An Obsidian Potency PSA: The biggest threat to democracy (and hip-hop) since Tipper.

"This is another public service announcement brought to you in part...by Obsidian Potency."



If you haven't read this Slate article, you should.  It describes how opportunistic corporations are buying rights to songs and then filing all kinds of lawsuits in hopes of fleecing artists -- particularly rappers who have already paid royalties to the original artist (when required by law) to sample.   The author calls this recent phnomenon "sample trolling."



Now, I know what some of you are thinking: "Sampling is bullshit anyway.  Why can't they come up with their own music?  They are just ripping off original work."  If this is your feeling about hip-hop, I have two responses. 



First of all, you're wrong.  Hip-hop isn't all about taking the entirety or main part of a particular hit song and rapping over it.  That kind of hip-hop IS bullshit...but also receives a lot of airplay because the song was a hit already in a different era.  Most rap isn't like this.  Public Enemy, for instance, would sample thousands of songs to create a single song of their own.  Most of the time, you have NO idea where the sample came from - nor can you even clearly identify most of the component pieces of one of their songs as samples.  It's as much of an art as playing the flute, composing a ballad or anything else one might classify as art.  Secondly, as a result of sampling hundreds of songs and recombining the sounds, they ARE coming up with their own music just as surely as Moby or any other pop artist does.

But companies like Bridgeport are aiming to ruin that by essentially stealing copyrights from the original artists, then suing for profits from songs that used pieces of these originals as samples...no matter how tiny the snippet used.  As the article puts it: "Imagine that the copyright owner of The Lord of the Rings had sued every fantasy book or magazine that dared used the words elf, orc, or troll. That gives you an idea of the magnitude of Bridgeport's campaign."



George Clinton claims that Bridgeport stole most of his copyrighted songs from him, apparently by faking his signature a number of times.  Hs music serves as a templae for many of the seminal works in rap history.  Clinton himself supports sampling, because he likes the fact that his music continues to endure in a slightly altered form.  But the new owners of his music want to destroy the very practice that allows Clinton's legacy to grow. 



These sample trolls are bad for all levels of the music business.  They must be stopped before it's too late.

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