Chase Taylor says he was hired to sing a starring role in a finished opera. He says he arrived at a Wyoming high school to find the opera “far from finished” and a door that would not open until he fixed that.
Taylor sued Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, in federal court in North Carolina on Wednesday. His complaint says that at Cody High School, “Defendants locked the door and ordered Taylor to work until the opera was done.” The job, he says, was to compose the rest of the music for “Nebuchadnezzar” and make it ready to perform in four days, alongside more than 150 performers, with requests for food, water, rest and an unlocked door ignored.
Taylor says he was promised lucrative pay, a producer credit and future work. He says he was told the operas were nonprofit religious productions, though audiences paid for tickets. He also alleges that his compositions and arrangements turned up, without permission or payment, in commercial releases including Travis Scott’s “Telekinesis” and tracks on “Vultures 2.” He is asking for copyright recognition, a share of profits, and damages for fraud and false imprisonment.
A second composer is telling a similar story. Willie Alexander, a New York musician, has a suit pending in Los Angeles. According to reports on his complaint, he asked for $15,000 to fly to Cody on short notice, Ye’s team countered with $6,000, and he accepted. He says he found the opera unwritten, finished it in four days and was never paid. His suit alleges Ye’s companies earned $4 million from a Tidal stream of the production.
These are allegations in unresolved lawsuits. The reports we reviewed carried no response from Ye to either complaint.
Not the first time
Workers on the 2019 production have been here before. Ye settled an earlier class action over the same production for $1.35 million in July 2025, benefiting more than 600 workers and performers.
That history is why the new suits deserve attention. Ye is one of the most famous Black producers alive, and for decades the people who build the sound behind a name like his have had to fight for credit and for a check. Black musicians have lived that fight for a century, from session players to the arrangers nobody put on the label. A star of his size has the resources to settle a rate dispute in an afternoon. Pay for the work first, and argue about the credit after: that is the standard any artist should meet, and the one these two composers say he did not.
Alexander’s case is still pending in Los Angeles. Taylor’s has just been filed, and Ye has not yet answered it in court.
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