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Shared DNA in Music

(pudding.cool)
248 points ksampath02 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.217s | source
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crawsome ◴[] No.43553354[source]
Why 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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kaeruct ◴[] No.43553801[source]
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.

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1. Ylpertnodi ◴[] No.43554137[source]
I use the Roland 505ii looper, and do massive 'samples' - whole verses etc, great for song analysis, practice etc. If I could incorporate something into a hit song, I'd happily pay the royalties to the 'samplee'. I rather suspect the early days of sampling/ hip hop etc, it was the "how do we get paid...they're ripping us off" panic that created issues. Now, the money-flow has been standardised, and sped up, there are considerably less problems. Oh, my favourite example of extreme sampling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYeSpyRpRA&list=PLXa6-G1Tk7...