FIRST AMENDMENT, COPYRIGHT AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Go ninja, go ninja go.

As I am a fan of a wide variety of music genres, let me start off by saying that I love sampling. I’ve loved it since the first time I heard the album Paul’s Boutique by The Beastie Boys, which isn’t so much a traditional collection of songs, as it is a densely packed collage of music taken from over 200 different sources, in order to create a nostalgic love letter to New York and disco. It truly made me understand the importance of sampling as a way to take previously created art, twist it, skew it, cut it up, and arrange it in a way that creates something entirely new. This is why I found Brett Gaylor’s appreciation of Girl Talk in RiP!: A Remix Manifesto so interesting. Specifically, how he described the enormous expenses of sampling. The Beastie Boys had the advantage of making Paul’s Boutique in 1989, when getting the rights to sample a song was much more affordable. Today the cost of sampling is so high that really only the wealthiest of musicians bother, like Kanye West and Rick Rubin. This is a real tragedy, and because of the extremely high cost, it seems no artist will be able to create sample-heavy albums like Paul’s Boutique, De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, or DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. ever again. Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. There, I’m done name-dropping. Now that I’ve gotten my love of the technique out of the way, I’m going to discuss a case where sampling went horribly wrong. Actually, it might be the most well-known example, as I don’t think there’s been a three month period in my entire life where I haven’t heard the words “Stop. Collaborate and listen”.

You can’t have a discussion about ill-advised sampling without talking about the unofficial king of the practice, Vanilla Ice. I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I still don’t fully understand how he actually believed he was going to get away with sampling “Under Pressure” without giving royalties to Queen and David Bowie. I mean, if you’re going to try to gyp an artist on a sample, why would you use one of the most recognizable bass lines of all time. It’s like sampling the riff from “Smoke on the Water” and then trying to deny it’s Deep Purple. You can lie about it all you want but in the end you’re not fooling anyone. However, all of my confusion about the “Ice Ice Baby” blunder cleared-up when I discovered this one fact; the song was never meant to be a hit. It was supposed to be a random B-side that would go under the recording industry’s radar. Unfortunately it became a huge success and Vanilla Ice ended up giving both writing credits and royalties to Bowie and Queen.

Now, why would I say that Vanilla Ice went too far when I’ve already established myself as a militant advocate for the sampling art form? Well, it stems from the fact that I appreciate quality over consistent ideology, and the sample in “Ice Ice Baby” isn’t very good. Vanilla Ice makes no attempt to weave the sample into the fabric of the music. Instead, he just dumps the bassline into the hook as a way to fill space between verses.  And just to be clear, I’m not saying I don’t like “Ice Ice Baby”. It’s way too catchy and way too stupid for me not to love it, but the sample is just so lazy. When Vanilla Ice wrote this song, he clearly treated sampling like the dumb 16 year old he was, without a shred of subtlety or invention. So basically my measurement for when I think sampling goes too far, is whether or not I like it. Is that fair? No. Is it unbiased? No. Does it make sense to determine copyright infringement based on an individual’s taste? No. But most importantly, do I care? And the answer is…

Reply to Justin:

Good review man. I've been a fan of South Park since I was 10, when I would watch it in secret late at night to avoid my parents from knowing. Back then I just laughed at the crassness of it all, but now I respect the show for its willingness to critique essentially any aspect relating to pop-culture, without any real agenda aside from pointing out things the creators find absurd.
I appreciate that you gave the episode a positive review even though you said the episode didn't make you laugh as much as usual. It shows that you understand that South Park can do more than just make you laugh, and instead can provide a different and, usually, insightful perspective on popular issues.
Also, the Yelp lawsuit turned out to be total bullshit. See here.
http://www.snopes.com/south-park-yelp-lawsuit/
I was fooled too until I found this. Too bad, would have been cool to see the lawsuit play out.