Check out the intro post here.
One of Jay Z's biggest criticism that he used a lot of the Notorious BIG's lyrics in his songs. Jay Z's response to this is that he's only paying homage to his fallen brother. Yet and still, people bash Jay for this. Nowadays, artists take flows or even 8's/16s from an artist. Some of the newer rappers take hooks with no shame, some artists steal entire flows (often times which are taken from other artists), and so on and so forth. When it comes to most artists nowadays, I usually don't care because they don't really have the talent to come up with something original or even give their own take on something (or are just ignorant). However, that will not stop me from going into an uncontrollable rage when I see it happening. This will be the first post in a series where I will break down any examples of copying, stealing, or using something old in order to gain popularity in music. Before I do that though, allow me to explain my thought process.
When it comes to using music that isn't yours in your songs, there an infinite number of ways that it can be implemented. Of those ways, there are about 2 categories that they can fall under: Sampling and Stealing. While this makes it seem like you can sample and not be considered a biter, this is patently false. It is always possible to sample music in bad taste (like Ella Mai) or use a sample in order the boost the likability of a song (such as what Drake does when sampling R&B artists). The main purpose of a sample is to be a callback to the original song, but it is not supposed to be the basis of the song especially when there is little done to the sample that can be made to say that it is a unique take on the sample. All these things trigger me as I find it lazy as an artist in this generation to do such things when (most) of them do not acknowledge those who came before them and how they paved the way for them to make music.
This lack of acknowledgment seems to bother very few people who are having their works were stolen, other than notably Marvin Gaye's estate. His estate has successfully gone after many high profile artists for taking his sound and trying to re-purpose it, whether it is subtle or not. While this is an obvious money grab (seeing that Marvin Gaye's music royalties and associated legal payouts will have to support many generations of family), its also a strong message to artists in the industry that you simply cannot just take someone else's work without the proper credit. But even getting proper credit for using a sound is not great for the artist because now you will forever be linked to someone else's work if the song proves to be popular, thus making it harder down the line to experiment with your sound due to the potential for fan backlash towards deviating from what made you, you in their eyes.