Twenty years ago a series of lawsuits criminalized the hip-hop sampling of artists like Hank Shocklee and Public Enemy. And yet, two decades later, artists like Girl Talk have found success breaking those same sampling laws. OTM producer Jamie York talks to Girl Talk, Shocklee and Duke Law professor James Boyle about two decades of sampling - on both sides of the law.
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Comments [9]
If you think about it, music, like culture, is always evolving, whether we are conscious of it or not. Sampling segments or entire melodies directly from established songs carries music culture forward in awkward chunks rather than in a smooth and natural flow.
I think that is simply crazy. If it applies to one person, it should definitely apply to everyone.
What was the name of the first Girl Talk song from this story?
Akufen has been microsampling sine the early 2000s, where he take fraction of a second clips from music and rolls it all together into something totally new. His album 'My Way' was totally sampled though you wouldn't know the clips unless you really sat down and listened to it. I'm only found a pink floyd riff and a michael jackson yell to date and I've had the album since 05.
His myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/akufunkture
When open forums for free speech are controlled by private corporations like youtube.com fair use is not honored.
The world of Dj'ing is based on mixing, or better known as mash-ups, it has been going on since the 80's. The Big company has lost control the consumer has the same technologies, not necessarily quality. They were just using tapes, not computers.
Good day to all. =]
It is incredible that this report on music sampling and Girl Talk, and ignore the elephant in the room. We addressed this in an essay we published on Copycense in March 2009: http://www.copycense.com/2009/03/girl_talk_as_fair_use_martyr.html
You might look at Kutiman on youtube. He does 100% sampling of unknowns that post on youtube and gets some amazing results.
Your story is trying to hard to look for controversy. The real story is that if you are taking small samples, you don't need to sample top acts. The DJ you looked at who was sampling top shelf acts really did not surpass the original Roy Orbeson imo, so what was the point of doing it.
Give me Rob Bass and Tone Loc lifted riffs over the current "original" tunes any day.
KC was right, Rap is interesting but exuausted as a medium.
Pre-lawsuit rules!
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