Obviously, hip-hop is a sample-based art form. Therefore, this kind of epiphany is nothing new to the hip-hop listener. From 2Pac’s Changes to Eminem’s Sing For The Moment, recycling music is the name of the game. But when two (or even three) of the artists your admire most cop the same sample the results can be polarizing. After all, you’re bound to prefer one over the other right? A previous loyalty to one artist might invoke distaste for a newly discovered group.I recently downloaded Wordsmith’s “The Pursuit of Harmony” off iTunes (get the album now if you haven’t already; shit is ill) and when listening to the track entitled Coalition I was sure I'd heard it before:
Wordsmith - Coalition
After listening to the song on loop 4 or 5 times in a frustrated attempt to identify exactly where the hell I’d heard the melody, it finally hit me: one of my all-time favorite groups, Sweatshop Union, used the exact same sample in their 2005 single God Bless, off “United We Fall”:
-by-Sweatshop-Union_VuJdQFxPnNAx_full.jpg)
Sweatshop Union - God Bless
But the story doesn’t end there. The “original” is simply a sped up version of Füchse a track released in 1999 by German hip-hop group Absolute Beginner.
Absolute Beginner - Füchse
For all I know, this musical regression could go back even much further into the annals of hip hop history. But I think you get the point. What surprises me is the intolerance some people have when confronted with this sort of crisis of sampling. On YouTube there are accusations that Sweatshop Union “stole” the beat from Absolute Beginner. And I'm sure the avid Sweatshop fan might think the same thing when confronted with the Wordsmith track.
Point is, I didn’t drop the album and stop listening to Wordsmith. In fact, I found the parallel fascinating. It made me curious whether Wordsmith had heard Sweatshop’s track before recording his. Or, had both groups heard Absolute Beginner’s track independently.
In any event, the identity of all three of these songs rests very heavily on the melody in question. Indubitably, problems arise when an artist recycles a sample. Being labeled unoriginal and therefore ostensibly untalented can ruin an artists career. Look at Vanilla Ice.
That being said, the existence of multiple interpretations of a single piece of music is not necessarily a negative thing; in fact, it often times enriches the listener’s experience. The incredible thing about hip hop is its innate ability to breath new life into music that has been overwhelmingly played out.Hip-hop could be viewed as a perpetual revival of music beginning with the conception of an original melody or beat, and the subsequent evolution of that piece of music (each evolution documenting how an unique group in history related to that particular piece of music).
Don't get me wrong, Füchse is quality track (and you should peep the music video if you haven’t) but both the Sweatshop Union and Wordsmith variations keep the beat fresh. Then again, I’m a firm believer that in music, better to have too many options than too few. The more important thing to take away from this, perhaps, is that, as someone once said: “there are no original ideas left in this world, only ideas to be evolved.”
A credo, perhaps, for the modern artist. And becoming more-so.
Finally, a little something I found interesting in relation to re-sampling. The top 8 most “overused” samples in hip-hop history. Check it out: http://audio.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/8-most-overused-samples-in-hip-hop-histor
Interesting idea on who had use of the sample first. I think it’s hilarious people will claim one hip-hop artist stole the sample from the other, as if the latter artist is the true composer of the music, instrumentally crafting the sample themselves. Any hip-hop artist that uses samples is fucking stealing. That’s why I cannot suffer listening to the retards on YouTube. Although RZA will validly argue sampling should be distinguished between using a sampler as a musical instrument and using it as a Xerox, the use of sampling is still borrowing the creative work of someone else.
ReplyDeleteI think important thing here is the regional level of reusing a sample, which must be taken into account before deploring an artist’s authenticity or originality. All of the three artists in question are from different countries. Obviously in this globalizing world we can expect some people to have access to all three of these songs at one point. But to the intended audience at large, I don’t think any of the artists stole the beat in order to capitalize off the other artist’s preceding acclaim. [Let's not let "similar creative coincidence" be forgotten either.]
Wordsmith for instance, is not realistically trying to sell records internationally. He is a British underground artist who is making music at the moment for whom? Yes, the British underground. If Wordsmith came from Canada, do you think he would have used the same sample just a few years after Sweatshop did? No, he’d rather intelligently try and use some underused British sample that most people in Canada had never been privy to.
Verbal, your concept about keeping it fresh is totally correct, I wish people realized that more... but further that idea must also take into account the regional level at which the music is to be produced and distributed. For instance, if the beats between Wordsmith and Sweatshop were almost identical, (which as you said are basically heavily dependent on the sample in question), but nobody in London had ever heard the Sweatshop song -- produced and marketed 4,000 miles away,-- then it still is fresh for his market within the UK. The very people he is trying to reach. And that is exactly what happened in this case.
Whether he got the idea from the Sweatshop song, the Absolute Beginner’s track, or straight from the original source, Wordsmith, or who ever actually produced it, used it knowing that the market for his music most likely would not have heard the sample before. Thus, the reception of the song will ultimately be unique and fresh. Whether some overzealous Sweatshop Union YouTuber likes it or not, that’s hip-hop. Nice post. P.E.A.C.E.