5 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING From Turntables to Mashups Kembrew McLeod

Artists have traditionally borrowed from each other and have been directly inspired by the world that surrounds them. But what happens—ethically, legally, aesthetically— when digital technologies allow for very literal audio quotes to be inserted into new works? Sampling refers to the act of digitally recording pieces of preexisting and placing those bits in a new . This practice can be viewed—with some obvious differences, of course—as an extension of earlier African American musical traditions that valued musical appropriation, such as the blues, jazz, and gospel. Well over a decade before the file sharing controversies—beginning with Napster, in 1999— pushed the topic of copyright to the front pages of newspapers, artists had already raised similar legal and moral questions when they began using the new audio technology of digital sampling.1 During the 1970s, hip hop DJs in the South Bronx reimagined the record player or turntable as a device that could appropriate and create music—by manipulating vinyl records with their hands—rather than simply replaying complete . Similarly, hip hop artists in the embraced the newly developing sampling technology as their own, finding ways to make new music out of old, rare, or sometimes forgotten, sources. As with the sharing of MP3 music files today, many artists and record companies believed that the practice of digital sampling was the equivalent of stealing. Others, like ’s , argued that there should be more freedom to recontextualize found sounds. However, Chuck D and other similar artists lost this particular argument after Gilbert O’Sullivan won the lawsuit he filed against and Warner Brothers Records in 1991 (Markie sampled and looped the hook from the hit “ (Naturally)”).2 Subsequently, the began to enforce more vigorously copy- right law as it related to sampling. The industry developed a cumbersome and expensive “sample clearance” system in which all samples, even the shortest and most unrecogniz- able, had to be approved and paid for. Since this period, the cost of licensing samples has continued to increase, as have the costs associated with negotiating those licenses. This made it legally impossible for certain kinds of music to be distributed—such as Public Enemy’s early records—because they contained hundreds of fragments of sound, just within one . Today, it would simply be too expensive to clear copyright licenses for such as Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back—a record Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Studies Account: s3432366 K. MCLEOD considered so culturally important that included it on its list of the 25 “most significant albums of the last century”3 and , which the Library of Congress included it in its 2004 National Recording Registry,4 alongside the news broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow and the music of John Coltrane. In the interview that follows, stated5 one would have to sell a record such as Fear of a Black Planet for $159 per CD to pay for all the licenses, as opposed to a time before 1991 when not all sound fragments needed to be licensed (and the ones that were licensed did not reach today’s astronomical prices—sometimes $100,000 for a single sample). Allen may have been hyperbolic, but there is more than a grain of truth in what he said. In our book Creative License, we (Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola) conducted an economic analy- sis of Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet and the ’ Paul’s Boutique, another “golden age” album that contains hundreds of samples. We determined that it would no longer be viable to release these two albums today.

In the case of the two records we are examining, the artists pay out more than they receive. Neither album would be commercially practical to release. Each artist, having licensed away more royalties and more publishing than the amount that they would receive on each track of the album, would go further into debt with every copy sold to the public. The prices for all the samples— multiple samples on each track—simply exceed the artist’s piece of the record- ing-revenue pie. Public Enemy would lose an estimated $4.47 per copy sold. The Beastie Boys would lose an estimated $7.87 per copy sold. The total amount of debt incurred for releasing these albums, according to our estimates, would be almost $6.8 million for Public Enemy and would be $19.8 million for the Beastie Boys.6

Many artists and critics have argued that this licensing system had a negative impact on the creative potential of this newly emerging African American art form before it had a chance to flower. They allude to the growth of twentieth century jazz music, which would have been similarly stunted if jazz —who regularly “riffed” on others’ songs—had been burdened by a similar legal requirement to license and receive permis- sion from music publishers for the use of every “sampled” sonic fragment.7 The remain- der of this chapter is a remix of sampled quotes from a series of interviews with musicians and producers. The oral history form—which relies on interviewees’ words to drive the narrative—lends itself nicely to a history of sampling and remixing. Drawing on the knowledge gleaned from over 100 interviews, what follows is the result of hours of crate- digging through transcripts in order to assemble a narrative about the emergence of and its eventual collision with copyright law. I have constructed a five-part chronological history (with an introduction and con- clusion) that allows those who actively participated in the development of sampling to tell this story. The first is a prehistory of digital sampling, documenting the ways that 1970s hip hop DJs developed an approach to music making that continued into the digi- tal era. The second provides an overview of the impact of digital sampling technologies in the 1980s, which contributed directly to what is often referred to as “the golden age of sampling,” roughly from 1986 to 1992. The third offers an account of the copyright infringement lawsuits that exploded in the wake of that golden age, and the fourth explores the ethical—rather than legal—implications of remixing practices. The fifth part brings us into the twenty-first century, discussing the phenomenon before Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 84

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING concluding this oral history with some more general observations about sampling from artists, lawyers, and record company owners.

Introduction: Appropriation, Technology, and the Law Chuck D (Public Enemy): Sampling is playing with sound, or playing sound—like it’s like an instrument, or a game. DJ Abilities ( When I’m sampling, I have all these artists in and Abilities): my . I’ve got Wes Montgomery. I’ve got Art Blakey, he’s my drummer. Chuck D: When those old musicians created magical moments, you had four or five guys that were the best, and they put it down. Sampling allowed the best magical moment to be duplicated. George Clinton With James Brown, they just sampled “Yow” (Parliament-Funkadelic): and all that. That was enough for one sample. There was so much personality in the tone, you didn’t need to sample much. Tom Silverman (Tommy Boy The beautiful thing about sampling was it put Records CEO): tools in the hands of people who didn’t have the traditional musical training or skills. I would say in the last 20 years the biggest musical con- tributions have been made by nonmusicians. Kid 606 (electronic ): Sampling is like Legos. If you give someone a bunch of Lego blocks and tell them to put something together, then they have something to work with—as opposed to saying, “Here’s a bunch of plastic, go mold it and then build it.” Lloyd Dunn (Tape-Beatles): The photocopier was one of those challenges to authorship—also the phonograph, which replaced the traditional artist or musician in many ways. Mark Hosler (Negativland): I see the computer as the ultimate box. Greg Tate (music journalist): A lot of people look at hip hop sampling as doing what bebop jazz artists did—taking a classic and putting a new melody on top of it. Shoshana Zisk ( So that’s where people start to wonder, “Why attorney): is sampling considered stealing, and jazz isn’t considered stealing?” It’s hard to say, really. Harry Allen (music journalist): I’ve never heard a completely original idea, from anyone. Most musicians will say that the best musicians copy. (): How many comedians tell the same joke? Nobody says, “Hey that is my knock-knock joke, or that is my mama joke.” Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 85

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 K. MCLEOD Chuck D: [Public Enemy] sampling wasn’t based on thievery. We used sampling machines as tools and looking at those tools from musician’s point of view. We wanted to blend sound. Just as visual artists take yellow and blue and come up with green, we wanted to be able to do that with sound. DJ Vadim (Electronic of sampling as being represented by two different Musician): painters. One guy takes a photocopy of the Mona Lisa—that’s P. Diddy, who just samples the choruses of songs. The other guy takes the same painting, chops it up and it doesn’t even look like the Mona Lisa any- more. He’s made it into a cow, or a spaceship. That’s what sampling can be like. Harry Allen: Sampling is like the color red. It’s like saying, “Is the color red creative?” Well, it is when you use it creatively. It’s not when it’s just sitting there in a paint can.

I: From Turntables To Samplers Harry Allen: The first person to perform hip hop publicly in the South Bronx, and the person that’s generally given credit for being the father or godfather of hip hop cul- ture, is DJ Kool Herc. And then of course you had and . Greg Tate: If you’ve ever had the fortune to see Afrika Bambaataa mix—he can move between bits and pieces of records and create these incredible medleys in a short period of time DJ Abilities: The DJing aspect is so complex, and rhythmically chal- lenging. To me, the turntable is the last new instrument of the twentieth century. Hank Shocklee Sampling came out of the DJ culture. You would have (Public Enemy): a drumbeat, and you would scratch a horn or a guitar riff on top of it. When you think of the beginning of hip hop, you think (Musician and Poet): of . You had these extended songs with one section where there would be a drum breakdown. Qbert (DJ): The break is the part of the song where it’s just the drums. Chuck D: Favorite of mine? You always have to look at James Brown’s catalog—to either the “Funky Drummer” or the “Cold Sweat” breakbeat. Hank Shocklee: “Funky Drummer” by James Brown—my favorite. The reason why “Funky Drummer” is so special is because it was the first time James Brown stripped down all his music and he had just a drum beat. Clyde Stubblefield On “Funky Drummer,” I started to play a simple beat (James Brown Band): and everybody joined in. Next thing I know all the rap artists were sampling it! Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 86

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING George Clinton: That raw sound appealed to them, the drums and guitar—real flat . James Brown’s records sounded so good. The beats have (): such a fat sound. Tom Silverman: In the early days of recorded hip hop, they would just use records and drum machines. There wasn’t that much more to it than that. Hank Shocklee: I think at the time (in the early 1980s) the only thing that could capture a sample or a recording was in a keyboard called the Synclavier, and that was a $300,000 machine. Matt Black Samplers existed back then, but at the time only rich (): musicians could afford them. Once they got cheaper, and more people could use them, [this] created an explosion of new music and new ways of making music. Chuck D: You had a mad dash of creativity, as far as musicianship and technological innovation was concerned. Those technology companies didn’t necessarily have any kind of allegiance to owners. Anthony Berman The view on the traditional side was that sampling is a (entertainment lawyer): very lazy way of making music, of songwriting. Shock G: As far as sampling is concerned, a lot of musicians and artists from the past generation thought that our gen- eration wasn’t doing enough work. Bobbito Garcia If you were sampling Pee Wee Ellis, you know, he was (Rock Steady Crew): an incredible jazz musician. He was a phenomenal musician. I mean, this guy played music for 20 to 30 years, and you’re taking his music. You’re sampling such a sophisticated level of musicianship. Harry Allen: I think for a lot of people who weren’t used to sampling, it was almost rude, actually, to say, “I’m going to take this song and sample the drumbeat because I like it.” Clyde Stubblefield: I never got a “thanks.” I never got a “Hello, how are you doing?” or anything from rap artists. The only one who thanked me was Melissa Etheridge.

II: The Golden Age of Sampling (1986–92) El-P During the golden age, you had these records that were (MC and producer): these extreme collage records, you know, producers like , who helped create the early records. De La Soul We used to sit there with a bunch of records and try to (hip hop group): find something to go into a song. That process alone, that’s what is so great about it, because we didn’t censor ourselves. Harry Allen: What you are hearing on those records is true experi- mentation, unrestrained by suits. Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 87

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 K. MCLEOD Matt Black: Public Enemy were iconoclastic, definitely. You’d never heard collage music like that. El-P: One song would have five, six, seven, eight layered sam- ples from really famous records, but completely reworked so that it didn’t sound like the original sources. Mr. Len (DJ and You listen to It Takes a Nation of Millions, and you hear producer): the song “Night of the Living Base Heads,” if you really listen to that song, it changes so many times. George Clinton: They actually did . They took small parts and had a whole 24-track that created one song. Prefuse 73 It was just the most powerful onslaught of sound I had (electronic musician): experienced. And it all was coming from machines. When you heard it for the first time back then it’s just like, “Whoa.” Chuck D: Public Enemy was manipulating noise, as Hank Shocklee would say. Hank Shocklee: Sampling was a very intricate thing for us. We [, Public Enemy’s production unit] didn’t just pick up a record and sample that record because it was funky. It was a collage. We were creating a collage. Harry Allen: The Bomb Squad was the association of Chuck D, Hank Shocklee, , and Eric Sadler. Hank Shocklee: My vision of this group was to almost have a production assembly line where each person had their own particu- lar specialty. Greg Tate: The synergy between Chuck, Hank Shocklee and Eric—that really created the Public Enemy sound, because Chuck and Hank hated professional musicians who played “correctly.” You know what I mean? So they would come out with the most outrageous ideas. Hank Shocklee: I’m coming from a DJ’s perspective. Eric is coming from a musician’s perspective. So together, you know, we started working out different ideas. When we sampled, we’d take a piece from each section of a song. You may get one part of the sound is from the intro, another part of it is from the drum break down, another part of it is from the end, the vamp on the end. So, and all those samples are combined to create one sample. Chuck D: We would get into a recording session and all four of us would just be playing. Hank recorded the session, and 95 percent was a mess, and 5 percent of the music was magical. You would listen to this mess and out of that you’d be like, “Whoa, what happened here?” That was the closest thing to a jazz band that you could have, just jamming. Maybe not a conventional jazz band. Maybe someone like Sun Ra [laughs]. Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 88

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING Hank Shocklee: When you’re talking about sampling, and the kind of sampling that Public Enemy did, we had to comb through thousands of records to come up with maybe five good pieces. Chuck D: “Fight the Power” has so many different layers of sound. You have musical loops going around with vocals, with vocal samples. And you got the musical loops compet- ing with the words, and the loops are going backwards and forwards. The song contains a great deal of black from a 25-year period. You listen to it, and it’s like [mock announcer’s voice], “This 25-year period black music is brought to you by Public Enemy.” From the beginning to the end, it’s filled with musical and political history. Drew Daniel (Matmos): What’s exciting about sampling and collage is that it makes sound referential—it’s not abstract. Sound con- tains a specific reference to a specific time and place. That’s what’s cool about sampling: that it transports the listener, if they’re willing, to move in a pathway back to a specific action. It’s like an archive of memo- ries of real experiences. Tom Silverman: There’s all these layers of audio archeology, and you can dig down deep enough and find the sampled source. Miho Hatori: We’re just buying records, searching, searching, and we find a record and it’s like, “There, that bass line.” . . . To find the right one or two seconds of sound—that’s a lot of work. Bobbito Garcia: Hip hop has really created a way for artists to take and grab different things around them, including music from past generations. Chuck D: So you had new generations checking out music from different areas that were not exposed to the , and sampling exposed artists to the new genera- tions. Then those generations became interested in the back catalog of artists like George Clinton. De La Soul: For someone like George Clinton’s Parliament- Funkadelic, you’re growing up to their music, and by using this music you make something out of a shared past. George Clinton: Funk is the DNA of hip hop. It really helped us a lot because people heard it and got to know it and wanted to hear the whole version.

III: Digital Sampling and the Law Siva Vaidhyanathan In the early 1990s there was a series of lawsuits that (media scholar): made it very clear the entertainment world was going to rein in this practice of unauthorized digital sampling. Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 89

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 K. MCLEOD Shoshana Zisk: The other person who was being sampled, of course, their attorneys got up and said, “Well, hey, where’s my piece?” That’s when all the lawsuits started happening. De La Soul: It got to the point when a lot of these older musicians, their grandchildren were telling them, “Yo, you’re being sampled,” so, you know, that’s how they found out. Mr. Dibbs (DJ): ’s song, “Bonita Applebaum,” someone I know, well, his dad performed the beat they sampled. So, when his dad heard that, he’s like, “What the fuck is that?” Greg Tate: I think that everyone woke up after De La Soul’s record came out and Turtles sued them. De La Soul: For me I felt like, “Wow, we’re popular; we’re getting sued by someone we don’t even know” [laughs]. Tom Silverman: We would clear samples. The most notable one was , which took forever to clear, and that was back when sampling didn’t cost that much. De La Soul: The organ and drumbeat was the Turtles’ “.” We actually told , our record company, and they decided not to clear it because it was just a skit. Tom Silverman: They never told us there was a sample. We can only clear what we know. And on 3 Feet High and Rising, they told us what the samples were and we cleared them. Shoshana Zisk: The most famous case was Biz Markie, who sampled “Alone Again (Naturally).” The court’s opinion began, “Thou shalt not steal” and the judge referred this to the LAPD to be criminally prosecuted. After that, every- one in the industry said, “Okay, we have to change the rules here.” De La Soul: When it really happened to Biz Markie, [the lawsuits] really took off. Saul Williams: You’d start missing albums, like, “Shouldn’t Biz Markie have an album out by now?” The album comes out one year late, and the title is All Samples Cleared [laughs]. De La Soul: Things definitely got more complicated. On our fourth album we recorded, we sat down at the beginning of the album with the record company, Tommy Boy, and they went through a list. “Well, George Clinton is in litiga- tion with Westbound so don’t mess with his stuff right now, or George Harrison don’t like rap, don’t mess with him.” We actually had a list of people not to touch. Tom Silverman: We had great ideas about doing songs that never even went to completion because we knew we wouldn’t be able to clear the samples. Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 90

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING DJ Spooky What happened to Public Enemy in the late 80s and (electronic musician): early 90s is they had to change their composition strat- egy because of lawsuits. Don Joyce There’s a whole industry built up around licensing now, (Negativland): getting clearance rights. Every label has offices that do that, and it has become a big income stream. Anthony Berman: It certainly created a big jump in the revenue streams of copyright holders, and it added another layer of bureaucracy to the creative process of making collage- based music. Tom Silverman: It’s a lot of accounting work. You’re having to pay out on 60 different people on one album. It’s quite a night- mare actually. Shoshana Zisk: When I was working in copyright at , you’d get one song and there’d be 14 people that you had to get permission from. And each one of them is like, “I own 6.2 percent, I own 8.9 percent.” There’s a pie-graph of a song and everyone has a slice. Siva Vaidhyanathan: Sample clearing quickly evolved to the point that it became cheaper to only sample one song per song, for economic reasons. That made sample-based music less creative. Chuck D: That’s when the sound of shifted and people started to only sample one hook, because it was cheaper than paying for 20 or 30 clips in each song— like how we did it. De La Soul: That’s what’s kind of messed up about sampling now. When you create a song you hand it to lawyers and the costs are just so crazy that you can’t pay that kind of money. Michael Hausman You can get some pretty outrageous quotes, and that (artist manager): hasn’t helped creativity very much. There has to be some kind of reasonable prices. Harry Allen: Those records are kind of artifacts of an earlier time, records that couldn’t exist today. They’re financially and legally untenable and unworkable records. We can’t make those records anymore because you’d have to sell them for, probably, $159 each just to pay all the royalties. Chuck D: By 1994, it was impossible to do any type of record we did in the late 1980s, because every second of sound had been cleared. It kind of curtailed creativity. Dean Garfield I find it hard to believe that, even with Public Enemy, (Former vice they couldn’t continue doing what they wanted to do president of legal because if one person doesn’t clear a snippet, they could affairs, RIAA): just use another snippet from someone else who would Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 91

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 K. MCLEOD clear it. I think Chuck D may say that today because he finds it convenient to say that. But it’s not true. Chuck D: At the end of the day, lawyers never lose money; they gain from both sides going back and forth.

IV: The Ethics of Sampling There’s two sides to everything. Some people like to (DJ and producer): hear their music being sampled, some don’t. Mr. Len: It all depends on what side of the fence you’re sitting on. Like, if you’re the one infringing someone’s copyright, of course, you feel like, “Hey man, this copyright law sucks.” Michael Hausman: The context in which music appears is very important because in my experience artists are very concerned with all aspects of how their art is presented. Chuck D: If someone else sampled my work without permission, I probably would be mad if my voice was put in a context I don’t believe in. If it’s put in, for example, some kind of Nazi song, I’d feel offended. Then that’d be a defama- tion of my character. De La Soul: I respect anybody who feels an attachment to a song that might be about their mother, and then NWA sam- ples it and says “bitch” over it. It’s understandable they don’t want that. Michael Hausman: If the were sexist, violent, or very profane, they might not want to have anything to do with it. The artists I work with see their creations as an extension of themselves. So I think there is a tremendous desire to control this creation because it is you, and you want people to get the best of you that you can put out there. El-P: I’m empathetic to the other argument, which is that you don’t want your music stolen, or taken out of con- text. I care about my music just as much as anyone else. Hank Shocklee: I’ve always been from the school where, you know, from if I’m sampling, who am I to attack somebody else from sampling from me? De La Soul: What happens when we get sampled? Honestly, it’s an honor. There’s been some things that I’ve heard that were no good, but I know they sampled it out of appre- ciation for us. Mr. Lif I mean if someone uses my voice, I’m not coming after (MC and producer): you. I remember the days when it was an honor to hear someone cut your voice on a . I encourage you to use my voice. George Clinton: You’re supposed to get paid for it, because it’s your personality that’s in the sample. Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 92

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING Prefuse 73: If somebody’s going to take something of mine, some beat of mine and use it in some different way, do something creative with it, do whatever with it, I’m not going to care. Shock G: If it’s just a little piece, a little sound bite here, and a sound bite there, use what you like. You like Humpty’s voice? Funk with me. Spread it to the world, you know. Clyde Stubblefield: Instead of receiving money for sampling, I’d prefer to get my name on the record saying, “This is Clyde play- ing,” to get my name out. Money is not important. Scanner Bjork sampled me for a record called Post, which went (electronic musician): on to sell something like five million copies. She used about five seconds of a track of mine, which formed the basis of this pop song. I was caught in a boiling pot of lawyers battling while I sat behind them thinking, “What’s going on?” I didn’t mind it was used for this track because I have also used sounds from other places. Richard McGuire I’m totally for sampling. I think it’s just like any other ( Liquid): art form. But I feel both ways about it. There should be compensation for the original artist. De La Soul: You know, we understand that if you sample someone, you should pay for it. If someone wants to get paid for it, I understand. They made it. DJ Vadim: I refuse to pay for sampling. I mean, I’ve changed the music so I wouldn’t have to pay. Pete Rock: I’ve never disguised a sample, I never took the chance doing that. I play by the rules. If you play by the rules, you have to clear the sample—you have to get a license. Mix Mike (DJ): I can imagine that a few samples I’ve used I should’ve cleared—I am not going to name any particular sam- ples. But I kind of reinvented them. Smashed them up.

V: Mashups and Digital Culture Scanner: The Internet has liberated the world of mashups. So you can take a Destiny’s Child track with a Nirvana track and actually pitch it so it fits perfectly. And you can take two beats that would never ever match and make them match. Matt Black: I guess mashups are sampling and mixing . Because when you use material that audiences are familiar with, they know that something new is being created. It’s spelling it out in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS, basically. Raquel Cepeda Record companies often release a cappella tracks to DJs (music journalist): so that you can play them over more popular instrumen- tals, you can mix them. Drew Daniel (Matmos): I mean, what’s so great about hip hop and R&B is that every single comes with an a cappella on the flipside. Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 93

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 K. MCLEOD It’s like being given some sort of naked photograph of a celebrity. Chuck D: Technology has leveled the playing field. You put a cap- pella vocals out there and you become 50:50 partners with somebody else who might have come up with an incredible piece of work. It is like a universal network of studios where technology allows people to have studios in bedrooms instead of big expensive studios. Richard McGuire: It can just be miraculous how mashups fit together. It just knocks me out. Each time you hear new stuff like that it’s like, “Oh, it’s so simple, why didn’t I think of that?” Drew Daniel: But I think that it can reach a banal “stealth oldies” level where it’s just sort of oldies by another means. Like, “Oh it’s Wham! and Van Halen!” It’s not actually interesting. It’s like, “Wow, you’ve made another jala- peño mint sandwich and no one wants to eat it.” Michael Hausman: I personally like Brian [], and I like , but it brings up a lot of ethical issues and I think people have the right to complain about it, you know? Joanna Demers The Grey Album was a sort of mashup that was distrib- (Musicologist): uted at the end of 2003 by DJ Danger Mouse, who mixed the vocals from Jay-Z’s Black Album with the Beatles’ White Album. Soon after it came out, EMI sent out all these cease and desist letters to squelch this album completely, and this got out on the Internet very quickly and galvanized protests in February 2004. Chuck D: The Danger Mouse album caused a lot of people to get mad at the fact that more people can be producers and jump to high heights from low places. Dean Garfield: Even though I may enjoy The Grey Album and may groove to it in my own home, the way The Grey Album was released is not the way to go about it. The way to go about it is to get a license.

Conclusion: The of Sampling Chuck D: Sampling definitely challenged people’s conceptions of what music was. Mix Master Mike: It’s an art to us. We want to recreate stuff from the past and make it new. George Clinton: Just like rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s and 1960s, it reminded me of that, when people were saying it wasn’t music. El-P: The musical culture of sampling, way that we do music—that’s not going to be embraced, it doesn’t fit the bottom line. Mark Hosler: What we’ve seen in the last few decades, because of economic pressure, is more copyright constraints. That, Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 94

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING I think ultimately, is really bad for the culture. We’ve moved toward total omnipotent ownership of every- thing, forever. And that’s the death of culture, that’s the death of ideas, science, art. It’s very shortsighted. Drew Daniel: Another danger inherent in all this is the cop in your own head. One of the worst casualties of all this law- yerly stuff is people not doing things because they are afraid maybe someone will sue them in the future. Today, to build on something you need the permission (Harvard University of somebody else. And it’s that transformation which law professor): has been radical and recent. Dean Garfield: The idea that this will result in less creativity is a farce, and it’s an excuse not to use your own creative juices to move people. I can suggest an alternative for people who feel stifled by the costs of sampling, which is—be creative. There’s nothing that compels you to sample someone’s work. You can just listen to it and vibe off it and create something new. Tom Silverman: I would like to see a level playing field where the small- est guy working in his home studio in , or anywhere in the world, could come up with something without censoring himself because he’s afraid of being sued. I think it’s unfair. I think there are a lot of creators out there who like to work with building blocks that others have created.

Notes 1 Kembrew McLeod, Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property (, MN: University of Press, 2007), 66. 2 Grand Upright Music Ltd. v. Warner Brothers Records, Inc., 780 F. Supp. 182 (SDNY 1991). 3 http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/03/arts/critics-choices-albums-as-mileposts-in-a-musical-century. html?src=p,&pagewanted=4 (accessed July 29, 2014). 4 http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/registry/nrpb-2004reg.html (accessed July 29, 2014). 5 Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola, Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 27. 6 Ibid., 210. 7 Some of the interviews were conducted on camera during the filming of the documentary Copyright Criminals: This is a Sampling Sport, produced by Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McLeod (see bibliogra- phy). Others were conducted during research for McLeod’s Freedom of Expression® and McLeod and DiCola’s Creative License; all of the interviews were conducted between 1999 and 2011. The answers, in some cases, were edited for clarity.

Bibliography Franzen, Benjamin and McLeod, Kembrew. Copyright Criminals. PBS, 2011. Grand Upright Music Ltd. v. Warner Brothers Records, Inc. 780 F. Supp. 182, SDNY, 1991. McLeod, Kembrew. Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. McLeod, Kembrew and DiCola, Peter. Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 95

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366