Music and the courtroom are two things that should never co-exist. Sadly, they’ve learned to live hand in hand as artists attempt to protect what they view as rightly theirs and simultaneously line their pockets.
One would presume the catalyst for making musicians enter a law of court would solely be down to a copyright infringement by another artist. While this is the most common occurrence, it’s not always that straightforward, and sometimes it can enter a rather surreal territory. Even Kanye West can find himself feeling a bit silly in these moments.
These court cases can pit artists against people from completely different walks of life who, unbeknownst to them, have found themselves accidentally trespassing on intellectual property, and the downright strange match-ups force you to make a double-take at the names involved.
The late legendary stuntman Evil Knievel was left dumbfounded by Kanye West’s 2006 video, ‘Touch The Sky’, which sees the rapper rename himself, Evel Kanyevel, and replicated his madcap behaviour.
Speaking to The Washington Post, Knievel lamented: “That video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I’ve ever seen in my life, and he uses my image to catapult himself on the public… The guy just went too far using me to promote his filth to the world.”
Kanye took it into his own hands and visited him personally at his Florida home. The sweet-talking worked a charm, and Knievel dropped the case following the meeting. “I thought he was a wonderful guy and quite a gentleman,” the stuntman told the BBC. “We settled the lawsuit amicably. I was very satisfied and so was he.”
Now it is certainly not the strangest story associated with Kanye West we’ve ever heard, and will likely be trumped within the coming hours, however, there is something poetic about the icon of yesteryear taking on the new century’s greatest provocateur.
