“Is there an actual legal reason to do a takedown on his music? I don’t think so. The hate speech is not in his music. You don’t like this person? Don’t listen to his music. Don’t support him. Don’t let him make money.”

HELEN YU, ESQ

BY WENDY LEE, STAFF WRITER / OCT. 26, 2022 A week after Endeavor Chief Executive Ari Emanuel called for businesses to cut ties with the artist formerly known as Kanye West after his antisemitic remarks, companies such as Adidas and the Gap stopped working with him. But others, including streamers Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music, still feature Ye’s music on their playlists. Apple Music and Tidal, which also streams West’s music, did not respond to a request for comment. Amazon Music declined to comment. But industry analysts say the decision to take down Ye’s music is complicated by several factors, including contract requirements streamers may have with record labels and publishers, free speech considerations and whether it is appropriate to take action against an artist’s behavior outside of their music.

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It’s been six years since Compton’s own YG has released his debut album My Krazy Life on March 18, 2014.

“March 18th for me marks a special day, the date serves for me as a good luck charm that I’ll always keep in pocket,” Helen Yu notes. “I’m proud to have been a big part of YG’s career especially our legal work on all the complex deals involving Drake, Nicki Minaj, Jeezy, Nipsey Hussle and many others on YG’s debut album on Def Jam.“

Yu has been able to help catapult his career from gangster rapper to a ubiquitous artist whose appeal transcends the palm tree lined streets that make up Los Angeles, the city, that birthed and raised him. He uses his LA roots as his muse for the music, and it’s proving to pay off.

“That’s why a lot of people respect me in L.A. that’s around my age group, because they saw me in the streets. They saw me at all these parties performing,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2014. “Mustard was DJing. Ty [Dolla Sign] used to come perform with us. That’s how the sound that we have now was created — all the [stuff] we was doing when we was young, just our lifestyle. And when we sat back on it and looked at it, that’s how it was supposed to sound. It was some party gangsta [stuff], some real street [stuff] at the same time.”

“With an Artist like YG with deep LA hip hop roots there’s definitely a method to navigating the entertainment madness,” Yu concludes.