Geoff Barrow furious with Kanye West’s unauthorised Portishead sample
The Portishead drummer, Geoff Barrow, has offered his opinion on the fact that Kayne West and Ty Dolla $ign have used a sample of a Portishead track on a tune from their long-awaited Vultures 2. The second part of the Vultures series was released on Saturday (August 3rd), following on from the first part’s release from earlier this year.
West and Dolla were meant to release another two volumes of Vultures in March and April, but they were not made available. However, now that Vulture 2 has finally been dropped, the ears of Barrow have pricked up owing to the track ‘Field Trip’ using a sample of Portishead’s ‘Machine Head’, seemingly despite Kayne and Dolla not gaining prior permission.
Barrow has now taken to Twitter to express his dismay at the unauthorised use of the track. “FFS. Not again,” the BEAK> member wrote, while on his Instagram account, he added, “Why can’t he write his own beats?“
‘Field Trip’ features a number of guest stars, including Don Toliver, Kodak Black and Playboy Carti. The track is not the first instance of a musician using ‘Machine Gun’ without gaining Portishead’s permission first.
Back in 2013, The Weeknd used the tune on his song ‘Belong to the World’ and straight away, Barrow was on hand to offer another damning verdict, writing directly at the singer, “When someone asks to sample you and you refuse they should have the respect as a fellow artist to not use it.”
Barrow had also said that he and his fellow Portishead members would likely allow any musician that they are fans of to use one of their songs as a sample, noting, “We usually give sample clearance to tunes we like. It’s got fuck all to do with money!”
According to Barrow, the hip-hop artists that mostly contact Portishead for a sample are “skint”, so he will likely be even more pissed off with the fact that Kayne West has not only used the ‘Machine Gun’ sample but actually used it without permission.
‘Machine Gun’ was released as the lead single from Portishead’s 2008 album Third and has been used in a number of entertainment pieces, including the trailer for the video game Metro: Last Light, the Channel 4 drama Skins and the Netflix series Orange is the New Black.
In using the song for a track from Vulture 2, Kanye West has seriously pissed off the Portishead drummer and may face legal action in the coming months.
It’s not the first time Kanye has been in similar hot water. The producer has been sued several times over recent years for using samples without clearance. The most notorious was Donna Summer’s estate, which attempted to take the hip-hop mogul to court following an uncleared sample of ‘I Feel Love’. This followed Ozzy Osbourne making a similar claim following a Black Sabbath song which appeared on Vultures 1 without the necessary clearance.
In most cases, Ye simply remixes the song with the sample removed, but it is not clear how he will react to the latest issue with Portishead.