Don't Sample (article for Boo Goo Doo Boom)

I want to shout out a fast friend, Enigmatik, for allowing me to speak on his "state of music today" post on Boo Goo Doo Boom. My article is in the middle, and one of the first comedic/sarcastic joints I've written in a bit. Def. peep out the rest of the articles, there's some dope bloggers doing all kinds of pieces out there, with links to their shit. Here is my piece, in its entirety:


Don’t Sample

sample: 3. a sound of short duration, as a musical tone or a drumbeat, digitally stored in a synthesizer for playback. 5. serving as a specimen: a sample piece of cloth.

The Man, who in most cases is white, rich, and totally disconnected with the urban culture he is writing checks for, does not want you to sample. Whether it’s a chorus from
some classic show tune or 3 seconds of an ill guitar riff, you will have to pay SOMEBODY for that sound, and it could potentially suck up your budget or delay your project’s release (I’m looking at you, Just Blaze). The thing is, no one seems to care about what this means to the quality of our grown son, Hip-Hop (that nigga stopped being a childa LONG time ago)…

The Man, again that balding white real estate mogul who is funding his 25 year old budding A&R son’s wet dream, does not want you sampling music. And if you want to sample music, you have to do it on his terms. The “MP3” is right now the most widely accepted form of music since the Compact Disc. It weighs nothing, easy to use, and is able to be played on the majority of the portable music players. Yet, there are CDs where you cannot turn music CDs you purchased (if you so chose to do so) into MP3 file format. Also, downloading promotional use-MP3 files is also strongly frowned upon, for fear that the polar ice caps will melt, and the penguins will drown… or that these bald rich moneygrubbers won’t get their investment back, whichever comes first. Some would think that these two forms of “sampling” do not intertwine… but let me show you how this thing works:

Biz Markie sampled Gilbert O’Sullivan and
caused a stir so loud that now every bedroom beat fondler fears for the life of his unborn and ends up not snipping that Led Zeppelin hi-hat. This means that more producers start to create music that they’ve actually conceived on their own (which usually involves music-making software or hardware beat machines that have either been pilfered or purchased through crack sales, which is another article), which can, at times, be of equal quality, but is usually of lesser quality. These “songs” get sent to the record label, who then puts them on a CD marked “ring tones”, and leaves it on the desk of the summer intern. This intern then listens to said CD, realizes “yo, this shit is off the meat rack” (even though this is rarely the case – usually, these toads are just so happy to have something that you don’t that they are willing to champion any nonsensical necromancer as the next H to the Izzo), and proceeds to upload that new Lil’ Jon ft. Big Maybelle RMX of “Back Dat Azz Up” to all of the contacts (read: bloggers) on his A&R boss’ les internets “contact list”. Within the day, radio stations and les internets get flooded with this new masterpiece in polyphonic ringtonability, and prompts “the bootlegger” (aka that nigga in the studio with the master copy of the entire CD) to leak the entire album, including extra-rare Japanese bonus tracks featuring Sammy Haggar and that nigga Bad Azz, to, you guessed it, les internets. The overwhelming amount of downloads and P2P sharing drives the sales of Pimp My Grits: Lil’ Jon Sings The Blues to only go 1x Platinum, thus creating such a decline in the RIAA’s yearly numbers that gas prices will have to rise another $5 just to balance the national budget. This fact is little known, but how else do you explain the millions of man minutes on les internets and on the nightly news devoted to today’s new terror: “10-year-old downloaders!

The moral of this story? The RIAA needs to let up. Hip-Hop was built on sampling, and the fact that they have clouded niggas’ minds (i.e. making them think that they will get more loot for creating the theme song to their new dance craze by opening up Fruity Loops and making, well, fruity loops, where all of the time that they are really just going to get a bigger cut of an advance they can’t pay back) into thinking they can become celebrities overnight is just ludicrous. Why do you think niggas like Crime Mob are allowed to produce? And the fact that the RIAA is willing and able to shut down sites that actually help promote their garbage is beyond me. It’s all about the backend: that’s where their wallets are, and that’s where they rape their "artists”. You’d think the emergence of services like iTunes, which help smart consumers bypass the 20+ track releases that yield 1 hot track and 1 semi-funny interlude, would mean something: we need to go back to the 1950s, where the 45 was king. Or back to the 8 track tape days, where niggas BEST to have a dope long player, or that shit gets used to hold up ya grandmama’s stool with the one broke leg.

Now before you guys load up on comments and diatribes poking holes in my scientific research, I will add this footnote: the only time they waste time on niggas who still sample is when Kanye West or some other money maker is involved. He’s one of the only cats really eating who still samples. Whether it’s Chaka Khan or Daft Punk, dude (or his ghost producers) has an ear for music, and can cook up a beat with ease. And for some reason, the fact that he can twist knobs helps alleviate the fact that dude really can’t flow – he has written a verse or 3 that have knocked, but dude is not hot with his voice.

In any case, it’s not like any of this matters. Once you read this, you
will click over to some other blog that matters and continue the hunt for “that
new”. I know I will…

Once again, shouts to Enigmatik for being chill and keep an eye peeled to his blog, it's the bidness.
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