At 15:06 -0700 05/22/02, B. Young wrote:
>The song is good period. I usually play the instrumental though.
>It's unlike anything being played on mainstream radio. The first
>time i heard it on the radio I was buggin' like "this is the dopest
>thing i've heard on the radio in i dont know how long". There is
>definitely a buzz. There was a segment on a major local news
>station here in LA specifically about the song. Everyone is saying
>the same thing. It's unlike anything else on the radio. The
>eastern sound is generally new to people that listen to radio music.
>IMO it's nothing but a good thing.
>
>I disagree on one thing... "Addictive" doesnt sound like something
>Timberland would do... it sounds just like something DJ Quik
>[excellent rap producer I've been following since i was 11 years
>old!] would do with Dre. I'm a rap afficionado... i grew up on
>gangster rap, grew up in the hood, live in the hood and I can say
>first hand it is bringing a new sound in and its a good thing.
>Everyone has been talking about the eastern sample and a friend of
>mine made a good point "it may not sound new or out of the ordinary
>to someone who listens to a lot of different music, but to us its
>completely new". There was even a 5 minute segment on a major news
>station here in LA about it... the streets buzzing with "what the
>hell is this new sound?".
Hmm, I recently read an interview on Slashdot of Siva Vaidhyanathan,
our man against the MPAA,
(http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/15/166220&mode=thread&tid=103),
about how now that copyright has become such the issue that rap has
become stale--e.g. everything starts to sound the same, because
they've become afraid of getting nailed for not clearing the samples.
Actually I think the Beastie Boys haven't been sued recently for a
flute loop;)
Here's the important bits:
H: Your book, Copyrights and Copywrongs, covers the evolution of
copyright law from its origins to the late twentieth century. Where
did you get the idea for this?
SV: From rap music. I grew up with rap music. But in the early 1990s
I noticed the music was changing. Everyone else was paying attention
to the lyrics -- the sexism and the violence and the anger. I was
observing how the underlying body of samples were getting thinner,
more predictable, more obvious, less playful. I had heard that there
had been some copyright conflicts in 1990 and 1991. So I suspected
that lawsuits had chilled playful and transgressive sampling. I was
right. The courts had stolen the soul. And rap music is poorer for
it. We used to get fresh, exciting, walls of sound that were a
language unto themselves. By the mid-1990s, all we got were jeep
beats and heavy bass.
JH: Are you dissing Ice Cube?
SV: [laughs] No! He's an O.G.! He and other artists are handcuffed by
the law. From my research on rap, I got curious about the evolution
of American copyright law and how it altered and got altered by the
rise of different media technologies and forms of expression. So I
traced the changes from the 19th century publishing industries
through the rise of film and television, through blues, jazz, rock,
and rap, and finally to the digital moment.
happy sampling,
erik g
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