Sampling is the bastard, inbred child of music. It is a recluse, cast away by the tight clique of so-called "legitimate" genres, forced to wallow through a dusty sea of modulated spiral grooves cut into vinyl acetate. There, it is left to drown, subsequently buried in an underground chamber of veritable appreciation.
There are a few rules to sampling, however:
1. There are no rules to sampling.
2. You may sample whatever the fuck you please.
3. Refer to rules 1 and 2.
Regardless of what goody-two-shoes proclaim, sampling is an art. It is the creative process of taking someone's artistic vision and combining it, both with others and one's own, to paint a lush landscape of sound only your ears can see. It brings to light a plethera of records that have been set aside only to collect dust and grow old. The sampler's duty lies in reinventing these songs, these sounds, these visions, and bringing them to the surface.
Copyright infringement? Nay, instrinic art form. Potato potahtoe. Two peas in a pod that will continue to rot slowly. The lowly art of sampling is not unlike allowing the music of old to be reborn in a way, to be given a fresh start, a new audience to cherish it. Then why prohibit this bastard child of the music world from being adopted by a loving family?
Speaking of bastard children, the hiphop community has to deal with a wave of them that are for reason invading the mainstream. Hiphop used to be about the art. The art of expression. Expressing your anger at the government, at society, at the cops, your mom, your pops, whoever. And somehow, over the past decade it's degraded into a radio-wave bitch fest infecting car stereos near you.
I'm glad you can express how you want to lick people like lollipops, how your boots are covered in fur or how you party like a rockstar, but shit, man, what happened to the real hip hop music? The one that actually delivered a message that wasn't just about entertainment?
We are watching the degredation of the music "industry" into what is really just one big entertainment industry. And then the government wonders why so many people are bootlegging shit. I'll tell you why: because it isn't worth dropping $15 on an album that's got maybe 1 or 2 tracks that aren't utter shit. Bootlegging has become practically the only way to find the true artistic creations of hiphop. It's as if there's a complete lack of quality control above ground, of filtering out what is crap and what isn't.
Ironically, the hiphop that actually contains a message, what the genre was truly about, is now found almost completely underground. Instead of defining the genre as what it truly is in the limelight of the mainstream, it has just been cast aside like the countless old records that continue to be sampled for the sake of the art that is hiphop.
Therefore, I challenge you, the fellow hiphop artist. Prove to yourself and to the rest of the community that hiphop is still an art. Prove that not everyone is in it for the money and fame, but for the passion they have in creating truly creative visions for others to share and enjoy.
best,
yun
*The author of this article condones piracy, sampling, copyright infringement, graffiti, defacing property, loitering, and bringing the fuckin ruckus.*
war-spawn
There's only a few people off the top of the head who I can say truly makes hip-hop for the love of the art. Even some of the better people on this site make instrumentals just to sell them, not for the actual love of it. Kinda depresses me... So for that, let's bring the fuckin ruckus.