I am collecting information and examples about music sampling. If you have any examples of the permission to use samples being denied, samples replaced with other work, removed, lawsuits and other stories, please let me know.
I plugged in sampling and lawsuit into google and came up with a good example. In 2004, NWA lost on appeal to the 6th Cir. for sampling a three-note guitar riff from “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” by ’70s P-funk artists George Clinton and Funkadelic for the song “100 Miles and Runnin.” I know when I hear “Shit, God Damn, . . .” it is a party. Off the top of my head I know I have heard samples from this song in used by Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, and someone else in a song called Make it Happen. Asking a couple people in their early twenties to complete the phrase “Shit, God Damn, . . .” only got me blank stares, so there is little evidence that the sample was being used for cultural criticism–but what of those that are, for instance a rap artist who would like to include the voice of MLK or Stokley Charmicheal in order to be critical of some stance they took. Without the ability to sample these voices, the ability to reference pop culture in order to elevate or criticize is circumscribed. This is especially important when the sample is easily recognizable, the very thing that prior sampling cases (before the 100 Miles case) have relied upon… is it easily identifiable.
If you know of more obscure examples, especially ones that didn’t make it to court or settled out of court, please send them my way. If you are an artist that this has happened to, I would like to talk to you. Thanks.
Filed under: Copyright
