difference is.. ppl like puffy and kanye take loops that are already established have been hits and already popular. Madlib takes obscure stuff that no ones heard before....and arranges them in new unique ways...including his own musical ability.
I dont agree with vexer at all. originality has nothing to do with notes and clefts.... originality is a feeling.. a moment a progression...that was given to YOU by something else, something that came THROUGH you. Musicians will know what i'm talking about, those moments where YOU the arist are the instrument being played by something else, something undefinable.
Curtis Mayfield went through it when he conceived 'move on up'.... kanye did not when he made touch the sky. THAT was a business decision. In my opinion that was NOT a true artistic method...
Leon Haywood ent through the process it for 'I wanna do something freaky '. Dre did not for next episode he did not conceive of it
David Bowie - Lets Dance same thing. Puffy jacked it ...didnt conceive of it.
etc..
Theres a difference between sampling a whole riff that was created by someone else or taking bits and pieces...like chords individual drum sounds.... etc but putting them together in an own unique inspired and creative way...a la dj premier or prefuse 73. these guys are stuill artists...just wih samplers as heir instruments of expression.
I dont think the end justifies the means. Otherwise i might justifiably just jack somene elses music...beef up the snare...or add a triangle and claim to be ill.
Who decides what a "genuine" artistic method is and according to what criteria?
I don't c why taking a riff from a sequencer is different from taking a riff from a hit or an obscure record.
Either way once u embody the alien riff within the hip-hop genre then as a producer you have to come up with an interpretation of that riff that will actually work.
Just becoz "Good Times" was a disco hit it didn't follow that "Rapper's Delight" would also be a hit.
Those catz had to come up with an effective re-interpretation of the track even though on a production level they just looped the track.
Its all in the execution and the re-interpretation of the sampled material which is art in itself regardless of whether the sample is just a loop of a hit or obscure record.
I'm sure u've heard lots of tracks that have used the same sample Biggie used for "Juicy" but how many of them achieved the same effect?
None, the reason being the execution and interpretation weren't on point.
Catz started by sampling records bcoz they didn't have libraries of readily available sounds like we have today in modern sequencers.
If u notice sequencer sounds or sample CD sounds are actually termed "royalty free samples" therefore using them doesn't make u an "original" composer.
If originality is a feeling then u'll agree that lots of sampled tracks possess and convey feeling and all manner of our abstract perceptions as human beings.
"Dear Mama" by Pac was a sampled track does it mean that Tony Pizzaro the producer doesn't deserve his props for sampling "Sadie".R u telling me that track is a vapid commercialist scam completely devoid of any artistic integrity just coz it used a sample that most catz especially Americans could identify with.
All i'm saying is everyone is equal let's not take anything away from anyone and attempt to create "hierachies of creativity".
Boz we're discussing art those hierachies are inherently contradictory and ultimately unsustainable.
