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11 year old blog post that touches on this subject a lil bit
http://qn5.com/blog/entry/sampling-in-2006-aka-primo-should-slap-you/music/song/want-whats-mine/music/song/thats-what-happens/
Sampling in 2006 aka “Primo should slap you.”
Posted 10 years, 4 months, 1 week, 4 days, 9 hours, 25 minutes ago by Kno
So, the turnover of hip-hop fans has finally started to take a toll on hip-hop production and people’s views on it. If sampling lawsuits killed hip-hop, then the information age is poking rap’s cold, dead body with a long, pointy stick. Repeatedly. In the jewels.
Know how many sample queries I get per week via the internet? Hrrmmmmbout…20. Know how many I answer? Hrmmmmbout…none. Know how many of those 20 people cuss me or go on about how I shouldn’t sample anyway because its “stealing” after I ignore them? Approximately 1/3. Know how much of a fuck I give? A tiny bit less than a little. Some call it a ‘smidge’, I prefer ‘pinch’.
See, heres the thing. When I was a coming up, I wouldn’t have DARED write Primo a smarmy letter demanding to know where he got the sample for Mass Appeal. I don’t care if you made beats or not, hip-hop heads simply knew what time it was when it came to samples and sampling. If you couldn’t find it yourself, you didn’t deserve to know. Period. The only time I ever heard anyone get pissy and say “Why do you need to steal other people’s music? Why don’t you just make your own?” was out of the mouths of old white guys that shook their fists in Anglo-anger as I passed in my busted ass Pontiac LeMans blastin “Deja Vu” on the Kicker 12’s. Mad cus Steely Dan got touched. I hear it more often now, but it comes from so called “rap listeners”. They’ll praise someone like RJD2 or 9th Wonder all day, but when rebuffed in sample inquiries will retort with “That shit is stealing anyway, why can’t they be original?” Who the fuck is YOU?
Not only that, but these same dorks will love a song, yet when they finally do scour the internet hard enough to come up on the song Alchemist sampled for the latest Mobb Deep track they’ll say “I don’t like the beat anymore because its just a loop. ALC didn’t FLIP IT ENOUGH”
Flip it enough? Flip these. Flip off. Go flip some fucking burgers.
Hip-hop music was born from THE LOOP. Some of the illest beats of all time are simple 2 bar loops with drums tossed on them. Of course I appreciate chopping when it is done well and serves a purpose, but somehow the technical aspect of it has become a measure of beat quality? So you can hop on Limewire right quick and download a Leon Haywood MP3, now Dr. Dre is wack? Tell me again why you lost interest in Green Day and decided to become Mr. Hip-Hop Knowledge Guy? On top of that, folks also want to complain about drum compression, sequencing and mixing and a whole host of things I never cared about when I was just a fan. Bottomline, did it move me? Folks are sucking the soul out of the music.
Finally, the old “such and such a person used this sample, so this newer song is WACK”. I’m gonna shoot you straight. I can’t listen to every got damned backpacker ass group who sold 53 copies of their CD off their MySpace page and had a feature on http://www.rapbeetz2000.org.
“Rap is an art you can’t own no loops
It’s how you hook em up and the rhyme style troop
So don’t even think you could say someone bit
off your weak beat come on you need to quit”
This is where I’m coming from. I hear or read reviews or hear discussions about our records, and a couple people always chime in talking about “Oh, such and such used this on their “CD-R Only” demo in 2001.” Why is it always some super-obscure material they bring up? Mac Mall used the same sample as “Caved In” before, but guess what? All I hear about is how Kanye used it on an UNRELEASED INSTRUMENTAL off of Talib Kweli’s bootleg that could only be found ON THE INTERNET. See what I’m getting at?
Apparently some group named Cyne used the same sample from “Remember Me (Abstract/Reality)” back in 2003. Never heard of em’, nobody I know has heard of em’, don’t care. Downloaded the song and, no offense to any party involved, its about as boring as underground rap can get. Drums suck, no real change ups, no layers, nothing. Yet, because some group that I had never heard of used the same sample as me, some people are going to INSIST on pointing out how I’m supposedly wack for using it? I can definitively say two things about people like this; you are no more than 3 years removed from puberty, B: the inside of a vagina is something very foreign to you and C: you need to learn some sh*t about hip-hop music before opening that little oxygen vacuum you call a mouth. Ever heard of Bob James’ Nautilus? Everyone and their mom has used that record, and about 20 CLASSIC hip-hop songs have sprung from it.
My philosophy is this: I’ll never hear a song and THEN try and GO FIND the record that was sampled so I can make a beat out of it too, that would be biting. But…artists…give me a reason not to use the same sample as you or to feel bad after the fact. Why exactly should I refrain from using something that you have already used? I need to allow you to WASTE AN ILL RECORD because of the 10 people that heard your song? Add to the fact 95 percent of the time theres really no chance I’ve even heard your track in the first damn place, and I DO keep up with hip-hop in order to not be redundant with sampling. Let’s REALLY take it back to 1990; outdo me or shut up.
Bottomline…is it dope or is it wack? As a fan, that is really all you should be concerned with.
Does this sound like the rant of an old man? Probably, but that is my biggest issue. I’m NOT old, yet the outlook of ‘hip-hop heads’ has changed so drastically over the past 6-7 years that I feel like I’m 70 when it comes to rap. So, whatever. I’ll be over here wearing Depends, eating Mueslix, listening to Timbaland instrumentals.
Peace! Kno _________________________________
Yes Yes Y'all
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