Ye — decided to put "Donda 2" on the Stem Player, a music remixing device he helped invent that costs about $200.
No one can be quite sure if "Donda 2" was a flop, since Billboard refused to chart it, but the rollout was a disaster. Many fans simply pirated the album instead of paying for a Stem Player. And what followed was a thicket of lawsuits from people who alleged West failed to properly credit their songs when using samples for the album.
The "Donda 2" fiasco foreshadows the legal risks West now faces as major brands and financial partners have abandoned him for his hateful conspiracy theories and violent threats toward Jews. He has already fallen fast from grace, losing fans and, he said, owing the IRS $50 million, apparently unable to hire capable tax advisors.
Yet without the usual corporate infrastructure behind his projects, West has been busy planning independent fashion projects without any major backers and launching a presidential campaign with a ragtag group of white nationalists.
If recent history is any indication, he'll have a host of more legal problems soon.
Lawsuits allege West failed to get rights for songs sampled in 'Donda 2'
Earlier this month, a recording label sued West, alleging he violated the company's copyright by knowingly sampling the song "South Bronx" by Boogie Down Productions on his song "Life of the Party."
West knew the song infringed on the copyright, according to the lawsuit, because his clearance agent asked for permission to use it on "Donda 2" but never actually got it.
"The communications confirmed that South Bronx had been incorporated into the Infringing Track even though West had yet to obtain such license," the lawsuit says. "Upon information and belief, despite the fact that final clearance for use of South Bronx in the Infringing Track was never authorized, the Infringing Track was nevertheless reproduced, sold, distributed, publicly performed and exploited in numerous ways."
Worse still, according to the lawsuit, West and his pals used "Life of the Party" to market the Stem Player. The Stem Player itself encourages more copyright infringement, the lawsuit alleges, since it allows people to split songs "into stems that can then be freely customized and manipulated using the device.