There was a lot of drama surrounding the release of The Life of Pablo. Kanye West's album was released exclusively on TIDAL, forcing many to sign up for a free trial of the streaming service. A recent lawsuit against TIDAL claims that the company actually fabricated streaming numbers for the album, which they have denied. It appears as though another Pablo-related lawsuit has been filed with TMZ reporting that "Ultralight Beam" is the source of the problem.
The intro song on the album is a powerful blend of hip-hop and gospel. Kanye West samples a viral video of a little girl praying in the car, which ends up making the song perfect. He had good intentions when he cleared the sample with the girl's mother. However, he went to the wrong person. You see, Ye requested permission to use the audio from the little girl's biological mother when in fact, he should have gone to her adoptive parents. Kanye likely wasn't aware of who young Natalie's legal guardians were at the time and now, it's all coming back to haunt him in court.
According to Andrew and Shirley Green, they adopted Natalie in 2012. Kanye's team reached out to Natalie's biological mother, Alice Johnson, who they say has no legal right to choose whether or not her voice could have been used in the song. On top of all this, the Greens say that Kanye never actually paid Alice, which he promised to.
Hopefully, this gets sorted out as it sounds like it was just a misunderstanding.
