Whatcha'll listening to?
- Thread starter Sabretooth-Ninja
- Start date
I am so out of the loop. I hear a "new" song and love it and then discover it's 4+ years old!!!
The last new song I liked was this, and it's a Strokes song specifically borrowing from the 40 year old Dancing With Myself as an artistic comment or something about the number of Strokes-like bands that followed them in the early 2000s. Music today is mostly garbage from my experience.
I just hit 405 deadlift to this track
Putting the PR in PrZZZ?
Dude I’ve seen GWAR 10+ times live. We all have that music that ties us to what hurts so good.
I was introduced to Gwar by my older brother at a tumultuous time in our lives after spending some time apart. At the same time, I introduced to him the Wu Tang Clan. Perhaps the most equidistant of musical genres and themes, and yet, strangely similar. Some fond and some painful memories. C'est la vie.
This is the song that GWAR stole from NWA - same beat and rhymes as Gangsta Gangsta by NWA
Ironic, because NWA stole multiple things from other bands to make that song. Like most songs in hip hop it is piggybacking off the work of others by directly stealing it and then manipulating it in the studio.
Hip Hop was built on the shoulders of giants. I do not think that is a degradation of the genre but rather a manifestation of the genre itself. Hip Hop IS samples, it IS others' melodic prowess, with provocative lyrics that fit the rebellion of the time.
If I have seen further, it is from standing on the shoulders of giants.
I understand that many hip hop beats, melodies, and hooks are derived or borrowed from previous artists, but rest assured that royalties have been paid on samples. Sampling is an artform in and of itself. Hip hop is more about lyrics and wordplay anyway, but I respect your position and understand it fully.
No, many musicians don't receive royalties from the theft and plagiarism of their work. One of the most famous samples used is the so-called Amen break . This drum break has been used thousands of times in numerous popular recordings. The holder of the copyright saw no money from its use, and the drummer who performed the break received no credit for his work to create the piece of music which subsequently became iconic through others' unpermitted - and even unrequested - use of his work.
This is not someone taking a previously-used chord progression, or borrowing a popular ( or not so popular ) riff, or appropriating a drum fill for themselves and then recreating it on their own instruments and recording it themselves. It is the hip hop artists taking a preexisting recording and using it themselves. Often times these recordings are modified or manipulated in some way but they are still recordings which someone else has made and now which someone else has taken for their own use, often without compensation or permission. From its earliest days hip hop has done this, starting with DJs using simple turn tables to manipulate recordings manually without studio equipment. They would take physical records and utilize them to form the music over which the lyrics were rapped.
Think of it like an artist with a painting. You are an artist who creates a painting from your own mind. You have poured your own hard work into creating your piece of art. You offer this piece of art for sale to others and it manages to attract some interest from some buyers but otherwise does not make you a wealthy or well-known person. Now, a decade or two later, someone who has happened across this painting decides to take it, cut it up a bit, maybe move some of the pieces of it around, or otherwise change it into something a little different from what you created but still recognizable as your own work. This person who has taken your painting and chopped it up a bit now sells this defaced work of yours as his own, maybe as a part of a greater compilation of pieces, and becomes wealthy and famous, and is lauded as a paragon of artistic achievement, all without recognizing your own contribution to his success. How would this make you feel? Not particularly happy I would imagine.
Similarly you can compare it to an author writing a story. You shop your story around a bit and it receives some middling interest but nothing amazing. Your story is then sold to some enterprising fellow who decides that your text is a wonderful basis for their own business venture. They tweak some of the characters, alter some of the language, maybe add a new setting, or even a plot point or two but the bulk of the work remains yours. This person then goes on to sell millions of copies of this modified work and claims it as his own work of artistic genius, ignoring any contribution which you have made to it. Surely the original author can't be happy upon seeing this success while seeing no benefit for their own hard work.
Ironically, despite the frequent assertion that those who oppose sampling do so for racist or prejudicial reasons, many of the most famous samples come from the work of black funk, soul, and R&B musicians. Sometimes the recordings used are so obscure that it's nearly impossible to find the actual holder of the recording's copyright. But just because the owner of a property cannot be found that does not mean that it you are allowed to steal their property in the first place. If that were the case then countless thieves would go free simply because no one came forward to claim their stolen property.
Hip hop is a genre of music formed from the destruction and modification of others' work. That does not mean that it can not contain its own level of beauty - indeed a burned-out house, or a dying tree can be a beautiful sight in its own way - but it is not an original thing created on its own. Nor is it a recreation of something else, or something inspired by something before. It is simple alteration and defacement. Whatever one may say about the artistry of hip hop artists, and their lyrical prowess it is undeniable that hip hop, as a genre, is founded upon the outright theft and plagiarism of others' work.
I don't like hip hop because I don't like the way it sounds. Similarly, I don't like heavy metal because I don't like the way it sounds. But I can respect heavy metal as an art form because it is the creation of someone with their own talent and their own work making something themselves. I can not respect hip hop because it is not that ; it is a bastardization of someone else's hard work with a few sprinkles thrown on top of it to obscure its origins.
If you want to stand as tall as a giant then build a tower on your own. Better still, be content with however high you stand on your own two feet, for at least you can know that they are yours.
