Aphex Twin recently spoke out about being “sampled” by Kanye West in a song from his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. According to Aphex Twin, the 2001 record Avril 14th was plagiarized in West’s Blame Game, yet he admits he is unsure if it should actually be considered a “sample.”
“Is it a sample? I actually don’t know what it ended up being in the end, I’m so slack. I know that he tried to fucking rip me off and claim that he’d written it, and they tried to get away with not paying. I was really helpful, and when they first sent it to me, I was like, ‘Oh, I can re-do that for you, if you like,’ because they’d sampled it really badly and time-stretched it and there was loads of artifacts. I was like, ‘I’ll just replay it for you at that speed if you want.’ And they totally didn’t even say ‘hello’ or ‘thanks,’ they just replied with, ‘It’s not yours, it’s ours, and we’re not even asking you any more.’”- Aphex Twin, Pitchfork
However, the liner notes for Blame Game do in fact include information that the record “Contains elements of ‘Avril 14’ by Richard James”, insinuating that there may have been compensation for the samplings.
Source: Pitchfork