Shared DNA in Music

What this mostly seems to demonstrate is that hip-pop is endlessly derivative. That might be a consequence of their data source:

> To build this project, we used the dataset of hundreds of thousands of songs on Genius.com accessible through their API, over 200,000 of which were “connected” in some way by sample, interpolation, cover, or remix.

Genres where sampling is openly and explicitly acknowledged are going to be massively over-represented. It would be cool build a relationship network using feature extraction on the actual audio.

I wonder whether a possible audio similarities analyzer would be capable of detecting influences described by the creators themselves. For example, in a podcast, Tal Bachman said that making his most famous hit "She's So High" started when he heard the chorus of "If It Makes You Happy" by Sheryl Crow in a supermarket. After that revelation I now can not unhear it and the choruses of those songs are connected in my brain. But the connection is not that obvious.

There's also https://www.whosampled.com/

The same applies to risk-adverse, high profit genres and/or producer heavy ones like pop country. Obviously zeitgeist and even conventions and music theory play a role.

Sir Mashalot had a few videos a while ago.

https://youtu.be/FY8SwIvxj8o

The Blues Traveler trolling with the song Hook using the melody from Pachelbel's Canon with lyrics explicitly calling this out wasn't noticed by almost anyone.

https://youtu.be/pdz5kCaCRFM

Obviously Pop heavily samples too, E.G. Tom Tom Club Genius of Love being used by Mariah Carey's Fantasy, but it goes beyond sampling.

The Rolling Stones pulling from artists like Fred McDowell and Led Zeppelin settled copyright suits on Lemon Song, Whole Lotta Love, Bring it on Home and Dazed and Confused etc...

The invention of the Fairlight Sampler may have lead to groups like the Pet Shop Boys sampling dozens of other works, but as the Stones and Led Zeppelin show it wasn't unique.

Well I guess the Pet Shop Boys were inspired by Grandmaster Flash, and if you listen to the original recording of West End Girls you can hear James Brown samples...not sure if that counts as "hip-hop" in that case or not.

https://youtu.be/PKB2bYYYTYw

As a bad guitar player, I can understand why even Rock and Roll pretty much grew out of artists copying R&B/Gospel artists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but inspiration vs copying is a fuzzy line.

But basically the tooling changed, not the methods which have complex and intertwined causes, motivations, and effects.

I wonder, do you find Outkast's ATLiens album to be derivative? Especially "Elevators" and "Wheels of Steel". I certainly don't know enough music to answer that question definitively, if anyone does.

Even though some of the lyrics have certainly not aged well, I do like its minimal aesthetic, and I was in Decatur, GA at the time, and it sure beat the crap Diddy and Mase were putting out at the time.

Side note: WCLK Clark Atlanta University radio station was the absolute best radio station I've ever heard, where I found my favorite music of all-time: AfroCuban jazz. Their Hip Hop and Jazz programs were fantastic. That's also where I learned of the magical spoken word intro version of Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World".

"No one's musical education is complete."

> Side note: WCLK Clark Atlanta University radio station was the absolute best radio station I've ever heard, where I found my favorite music of all-time: AfroCuban jazz. Their Hip Hop and Jazz programs were fantastic.

You’ll probably like WEFUNK, a hip hop/soul/funk weekly program that has been streaming since the late 90s, with ad-free streams and downloads, livestreams, RSS feeds etc while being listener-supported. They even have some basic apps for your devices.

https://www.wefunkradio.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEFUNK_Radio