#6 - Copyright and Fair Use

Sampling has always been a hot topic in music. Many great artists use samples to enhance their songs or honor other musicians. Rap music is generally the main genre sampling is used in. This play differently than situations like the Queen/Vanilla Ice debacle. For an example look towards many of Kanye West, Jay-z, or Eminem's music. As three of the greatest rap artists of their generation their music is know world wide. A big question is what is considered plagiarizing and what falls under fair use. 

This has always been tricky for courts to settle. One example involving Kanye West was the lawsuit he received from the family of a young lady who's viral video was sampled for West's song Ultralight Beam. The original video shows a little girl praying and West decided it fit the theme of his semi-gospel song featuring Chance the Rapper. In my personal opinion West should have asked permission for the girl's audio clip to be used, he had plenty of money to compensate her family. Inversely wouldn't the Christian thing to do be allowing West to use this audio to reach a new demographic with the Word? Theological debates would just end up running in circles so the court settled it. This is an example of improper clearance. Kanye West claims he cleared the use of the voice in an agreement with the little girls biological mother, not the adoptive parents and legal guardians of said girl. And whats more is the mother claims to have never received an agreement or payment from West. While the hit song was released in 2016 the status of this lawsuit is currently unknown. 

A more recent example is the lawsuit proposed against Drake that was just appealed. Like many great hip-hop artists Drake is a fan of sampling jazz or blues to give his tracks more soul. In his song Pound Cake/ Paris Morton Music 2 he samples audio of Jimmy Smith Rap, a track which features jazz legend Jimmy Smith discussing the music industry. The appeal was a rare success for cases like this. the evidence used to site fair use was presented as such: "The first factor supports fair use because the use was transformative. A work is transformative when it “uses the copyrighted material itself for a purpose, or imbues it with a character, different from that for which it was created.” … “Pound Cake” does just that. The message of the “Jimmy Smith Rap” is one about the supremacy of jazz to the derogation of other types of music, which—unlike jazz—will not last. On the other hand, “Pound Cake” sends a counter message—that it is not jazz music that reigns supreme, but rather all “real music,” regardless of genre…. Beyond the text of the lyrics themselves, “Pound Cake” situates its sampling of approximately thirty-five seconds of the “Jimmy Smith Rap” at the beginning of an approximately seven-minute-long hip-hop song in which Drake and Shawn Carter, professionally known as Jay-Z, rap about the greatness and authenticity of their work. Through both the alteration of the “Jimmy Smith Rap” and the rest of the rap’s lyrics, “Pound Cake” emphasizes that it is not the genre but the authenticity of the music that matters. In this manner, “Pound Cake” criticizes the jazz-elitism that the “Jimmy Smith Rap” espouses. By doing so, it uses the copyrighted work for “a purpose, or imbues it with a character, different from that for which it was created.” ". In short the changing of the order of the lyrics in this cut of the song was done for the purpose of exposing elitism in music and the words original meaning was changed by doing such.  The full explanation of Drake's defense can be found in this link to the original article that I sourced from.