alt Hacker NewsWhy is it "Shared DNA" if all rappers do is sample and totally rip-off music (Logos, artist names etc) before them?
The concept of "DNA" with music goes much deeper than some lucky nobody who sampled someone's life work so they could pollute it with lowest common denominator poetry and a Roland Drum Machine.
I submit that oogling over people who steal music by sampling is not that deep, and there's deeper methods of musical analysis than "This band sampled this beat, this means they're a natural progression of art".
Every example I skimmed over was some hiphop artist who ripped off music before them.
Other artists have some shame and just copy chord progressions, but rappers went so far to just completely steal parts of the song.
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> Every example I skimmed over was some hiphop artist who ripped off music before them.
Mozart ripped of Händel. For example parts from his famous Reqiuem are a rip of of Händels Messiah. And a lot of classical Composers (ex. Beethoven) ripped of from their "godfather": J.S Bach. Altough they did not call it rip of, but learning.
There's a great video essay series known as "Everything is a Remix" by Kirby Ferguson [1] if you have an hour to spare. Ferguson uses the trends of music sampling as a base for how artists draw inspiration from others. The controversy of sampling has been used across genres, include around minute 9 Ferguson points out that Led Zepplin were considered ripoffs for their appropriation of Jake Holmes. Axis of Awesome also has a "chord progression song" [2] that makes fun of how similar many pop songs are.
The video draws a nice parallel to how so much in our world serves as "inspiration" for our own works, but acknowledges the controversy around using a single source as "too much inspiration". Especially as we move into whatever copyright arguments are getting made toward AI right now, I think it serves as a nice outline on why this is such a complicated matter.
[1] https://www.everythingisaremix.info/everything-is-a-remix-20...
I'm always weirded out by such "domain-specific knowledgey" statements like this.
I just don't get how someone simultaneously e.g. knows what a Roland Drum Machine is, but also manages to stay wildly ignorant about an entire genre of established music to make such a sweeping statement.
Your cutoff is somewhat arbitrary.
Whatever artist you think is legitimate never did anything fully original either. The only original musician may have been the first caveman to hit two logs together.
I agree that rap/hiphop artists are often guilty of just gracelessly slapping a beat over some one else's hook or chorus and it really does come off as lazy and disrespectful. This is especially true when the sample is of something that is (or was) already popular and easily recognizable.
That said, samples can be used in a lot of creative ways and even some very straightforward ones while still creating something unique/transformative. I still think it's a good thing that artists can use samples in their work since it does expand what's possible and I can always just ignore the low effort garbage.
this is a weirdly anti art view of music as a whole, do you just not enjoy organized sound?
The very first rap/hip-hop song, Rapper's Delight is itself ... inspired by previous a song or two.
But that's ok, since they absolutely added improvements.
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Some sampling might be lazy, but there's plenty of impressive producers which take the art to the next level. Some suggestions you can sample: DJ Shadow, J Dilla, Madlib, The Avalanches, Statik Selektah. And as a bonus, an artist definitely not hip hop which makes beautiful use of sampling is Jens Lekman.
I will be charitable even though you called rap "lowest common denominator" poetry.
If you are genuinely interested, I suggest you look into the history of hip hop. IMO, the point of early hip hop was not to create sophisticated music, but to connect people by using sounds they were already familiar with. More important was the message and vocal delivery of the MC.