There Is No Sampling Epidemic in Hip Hop
Why I love sampling and why it should be a protected art form.
"Sampling epidemic." It's a term I've often heard when hearing people discuss their peeves with modern hip-hop music. Some argue that artists' use of samples encourages a lack of creativity. This argument has always been peculiar to me, as hip-hop as a genre would not exist if it weren't for the concept of sampling. These arguments are rooted in a lack of foundational understanding of the history of hip-hop music and sometimes I want to ask people who disdain sampling if they think there was a "sampling epidemic" in the 70s.
Critiquing how an artist chops up samples is valid, but I think describing sampling as an "epidemic" is ahistorical. At its root, the very essence of hip-hop was the breakbeat itself. Whether the music itself was good or bad, corny or innovative, sampling has always been a staple in hip hop, and when it was first created, sampling was standard practice. DJ Kool Herc, credited for creating hip hop, explains how the breakbeat came about in an interview with DJ History. "The breaks were always a part of my format. Always going to be there. Different people come there and dance to different types of music. I'm catering to each and every little group of people there. How the broken thing happened, I was seeing everybody on the sidelines waiting for particular breaks in the records."
Of course, the critique of hip-hop artists utilizing samples is nothing new, with many critics of hip-hop in the 70s and 80s calling sampling "unoriginal" or accusing artists of "ruining" the music they sampled. In 2013, Grammy Award-winning jazz trumpeter Nicholas Payton wrote a scathing critique of sampling in hip hop. "I think it's time to reassess what sampling and Hip-hop is doing to Black culture. . .Hip-hop is a predatory art form — and over the years — has more and more become a bastion of musical cannibalism. . . I'm not anti-sampling, but: If they'd had samplers in Africa back in the day, mothafuckas woulda never learned how to play the drums, then who would you sample?"
What Payton misses in his thinkpiece is that hip hop artists and procurers have a long history of crediting and championing the artists they sample. For example, DJ Kool Herc who is known for using James Brown breakbeats credited him saying “James Brown is my inspiration with the music. I’m a spin-off of James Brown. Hip hop is a spin-off of James Brown. James Brown don’t know that but as I go out to you right now James I want to do a tribute to you.”
And in Nate Patrin's thesis on sampling in hip hop, "Bring that Beat Back," he argues against these critiques, maintaining that sampling is a way to advance the legacy of black American music. "In roughly ten years, from the late '70s, DJ sets to the late '80s SP-1200 soundscapes, hip-hop had created a way of recognizing, acknowledging, renewing, and transforming a collective language of musical history that massively expanded the way the music itself is listened to: as a mutable object, the calling up of fragmented memories that get the hook or the beat of a song stuck in your head and then make a new world out of that memory. It was the musical equivalent of restoring an old car to run faster or bounce on hydraulics or gleam with candy-colored paint," he said.
Sampling is an art form, with some producers completely changing how we listen to songs we love. Of course, the late great J Dilla is known for his contributions to hip hop with his iconic chopping style, and other producers like DJ Premier and Pete Rock have helped shape how producers sample music. Today, producers are concerned about the accessibility of sampling due to hefty sample-related lawsuits, new AI tools used to identify samples, and websites like "WhoSampled." I hope sampling in hip-hop can continue and sustain longevity. However, this can only happen if leading forces in the industry make a concerted effort to embrace sampling.
If people in the industry care about accessibility, they should care about sampling, as it has made music production more accessible to lower-income youth for decades. Rapper and producer Q-Tip talked about this in an interview with Jeff "Chairman" Mao in 2013, saying, "I would make pause button tapes, which was a big thing for kids back in the '80s to do like, if you had ideas for music because we didn't have any setups, we didn't have any track machines. We didn't have any of that stuff, so what we usually had was some janky-ass stereo system that you moms and your grandmother had".
Where would music be today if kids in the 80s and 90s couldn't make beats with tape recorders sampling jazz and funk? The answer to that question is why sampling was essential and remains important today. So, as the title of this article says.. No, I don’t think there is a “sampling epidemic”. In fact, I hope sampling is here to stay.