What is the demand for sample-based hip hop now?
Grafwritah
4,184 Posts
I watched the Stones Throw documentary - and was reading the old posts on this board - and it seems like there was demand for sample based hip hop through the mid 2000s. Now it seems like that is completely out the window. I get that the legal environment is not conducive to sampling (economically) anymore, but it seems like tastes have swung as well. I think that a big reason that the SS demographic seems to stop around 2005 (the people still hanging around are just 10 years older, there aren't new 25 year olds coming on board) is that the youth these days - teens, twenties - aren't interesting in sampling or crate digging.
What do you think? Is there room for another Stones Throw to get going? Are there kids out there today that still are interested in DITC? I'm just not seeing it.
What do you think? Is there room for another Stones Throw to get going? Are there kids out there today that still are interested in DITC? I'm just not seeing it.
Comments
From turntable mixers in the early days, to 8sec samples/loops, longer samples, to chopping.
I don't know what technology is the big influence now, or next.
Kids who try to join soulstrut are run off pretty fast.
I think there's still decent demand for sample-based hiphop, so I'd imagine there's always going to be supply. But I do think it's done (unfortunately) as THE sound of hiphop. Maybe someone will eventually come along and make it really popular again, but I feel like it's more likely to just become an increasingly niche style.
I've noticed people are snapping up clean LPs for $15 - $50 depending on artist / title.
I wonder if there's a furniture designer's forum somewhere on the net where there's a heated debate going on over whether bedframes made from oak are better than, say, wrought-iron ones, just because they're made from wood?
I don't know if the market, such as it is, has ever really said "We want sample-based hip-hop!", any more than it's ever demanded the opposite. Technology has always been the main driver, same as when people began using samples to begin with. Cheaper hardware, better software and easier, more widespread access to the internet may have helped simplify certain aspects of the creative process, but they haven't rendered things like using samples or sampling from records redundant.
Likewise, the legal aspect of sample use hasn't really changed, despite all the test cases and precedents. Sure, you have rights owners like Aaron Fuchs and others who've cottoned onto the fact that there's money to be made from the ownership of certain catalogues and are consequently capitalising on that pretty ruthlessly. But there were never any hard and fast rules covering sample use in particular, apart from "ask permission", so I don't buy the idea that there's a significantly greater legal impediment now than there was before.
Well played on getting in a few of the kind of sour, snide little digs that are typical of the Rap Game Artisanal Locally Sourced Cupcake/Flatbread/Third Wave Coffee House bullshit that still clings to this whole debate. May as well try to argue that it ain't proper rock music unless the guitarist plays a pre-CBS Fender or a '59 Les Paul. Your implicit suggestion that rap producers who eschew sample use for whatever reason are lazy and lack creativity makes you little different from the central-casting rockist troll making "rap = crap LOL" jokes in the comments section on a Chief Keef Youtube clip. There is PLENTY of good rap music being made ALL THE TIME using samples that doesn't depend upon making a virtue out of its production methods because it's too fucking BORING to find an audience on its own merits. If you wouldn't know what it is because you're too hung up on this backwards-facing purist aesthetic - the diametric opposite of actual creativity, btw - to know where to find it, that's your tough luck.
I still listen to the old shit as well as the new shit because [em]I actually like rap music[/em] as opposed to some romanticised idea of "authentic" rap music made a certain way with certain tools. I don't give a fuck about new shit that tries to sound old. Fuck Joey Bada$$ and his piss-boring style studies. What actual use is that shit when I can listen to Kane or Big L or Saafir or some other old shit that blasts it out of the water any time I want? Give me something I haven't heard before, not some tedious facsimilie of a '93 Primo beat, stripped of all context and decades away from when that sound was genuinely new and exciting. If you dig genre exercises in the use of SP1200s, MPC-60s, S-950s or whatever, that's fine. Miss me with any "real hip-hop" talk, though, because anyone doing that shit in 2015 and making it their USP, as opposed to focusing on just making the best music they can make, is on some Jack White "back to mono" bullshit.
I think we're on different wavelengths here (although I can see why my post came off the way it did).
I don't really give a fuck about the "real hiphop" debate, and I don't think "real hiphop" is a definable thing. Yea, I'll always be in love with dusty, chopped up sounds. And yea, I do think it sucks that the sample-based sound has gone into decline. But things change, and I'm happy to roll with it. I like Chief Keef. I don't like Joey Badass. I do like Action Bronson. I don't like Young Thug.
I do think there is a real "market" for sample based hiphop, although I don't think its existence is explicit (like, "WE ARE THE MARKET!"). You can see signs of the market when you hear dudes fiending for Roc Marciano, Ka, Droog, etc. You can see the "anti-market" (whatever, I'm not a damn economist) when you see people dismiss that shit as "old man music."
As far as legal concerns go, it really doesn't matter what the ACTUAL legal situation is. What matters is people's BELIEF about the legal system. Go to any producer forum and read the first 10 pages -- I'll bet you quickly come across a post that's like, "I'd really like to try sampling, but I can't because they'll sue me!" People are afraid to sample because of their imaginations of copyright laws and punishments. [Not mentioned here are posts like What exactly is a drum break?, which are indicative of other stuff contributing to sampling's decline].
You're right to criticize me for suggesting there's any kind of laziness about the new generation of "sampleless" (kinda… you know what I mean) producers, I'll definitely give you that. The new gen is grinding and they're as creative as any one has ever been. But I do feel like there might be broad cultural shifts happening (not limited to hiphop) towards attitudes that aren't conducive to sampling. For example, the shift towards "instant gratification" in our culture (which may or may not be an actual thing) is not at all in line with the practice of sampling.
I think the decline of sampling is a loss for culture at-large (I feel like sampling is/was special for a whole bunch of reasons that go way beyond music). But I'm not trying to suggest that this amounts to "the death of real hiphop" or anything like that. Hiphop is always doing fine.
as far as digging, it's not a question of time - people can sample off youtube or mp3s. you don't need to spend half your life in a record store to find cool stuff to sample.
as far as "traditional sounding" hip-hop or whatever, that is not the popular style anymore and it's not going to return. but there's plenty of stuff out there if you check.
younger artists are just as likely to sample some indie rock cloud drone ssw whatever from 3 years ago as an old soul record.
amen
How so? Wasn't the heyday of this close to 20 years? What would be gained by prolonging it?
How long were the glory days of Funk, Hard Bop, Psych or Ska etc etc?
The only thing happening here is the passage of time and the inevitable cycles that all musical styles go through.
Though there are people bemoaning/debating the death of Funk, Hard Bop, Psych or Ska.
But as a wise man said, "time happens, things change".
This is admittedly a half-formed idea, so… yeah. (I'm sure someone has written about this more coherently though).
I think you can see sample-based hiphop as a practice of (inadvertent/subconscious) political protest or resistance. I know a lot of music, both then and now, can be looked at as 'resistance', but sample-based hiphop seems different to me. It's neat because it isn't explicitly resisting some specific government or event (i.e., folk music during Vietnam). Instead, it implicitly (but blatantly) violates the abstract concept of property rights, which is one of the main pillars of capitalism. How many of our favourite songs use uncleared samples? How many of our favourite songs are basically illegal/against the law? I know the dude's making it didn't think in these terms, but sample-based hiphop is protest/resistance/outlaw music unlike anything else I can think of (can you guys think of parallels?).
So, if you think about sample-based hiphop in those terms, its decline takes on a really interesting meaning (to me, anyways). It means that the protest against property rights, at least within the hiphop community, is declining, and that people have become more willing to work within the system than work against it. That's definitely just a product of time/change, but I still think its kind of unfortunate.
edit: I guess you could also make the argument that, in continuing to use samples in far less obvious ways, the protest (if it is one) hasn't disappeared so much as it has gotten more clever / sneakier...
I think there will always be a place for sampling as long as it sounds fffffffresh.
EDIT; re:your edit, just echoing your final sentiment!
This is way off.
Dudes just wanted to use the records they partied to. Early Hip Hop was using session players to clone their favorite shit.
Its no different from folks building on established Blues riffs. Its not some political subversion.
The "laws" werent established until years into the game. In fact many of the early samplers looked to the practice as exposing a new gen to forgotten music/artists. What it became by the 90s is another story.
Shit sounds like some fuckin College course bullshit.
Definitely.
I dont really check for new hip hop and I've no idea what the bigger acts sound like or even who they are but Im sure if a producer came to them with a beat that had "hit record" written all over it and it had a loop that needed to be cleared Im sure the record company would just clear the sample like they have cleared samples hundreds of times over the years. A track built from multiple samples and I guess the label would say no to that one.
Me personally I used to be a hardcore "hip hop music must be made from samples" kind of guy, but like most folks who shared that view Im kind of embarrassed by it now. I think I held that belief as when some of the artists I was into took the live instruments/ non-sampled route they were really rubbish at it, glad to say the standard has picked up over the years (obviously there have been live instruments in hip hop since day one, and some great session guys laying stuff down). I also really liked the idea of sampling old records, I love records.
As for kids today, will there be a future generation of crate digging sample loopers, I think there will be kids doing it like a lot of us did, but not many, it will be an underground/minority hobby/interest.
Had things like Logic/Live been around in the late 80s/early 90's and guys could have sat down at home and had 1000s of amazing sounding instruments at their finger tips we might never have had this whole crate digging/sampling culture at all.
and felt bad that charizma got shot
also felt bad that pnbw lost his homie
then i felt really awful listening to damfunk trying to freestyle
and then i shit blood in pubix and threw up bile watching the self congratulatory circle jerk complete with guest stars that it turned into
holy toledo that was just fucking awful
and yea hip hop is dead/alive/being resuscitated in the back of an ambulance on it's way to ryker's island/being tortured in syria by ice sis /alive and well in starlito's coupe/dead as baby huey at the fat beats warehouse/on life support and in a dust induced money coma at rza's LA mansion /chuck d copping a plea at selma ....samples notwithfallingstandingblanding at the speed of light@ grand concourse and dr dre is a billionaire.....soon we'll hopefully see drake impaled on dmx' crack pipe while biz markie gets skinny on zevia
ghostface killa on jimmy kimmel and some whack ass vh1 dating show? ...bitch please
wassup soulstrut?
its either good music or it isnt.
With the technology we have today, I am almost completely oblivious to the musical demands of anyone other than my own.
Yeah, this.
Also, some of the biggest, most visible names in rap are still sampling--Kanye, Kendrick, etc. So the demand is clearly still there.
Also also, whereas for a while, sampling used to be THE way to make beats, it's just one of many ways now: Sampling, stock sounds, sound pack downloads, drum machines, keyboards, live bands, replays/interpolations, sampling studio musicians, and on and on. Maybe you could say that Bomb Squad/Prince Paul/Dust Brothers "20 samples to make one song" style has been kinda crushed out, but it's been that way for a while.
Also also also, I agree with Kala about the Stones Throw documentary.
^This
Bonus beat: in my previous life as a sample clearance professional for a major music publisher, I once received a phonecall from Phil Manzanera, who was one of our writers. He was seeking my advice about rights ownership for a fiendishly obscure cumbia recording he wanted to sample in a song he was working on, and I can testify first-hand that, back in 2008, he didn't have a fucking clue how this shit worked.
b/w
Guilty! I thought Phil Manzanera was Ray Manzerek or however they spell them.
It seems as if you have the group of Kanye West, Jay-Z and the like who have sales that justify full on sampling.
Or as part of that higher end group you have people who can afford to have studio musicians replay samples, so they only have to pay fees on composition.
And you've got the other end of people who are either butchering samples to avoid being recognized or are sampling and assuming/hoping they will fly under the radar.
I can see your point though ... no shortage of entirely synth based beats. My entirely anecdotal observation though is that the youth and the music of now are not swinging that much toward sampling. Compared to most of the 90s when almost everything was some sort of loop or break that seems to really be lacking now (97-99 really started fudging those dynamics, though.). And I don't think the youth are missing it.
Wouldn't hating on Joey Bada$$ for being semi-throwback style contradict your comment earlier about liking music for what it is?
What about the other artists in other genres that also do throwback styles? Soul, for instance?
I've found if done well contemporary throwback styles can be good, and even sound cleaner/more modern at the same time. Unfortunately doing it well seems to be the hard part.
Samples. Still in demand.
You mean this bit?
Because that's the only thing I wrote in this thread that [em]I[/em] think could be read as a call to judge things on their own terms. If you meant something else, let me know. Happy to hash it out.
Returning to Joey Bada$$, "get in where you fit in" is all well and good, but in his case it seems that he or somebody involved with his set-up has decided that marketing him as the new generation's leading torchbearer for TRU3 SK00L rap values represents his best hope of finding any sort of audience. And it's worked. I saw him out here in Berlin last year right before he abruptly cut short his tour, and the spot was [em]rammed[/em]. To put it in context, I go to a lot of rap shows of all styles. Coming up over this next few weeks I've got M.O.P., Migos and a Flatbush Zombies/Underachievers double-header. I've been to very few shows in this city that [em]aren't[/em] rammed, as it happens. But with Joey Bada$$, this is someone without a big radio hit (or a particularly big underground hit for that matter), and there [em]appears[/em] to be no major-label money behind him, unlike a Schoolboy Q or a Meek Mill. Whether or not he was able to pull this crowd simply by presenting himself as The Antidote - "if this is what you want/need, then step right up because I'm selling" - is up for debate, I guess, but I really couldn't call it. The show itself was...OK. Static Selektah did a great job of hyping the crowd beforehand without resorting to the same tired classics you've heard a million and one times, but there was nothing truly exciting about it. It felt like a musical comfort blanket, somewhere to escape to when you're overwhelmed by all the Wakas and Guccis and Keefs and Thuggas and Yungs and Lils.
The rap game is full of all kinds of slick marketing at every level these days, and very often things are far from what they appear. I'm instinctively wary of rappers who lean too heavily on nostalgia, because it seems at odds with the constant change and musical development that I personally believe is what makes rap unique amongst modern popular music. Very few rappers have ever succeeded by trading on the past, whether real or imagined. Jurassic 5 had a brief moment, and for a while that was a lot of fun and genuinely entertaining. Essentially, though, it was a novelty and it had the shelf-life of a novelty. Amongst the many bon mots faux_rillz blessed us with back when he still drank at this bar, one of my personal favourites was when he described J5 as "the Sha Na Na of rap". Cruel, but fair. Anyway, maybe Joey Bada$$ thinks right there lies a gap in the market that he can fill. Good luck to him if so, but it ain't for me.
Yeah, to be clear, anti-throwback is not my default setting here. I try to roll case-by-case. I think Raphael Saadiq is fucking brilliant, for example. But good as he is, a song like Love That Girl isn't [em]quite[/em] good enough to make me forget that the song it pharrells[strong]*[/strong], namely Woman's Got Soul by the Impressions, is way, way better. And that's the big issue I have with throwback soul particularly - very often the songwriting feels like the last thing anyone thought about. Have you seen or heard this Leon Bridges kid who's signed to Columbia? Really good voice, good-looking lad, the kind of act you could easily imagine being successful without a whole lot of effort. Yet everything about how he's being presented to the world screams, "WE'VE FOUND HIM, EVERYONE! THIS IS THE NEW SAM COOKE!" Seriously, Sam Cooke. You're really going to dump that kind of weight on a kid's shoulders without giving him the material to help carry the load? Man, that's all kinds of fucked-up. It's like when that Duffy lass came along a few years back - bottle-blonde British girl doing ersatz soul, and everywhere she got written about, some soft biff was saying "she's the new Dusty Springfield!" Was she fuck. You can pull it off just by looking the part for a while, but if you don't have sufficient material strong enough to make people forget they're not actually listening to Dusty Springfield or Sam Cooke (or Big L), then it strikes me you're pretty much on borrowed time.
[strong]*[/strong] - pharrell
/faˈreːl/
[em]verb[/em]
to consciously invoke or call to mind familiar stylistic aspects of a classic pop or soul song in a new song without directly copying it.
Partially. To paraphrase, you like hip hop because you like hip hop, not because they are trying to recreate a sound of a certain era. My point was that it's entirely possible to have a throw-back sound that sounds good. It may sound like BDK or something else but if it sounds good, why castigate it just because it wasn't originally created in 1992? Seems contradictory to like a certain genre for what it is and then single out people who aren't playing a sound that is contemporary to their era.
It's a business. People promoting shows and selling tickets may like what they do, but they are also looking to get paid. Nostalgia sells. But true, I do think it hard to carry a serious career based strictly on a nostalgic sound unless you are looking to cater directly to that market and be known for such. (I think of Motley Crue or someone playing their hits from the 80s to a crowd of 50 year olds when I say that)
Really though, what is the shelf life of most anything in the arts or popular culture? Bone Thugs had a good run but that style didn't stick either.
It's like when that Duffy lass came along a few years back - bottle-blonde British girl doing ersatz soul, and everywhere she got written about, some soft biff was saying "she's the new Dusty Springfield!" Was she fuck. You can pull it off just by looking the part for a while, but if you don't have sufficient material strong enough to make people forget they're not actually listening to Dusty Springfield or Sam Cooke (or Big L), then it strikes me you're pretty much on borrowed time.
I guess that depends on the style. Hitching your horse to something that specific would make it hard for long term success.
Action Bronson is niche though.
Look at http://www.billboard.com/charts/r-b-hip-hop-songs
How many of those are sample based? Not many.