Even when Ozzy Osbourne refused Kanye West's request to sample his new album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 1elements of Black Sabbath's hit “Iron Man” still appear on the album.
His edition Vultures 1 released by West does not use this sample of Ozzy Osbourne's solo band performing “Iron Man” at the 1983 Us Festival. Instead, it uses a sample of West's own track, “Hell of a Life,” which released in 2010 with Universal Music Group (UMG), which also features an interlude of Black Sabbath's “Iron Man” guitar riff. Such use would likely also require approval from the members of that band – Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward – all of whom have writing and publishing credit on “Hell of a Life”.
Because “Hell of a Life” features a lot of samples, there are actually more songwriters on this track than just on “Iron Man.” They also include swamp rocker Tony White Joe and Sylvester Stewart, better known as Sly Stone. Stewart's song comes from a sample of “She's My Baby” by The Mojo Men, a band Stewart played and wrote with early in his career. Randall Wixenfounder of Wixen Music Publishing, which represents “She's My Baby” and controls 35% of the shares in “Hell of a Life” songwriting and publishing, confirms that the use of “Carnival” was not cleared by his company either .
“It's ironic that Kanye replaced the unlicensed sample of Ozzy Osbourne's 'Iron Man' with a sample of 'Hell of a Life,' which also features a song by Osbourne and Tony Iommi,” says Wixen. “So he just replaced an unauthorized Ozzy sample with another and now he's brought our song into the picture. In a perfect world, all samples would be approved and cleared before release. It's basic respect for the songwriter.”
Nor is she the only unlicensed use of a song or recording on the record. A spokesman for Primary Wave, which has a partnership with the estate of James Brown, says Advertising sign that the frequently sampled use of The Godfather of Soul's “Funky President (People It's Bad)” was not cleared for use on Vultures 1 “Fuk Sumn” track.
It is not uncommon for albums to be released with inconclusive songwriter splits, often to the surprise of writers and publishers. However, it is less common for an album to be released without clean samples or jams Rel Lafarge, president and COO of Reservoir Media, says that's still the case. But the level of West's popularity — and notoriety — makes the album an extreme example.
West's team is working with sample clearing house Alien Music Services to license these works, and according to multiple sources, they've secured a patchwork of necessary licenses so far. Some projects are cleared, others not and some only partially. For example, Lafargue says Reservoir is currently negotiating to use a sample of Brand Nubian's “Slow Down” for the album track “Keys to My Life,” but the deal isn't done yet. Many sources also say they were only approached with licensing requests afterwards Vultures 1 released last Saturday. Now the album is a serious contender to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart next week.
“To Kanye's level in 2024 to put out an entire album of samples that haven't even been asked to be cleared, I don't think I've ever really seen that today,” says Lafargue, who helped launch De La. Soul's catalog of recordings hit streaming services last year after it was famously linked to sample clearance issues. “This is definitely the exception.”
This has already created problems for the album. On Wednesday, the song “Good (Don't Die)” was pulled from Spotify following a copyright infringement claim filed days earlier on behalf of Donna Summer's estate, and other streaming services soon followed suit. The estate claimed in a social media post that West's team had asked for permission to use Summer's iconic hit “I Feel Love” and been denied, but the album was released with an insert anyway.
Separately, on Thursday, the platform made the distribution Vultures 1 on streaming services, FUGA said Advertising sign was removing the album from his systems. However, there were no suggestions related to sample clearance or interference issues. The album is now distributed by Label Engine, a service owned by Create Music Group.
Che Pope from Yeezy Music says licensing talks are “in process” for the album and “everything is in great shape, except for Ozzy Osbourne and Donna Summer.” He says that the use of summer was never supposed to be released and that the team is now working on the “Carnival” theme. With “Carnival,” Pope says West just needed a “guitar turn” on the track (the usage appears around 1:43) and they can “find a way to play something else in there,” as opposed to ” Good (Don't Die),” where the interjection was more essential to the song. “There are a few of us who play guitar,” Pope adds.
West plans to release Vultures as a trilogy project, and Pope says the licensing issues leading up to that album's release were a matter of which songs were going to make the cut. “We didn't really know what was on the album until the release date was closer,” he says. “Well, the thing is, we had all the samples of what could possibly be all in any of the three volumes.”
It's rare for streaming services to pull a major artist's song into a sample or jam without permission. More typically, an agreement is made between the artist's groups and the creators to put a license into effect, and since the track is already out, the artist loses leverage in these negotiations and often gives up a larger share of the rights. This famously happened with The Verve's hit “Bittersweet Symphony”, which was based on a sample from a 1965 version of the Rolling Stones' song “The Last Time”. Since the band did not clear the song with the Rolling Stones' former manager, Allen Kleinwho held the copyright to their songs prior to 1970, frontman Richard Ashcroft was forced to relinquish all publishing to Klein's label ABKCO Music, and composition credits changed to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Stones.
While West has built a name for himself as an all-time great hip-hop producer with an excellent use of samples and jams, this release is complicated by his recent history of anti-Semitism, which began in 2022 and has since been widely condemned and lost numerous business deals. Talking to me Advertising sign on February 9, Ozzy Osbourne's wife and manager Sharon Osbourne noted that Ozzy often allows other artists to sample his work, “but the simple thing is, we don't want to be associated with a hater.”
Sharon Osbourne, who is the daughter of a UK music manager Don Arden and raised Jewish, he continued, “For him to spread hate the way he does, it shouldn't be allowed. All the excuses – he's bipolar or whatever – don't change that. It's like, f— you, basically.”
To everything, Vultures 1 has at least two dozen samples and jams on 16 tracks, according to the website WhoSampled.com and was rated by Advertising sign. These include several uses of West's earlier music, such as with “Hell of a Life” on “Carnival” and the 2012 track “Cold” on “Vultures” — all of which would apparently require licenses from UMG, under which it was previously released recordings. There are also uses of samples from the film Doctrine and a TikTok video of a cheer group and an interview with Mike Tyson from a podcast with Hollywood Unlocked's Jason Lee, who was West's former head of media and partnerships. And, of course, there is a lot of music by other creators.
Pope says the licensing process on this album was “no different than any album” before, but adds that it marks West's first proper release as an independent artist since he no longer benefits from easier clearances within the UMG system. (In addition to West's own tracks, UMG's record samples include Juvenile's “Back That Azz Up (Back That Thang Up),” Public Enemy's “Bring the Noise,” and Pierre Henry's “Jubilation,” and Spooky Tooth, among others.) There are also image issues. “The landscape, the reality of it is different,” says Pope. “He has an uphill battle in some areas. Clearing samples is never easy, but this one is more difficult just because of how the landscape is in everything.”
Most record labels and publishers contacted for this story declined to comment, with many saying they don't talk about individual licensing deals and that their policy is to follow the wishes of their artists and songwriters in these cases. . However, not all artists and songwriters involved in their work may be aware Vultures 1.
Indie R&B artist Dijon took to Instagram Stories on Feb. 9, a day before the album's release, suggesting he was unaware his song “Good Luck” was being sampled on the track “Stars.” (Now Pope says Dijon “must be good,” though, and reps for the artist declined to comment.) Wixen and Primary Wave learned of their creators' uses on the album until Advertising sign contacted the companies, and considering the complexity of licensing a sample that contains a sample, it's easy to imagine that some rights holders are still unaware that their work is being used.
Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, for example, according to the Songview database, have songwriting credits on Brand Nubian's “Slow Down” because it samples their 1988 hit “What I Am.” Universal Music Publishing Group, which represents the band's publication for the song, did not respond to a request for comment.
The song “Fuk Sumn” also samples Three 6 Mafia member Koopsta Knicca's underground single “Smoking on a J”, which samples Days of our Lives the theme song and Isaac Hayes' “Walk From Regio's” from 1971; Axis soundtrack, according to WhoSampled.com and Advertising signhis own criticism.
West's own “So Appalled” from 2010 is sampled on the track “Problematic,” but he also features Manfred Mann on the songs due to a sample of “You Are – I Am,” according to Songview.
All told, a work like Vultures 1 it could require upwards of 50 blanks, he says Danny Zook, CEO of Alien Music Services. “We are working diligently to clean up all the samples in this project,” he says.
