Kanye West and TIDAL are Being Sued Over Release of ‘The Life of Pablo’
Kanye West's rollout of The Life of Pablo was one of the more bizarre in hip-hop history and one fan is suing the rapper and Tidal over the album's release.
Justin Baker-Rhett filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Monday (April 18) against Kanye and Tidal. The fan claims that Kanye "fraudulently promised fans that his album, The Life of Pablo, would only be available on TIDAL." The project has since been made available to stream on Apple Music, Spotify and other services.
Baker-Rhett argues that the move was nothing more than a way for TIDAL to boost subscriptions and gave the streaming service access to user information such as credit card information, music tastes and more.
"We fully support the right of artists to express themselves freely and creatively, however creative freedom is not a license to mislead the public," Baker-Rhett's attorney Jay Edelson wrote in a statement obtained by the Associated Press. "We believe that we will be able to prove to a jury that Mr. West and Tidal tricked millions of people into subscribing to their services and that they will ultimately be held accountable for what they did."
Kanye's outrageous Twitter use may end up coming back to haunt him. According to the report, the lawsuit references the rapper's tweets including, "My album will never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale...You can only get it on TIDAL."
Earlier this month, The Life of Pablo came in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, making it Yeezy's seventh No. 1 album. According to reports, the album was streamed 250 million times in the ten days following its release and 400 million times as of Monday, March 28.
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