A singer says Ye locked him in a Wyoming band room to finish an opera. Now he wants a share of the songs too

Seven years after Ye staged Nebuchadnezzar at the Hollywood Bowl, one of the singers who made it happen says he was locked in a room until it was done.

Chase Taylor, an opera performer from North Carolina, filed a lawsuit against Ye and companies linked to him in federal court in North Carolina on Wednesday, US time. The complaint runs to 45 pages and accuses the rapper, who legally changed his name from Kanye West, of fraud, false imprisonment and unfair and deceptive trade practices. Every claim in it is an allegation that Ye has not yet answered in court.

What does Taylor say happened in Wyoming?

Taylor says he was recruited in 2019 for a starring role in Nebuchadnezzar, an opera retelling the story of the Babylonian king, which he believed was already written. He flew to Cody, Wyoming, where Ye was based at the time, with less than a week to go.

According to the complaint, the music was nowhere near finished. Taylor says he was taken to the band room at Cody High School and told to make the production performance-ready in four days.

“Defendants locked the door and ordered Taylor to work until the opera was done,” the complaint says.

Taylor says he was put in charge of preparing more than 150 performers, who sat and slept on the floor between sessions without enough food. He says he asked Ye’s producer to unlock the doors and arrange food, water and rest, and that “defendants ignored these requests.”

Why does he say the music is his?

This is where Taylor’s case breaks new ground. He claims compositions and arrangements he created for the opera were later used, without his permission or payment, on commercially released songs: Travis Scott’s “Telekinesis”, which credits Ye as a co-writer, and several tracks from Vultures 2, Ye’s 2024 album with Ty Dolla $ign. The complaint does not stop at money. It asks the court to declare Taylor a copyright owner of the music and to award him a share of the profits from the songs.

He also claims he agreed to work for less than his usual rate because of promises of producer credits and lucrative future work that never came.

What is the claim about the operas being charity?

Taylor also worked on Ye’s second opera, Mary. He claims Ye and his companies presented both operas as charitable religious productions whose proceeds would “save souls”, yet charged audiences for tickets. On information and belief, the complaint alleges, the companies kept the profits.

Why is he only suing now?

The complaint says Taylor and Ye’s side agreed in 2020 to pause the legal deadlines on his claims, which is why a case about events in 2019 is only reaching court in 2026.

Has this happened before?

Nebuchadnezzar has followed Ye into court for years. Hundreds of performers and crew from the 2019 production brought a class action over their pay, and Ye agreed to settle it for US$1.35 million. A court gave the deal final approval in July 2025 and more than 600 class members were sent cheques. By May this year, 257 of those cheques, worth US$277,210 in total, had not been cashed, and a hearing on the settlement is set for 8 December.

New York composer Willie Alexander has a separate case in Los Angeles County Superior Court. He says he was lured to Wyoming for the same opera and was shocked to find it “had not been written at all”, leaving him to compose and arrange it largely from scratch. That case has a mandatory settlement conference on 12 January 2027.

Why does it matter beyond Ye?

Taylor’s case puts a hard question in front of a court: when a production is built in a rush by dozens of uncredited musicians, who owns what comes out of the room? If a judge agrees that his arrangements live on in released songs, the dispute stops being about one chaotic week in Wyoming and reaches into the publishing on records that have already been streamed and sold.

It also lands while Ye is in a run of huge independent stadium shows in the US, where he has broken attendance records this year without a major promoter.

Ye’s representatives had not responded publicly to the lawsuit by Friday, US time.