After Kanye West dropped his new track “Alive” featuring NBA YoungBoy, Playboi Carti hopped online to accuse the rapper of sampling his own record, “CRANK.”
Ye drops new NBA YoungBoy collab “Alive” on IG, sampling Playboi Carti’s “CRANK” pic.twitter.com/wf81bUbpLQ
— XXL Magazine (@XXL) May 21, 2025
While some fans assumed the sample was cleared and maybe even a sign the two had squashed past tension, Carti quickly shut that down.
Hitting Instagram via his Opium account, the Atlanta rapper posted a visual for his own version of the track and didn’t mince words in the caption: “DIS MY SONG LIL BRA @ye.”
After Carti’s post, Sneako, who has somehow become Ye’s spokesperson over the past few weeks, denied the Atlanta artist’s claims. According to Sneako, Ye made the beat so it belonged to him, and he also trashed Carti’s version, saying it was not “very good.”
The pair used to work closely together and even planned a joint album, but tensions between Ye and Carti escalated earlier this year when Carti excluded Ye from his album Music, leading Ye to express his frustration publicly. He accused Carti of sidelining him due to past controversies and took issue with Carti’s request for Ye’s daughter, North, to contribute vocals to a track, which offended Ye.
Sneako says “ALIVE” belongs to Kanye West and not Playboi Carti because Kanye made the beat and YoungBoy wrote the lyrics
pic.twitter.com/bYvu5B0zVe— FearBuck (@FearedBuck) May 22, 2025
The situation intensified when Ye alleged that Carti confronted him at the Chateau Marmont hotel with a firearm, a claim that added a serious dimension to their conflict. There had been talks of an upcoming reconciliation, but that doesn’t seem to be on the cards right now.