I've been following this whole Timbaland/Tempest plagiarism thing... I'm a little surprised by the comments from those supporting Timbaland.

They keep saying that sampling a person's work without giving credit is common practice in hip-hop, and there's nothing wrong with it...

EDIT: Crap ... sorry about the thumbsup. It should be thumbsdown.
[Edited 1/30/07 19:47pm]

of course! giving credit means giving up points.

I don't dig it, they should have to give actual written credit to the original composers, etc. Without it they wouldn't have a fucking song so how can they not? It's fucked up...

Sampling has always been given WAY too much credit and way too much leeway in music and in copyrights. At one point and maybe still there is a certain amount of a song you can take and loop it and its not a violation. To me if you take a second, you give credit,money whatever, and if you dont you are stealing plain and simple and when you get caught dont cry like Vanilla Ice.

i remember listening to some gangstar and there was a skit with dj premire snapping about dj's releasing compilations of the original songs that samples were taken from by various rappers. i guess these albums were causing some problems in the hip hop world 'cuz the tracks they were sampling from weren't given credit.

magnificentsynthesizer said:

STOP. DOIN' THAT. Y'ALL ARE VIOLATIN' STRAIGHTUPAND DOWN!

hiphop gets away with alot of shit other genres cant. how can dr.dre be considered some kinda genious when everything he creates was already created by george clinton,james brown or some actual musician/producer.

lastdecember said:

Yeah, that's how I see it. I don't see how anyone can say it is not stealing. "Everyone does it" is not an excuse.
[Edited 1/30/07 21:17pm]

It's a different thing to sample something straight off another person's record for artistic reasons, it's a whole another thing to lift off things for a mainstream hit record like that of Nelly Furtado's.

If you're keeping it small and on a no-profit level it's perfectly common practise and can be a valid form of expression. If you're buying houses and sports cars on another person's work there's nothing recommendable about it.

Altough I do have to say at least Timbaland showed some taste sampling retro computer music. Which just proves that he is a total geek, and you can't hate on geeks.

novabrkr said:

Well, geek or no geek... this guy has certainly earned my hate. He had some audacity... first he releases a ringtone which is basically the original track with drums... he gets away with that... then he continues his theft with the Nelly Furtado song... This shit is not cool...

It's like, an album track. Talk about an overreaction.

The biggest problem with these excuses is that the sample-based form of hip hop is completely different thing for a completely different market than what Timbaland operates on. And people referring to "hiphop traditions" seem to forget that not under any conditions is Nelly Furtado "hiphop". No matter even if the producer responsible for the background music just happens to be black and raps once in a while.

Really, I just think Timbaland just digged the song a lot (people can be very affectionate about pieces of computer music if they are inclined towards small circle things like that). All he really would have needed to have done would have been to give the writing credits to the original composer, if he was intending to make money out of it. The problem here is the money, not sampling.

novabreaker i feel u baby

CinisterCee said:

How is it an overreaction? Millions heard the track... Timbaland probably made tons of money off the ringtone... which is essentially the original track plus drums...

If someone took a song of yours, added drums, then went off and claimed it was his and made millions, how would you react?
[Edited 1/31/07 1:33am]

novabrkr said:

Money is part of it. But the problem is that the original composer wasn't given credit... This happened TWICE! With the ringtone... then with the song... And neither time was the original composer mentioned... This wasn't just some simple mistake in paperwork... Why didn't he give credit where credit was due? Was it to save money?
[Edited 1/31/07 1:41am]

CinisterCee said:

Fucking bullshit. We're talking about some fat cunt producer ripping off someone not once, but twice.

CinisterCee said:

But Cee, producers/writers get royalties off of album tracks, even if the track is not released as a single.

unkemptpueblo said:

Damn right.

Mong said:

Mong said:

Ohhhhkay Yeah, y'all are right.

did someone just call Timbaland a "fat cunt" - cold!


I know that in some cases, the sample is used even when the search for the original writer is futile, but something tells me no one tried to notify the composer of "block party" in the first place.

it's an industry that is more concerned with bottom line than creativity that has created the mess

The thing is that nowadays "media" is so widely available, things get posted here and there and the music is so easy to reproduce at this point "theft" exits all over the place, which is shown in the music and how its selling, at least "mainstream". My view on sampling be it in "hip hop" back in the day or mainstream pop/rb beatmakers like timbaland and Pharrell is that you are taking advantage of the "familiarity" of the track you are using, whether its just a beat or half of JB's "Funky Drummer" looped. I dont really see it as an art form as it really is just a "shortcut".

CinisterCee said:

point taken.