Kanye West sampling Mono No Aware. What are your thoughts?

#41

Everyone shut up when they found out it wasn’t Kanye who found the sample, huh?

#42

Fr3sh by Kareem Lotfy samples a PNL song, you could say the PNL song is basically the whole sound of Fr3sh to be honest. I wonder if PAN cleared the sample.

It seems like ppl are fine when artist they like or smaller artist sample but as soon as a big artist does or one they don’t like it’s a problem.

#43

I think i’ts just matter of resources. Bigger artists have them, smaller artists dont.

#44

I only can speak for myself, but I had the feeling that I already made my point and that the discussion was somehow settled.
that one tweet changes absolutely nothing. Kanye is the one who has to take responsibility, because it’s his album. it really doesn’t matter if one of his paid producers, a lawyer, he himself by rushing the release and foregoing finishing touches, or somebody else messes up. that tweet shows once again that Kanye has practically turned into the CEO of his own music career.

as long as PNL won’t speak up I imagine they did. I tend to always give labels/artists the benefit of the doubt. we only have this Kanye discussion because PAN actually spoke up.

mo money, mo problems
but, again - sampling is not bad as long as they are cleared.

#45

Would PNL speak out if they didn’t even know? Electronic music was built off of sampling without permission or clearing samples. From all the House/Techno songs that sample funny records, to all the songs that sample the amen break. Imagine if MAW had sued for the Ha sample, would ballroom exist as it does today?

Even when an artist from a scene makes music they themselves are appropriating the culture they come from for profit. Has Chicago benefitted from Dril music like Chief Keef, no. Do the countless cultures European DJs steal rhythms for club tunes from benefit from it, no. By selling art you are appropriating the culture because the whole culture does not benefit from the art as you do.

To me intellectual property is reactionary capitalist BS that only gives power to the already wealthy, the only people that can afford the insane process of clearing samples are major label artists and even they are dealing with ever shrinking budgets. unless you get sampled by someone huge like kanye and a laywer will take the case pro bono underground artists aren’t even go going to be able to afford to sue.

#46

wait, what?
so if I’m an underground producer with a full-time job who uses her whole spare time to create music and somehow manage to land on a small indie label, it’d be fine for you if somebody like Kanye or one of his producers stumbles across my song, uses a fair amount of it and then makes thousands or even millions with that?
the whole idea intellectual property and clearing samples is to protect the underground artists from reactionary capitalist BS that gives power to the already wealthy.

appropriating one’s culture is another topic, but perhaps with the same bottom line as for sampling - as Etch said earlier, “when I sample I gotta make that shit my own”. it’s cool when you use a sample as jumping-off point and then develop your own idea, but taking an intrinsic part of another song, using it as a sample without changing it (too much) and charging money for it is just wrong.

#47

How is this a power dynamic thing? You are reading way too far into this. It happens all the time from every kind of artists/producer.

#48

Yes totally Copy Right protects underground artist that’s why so many producers get their songs taken off soundcloud and youtube because Copy Right laws are protecting them not because Copy Right laws are mainly benefitting big labels which are huge multi-million dollar corporations.

#49

@cesar Intellectual property doesn’t care if you’re wealthy or not and is not responsible when artist are not treated fairly. Of course it’s easier to enforce your rights when you have money but you can’t blame a singular law for this.

However, the whole culture of sampling is questioning intellectual property since the 80s. And there were/are many law-suits.

For example Kraftwerk sued a german Hip Hop-producer who did not give credits for sampling the band. Both are established non-underground artists. In the 80s Afrika Bambaataa (or his label pr whoever) paid Kraftwerk for using their beats in Planet Rock.

The drummer who did the Amen Break never received any royalties for being sampled by thousands of underground producers and died in poverty.

In 2008 a german artist did a song consisting of 70.200 samples. For every sample he filled a form to register it at GEMA which is Germany’s organisation to “protect” musicians.

There’s no easy answer in this debate. Maybe the easiest way would be to share percentages of the profit an artist makes with the owner of the copyrights and even this doesn’t have to be fair when the copyright is with the label instead of the artist who has been sampled.

#50

Although there are nuanced arguments you can put forward for copyright freedom, they generally start to look pretty stupid when it’s someone like Kanye doing it, via an expensive and corporate scouting network of co-producers.

#51

I think credit should absolutely be given, and for it to come from such a high profile artist (his producer or otherwise) is pretty poor conduct. Admittedly that’s hard to argue when you have cases like the original amen break drummer receiving no royalties, alongside no doubt hundreds of other artists (the entire jungle movement, hip hop, every single sample heavy genre out there), but the frontman’s crowdfunded reward back in 2015 should be taken as a form of legal precedent from that point onwards. I seem to remember reading that Kanye or associates tried to get away without paying royalties for the use of Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14th”, which wasn’t exactly edited in its use. I feel that some amount of creative commons logic should be applied, I could forgive an up and coming producer doing something like this so long as they weren’t just ripping off melodies/compositions, but again for a multimillion sales/streams artist like Kanye to attempt something like that is an insult to the original artist.

#52

this is a very good typo