Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Music Sampling Works

Episode Date: August 19, 2023

Today music sampling is a common practice, especially in electronic or hip-hop music. But how does it work? After all, other artists made the original music, and most of them would presumably like to be paid. Tune in to this classic episode to learn more about music sampling.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's up, this ICT was something I know you're gonna want to hear. In my new podcast, ICT's Daily Game, I'll be dropping some daily wisdom and personal insight that I believe is essential to achieving success in business, love, life, hustling, whatever. I'll be coming to you every single weekday with a fresh new quote that speaks directly to me and I hope to you as well. In five minutes or less, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories and experiences that show them in action in my life. My goal is to inspire all of you out there to achieve success and happiness, whatever that means to you. So start every week day morning with me and get inspired. Listen to IEC's daily game every week day

on the I Heart Radio app on Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts and start your morning with me. What's up? This is Chris Rudiger. I am the owner and co-founder of the 615 House and you're listening to my new podcast, the 615 House podcast. It's a chance to take a deep dive with some of Nashville's hottest artists as we learn their

stories and I try to keep the questions pretty spicy as these artists sit in the hot seat. Hang out with us as we talk to some of your favorite artists here on the 615 House podcast. Listen to the 615 House Podcast on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get podcasts. Hello everyone, this is Charles W. Chuck Bryan, ear co-host of Stuff You Should Know. That's the podcast you're listening to right now.

If you didn't know on Saturdays, we play reruns. That's right, we call them Celix because we hand-pick them ourselves and do these goopy little intros, which is kind of a lot of fun actually. But that's what they're called. They're called Saturday Celix and it's a chance for you to either re-list into a classic episode or to hear it for the very first time if you didn't start listening to the podcast a gazillion years ago when we started. This is from March 29th 2012. Oh boy, that's a long time ago. How music sampling works. I hope we got this one right.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that makes this the super uh, simply version of stuff you should know. The super stuff guide to sampling. Could that be an audio book? Why not? Let's try, as a matter of fact, if you're listening to this right now, you owe us a dollar. May it in. Yeah. May it in to 3350 Peach Tree Road at Lannan, Georgia. Care of Josh Clark.

3031336. Sweet 1500. Okay. All right, with that done, we can continue on with the podcast. You know what? We should have gotten really creative and just like sampled old podcasts and put them together and to...

Jerry, do you feel like doing that? No. I guess a mash-up, that's what they call that. Sure. That's what the kids call it these days. Yeah. Yeah. No, we'll just do it straight instead.

Boring, I guess, is what you call it. I have an intro. What's here? Have you heard Chuck of a man named Armand Boladian? Armand Tanzarian? Nope, nope. I have not done. Armand Boladian is the owner and soul employee

of a company called Bridgeport. Oh, yeah, okay. Now I have Bridgeport is a music catalog company. Yeah. And like many other music catalog companies, they basically just sit on a lot of copyrights to popular songs, the musical composition of those songs, right? Yeah, it's almost like owning stock. Yes.

Like you buy stock in these musics and wait for them to be worth something. Sure. Or you can allegedly, shadily, get your hands on already valuable music, sure. And then, like stocks. Dude, what Bridgeport did, which is, starts suing anyone and everyone who ever sampled it. So Bridgeport made a big flap in 2005 when they sued Jay-Z for his song Justify My Thug. I want to go ahead and add a disclaimer here.

I am far too square to talk seriously about hip hop. Like I'm really into elevator music right now, seriously. So when I say things like Justify thug or Jay Z or breaks, I'm speaking strictly as an outside observer, an interested outside observer, but I'm not from the streets so like I don't. Yeah. I was down, as they say from like

87 to 95-ish That was those were my big hip-hop years nice and then but these days you say Jay-Z And I know that's the that's the handsome man married to that pretty lady Okay, so I'm not down with the new stuff. We had a similar trajectory. Yeah, except I used to be into it And it sounds like you never were, right? What in the name of God is a walk of flock of you know? Yes. All right, so anyway, Bridgeport Sujaze for sampling, Madonna's Justify My Love. Somehow Bridgeport got its hands on the copyright to justify my love. It's a pretty big song, sure. And when J.Z. sampled it, they sued him. Now this guy runs around suing everybody. Apparently he had like 700 lawsuits against just people who

sampled George Clinton's work. Well that's a big attorney's fees right there. Yeah it is. And but when it pays off, it pays off. So this guy has come to be known as Bridgeport. People like him have come to be known where called Sam trolls remember patent trolls when I gave like the absolute wrong definition of that Yeah, well a Sample troll is somebody who just buys up songs hangs on the copyrights and then suits people who sample them without asking right on the One hand you can make a case that well these people are breaking copyright law Sure by not asking and getting permission to use samples of this. On the other hand, Bridgeport has made it their aim to sue anybody who's

sampled it at all, even if they've taken the work and made it unrecognizable. Right. Which that kind of a lot of people are on the other side of the aisle going like that's ridiculous, that's stifles creativity. This is just one of the many interesting aspects of music sampling. Wow. That was a proper intro. It'd been a while. And that's one, but it's probably the biggest as far as what people think about how music is used and creativity and ownership.

And one of the things that you just mentioned was bridge port is some big corporation. And if you talk to like Hank Shockley, the former producer of public enemy, he will say that, you know, we don't have any problems paying music to artists who created this stuff. He said, but they're own by these corporations now. And it's just, it's greed on their part. Yes. But there are two sides to every story. No.

And the music industry, as we'll see, kind of went on a tear of like suing everybody and protecting themselves. Yeah. And now you kind of understand, like, oh, that's why no one feels bad about this whole music piracy thing. Well, there was a big rush at one point because it was a new genre. I mean, we'll get into the history of how it came to be in all, but it was a new thing. And so all of a sudden, you know, for the first, you know, several years that was open

territory. And that's when, like, that was the heyday if you asked me. Well, folks, nerdy or the nuts might be confused at this point because sampling also refers to digitizing music. Yes. What we're talking about is taking a piece of an already established piece of music, right, a selection of it, and then recreating it, using it, maybe putting it back to back to back in a loop sometimes.

Often times actually. And then creating something new using this. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So that's what we're talking about with music sampling. All right. It's been around for a while too. Yeah. Well, you mentioned taking a snippet. Let's go ahead and just get a couple of examples out there. If we want to start out with

Trying to explain to people what a sample is and those people know this. Okay. There are no further places to look then James Browns 1970 song funky drummer Let's go ahead and hear that that little break beat. Oh, it's like that. Yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right, so that's instantly recognizable. So that's funky drummer. That's funky drummer and that was, who was the drummer there?

Clyde's double field. Yes, Clyde's double field, who has never gotten a cent. No, but he's pretty cool, man. He is not trying to sue anybody, he's not seeking anything, any damages from, and this literally thousands of songs have used that drum break, right? Yeah, James Brown has been sampled, and this is not just that song,

but a lot of it comes from Funky Drummer, 2,729 times. Okay, so the leader. And you can make a case of Funky Drummer provided provided the basis for hip hop like all early hip hop songs especially in like the mid to late 80s all use that drum break, right? Yeah Stubblefield's not going after anybody for that, but what he did was get together with some documentarians who made something called copyright criminals a documentary called copyright criminals to release a special version of the DVD that has all new, ready to sample, Clyde's double field drum breaks that he created just for this.

If you want to use them, he's given like 15% of your sales. Nice. So he's trying out a different model. Well, on the other side too, which we haven't mentioned is, and this is a point that a lot of the hip-hop producers would make is that some of these people are being pulled from obscurity. For instance, the second clip we're gonna play, which is the A-men break from A-men brother,

and it was a B-side from a very little-known song from a group called The Winston's. Whoa, we can hear this one too. Yes, and we'll hear that right now. So that one to me is slightly better than funky drummer. So that's the A-men break. That's the A-men break. And do that one has been sampled thousands of times.

So that one gave birth to drum and bass in jungle. Like, all, all jungle music is based on the deconstruction of the A-men break. If you're interested in hearing about there's a really cool movie or a video. It's like 18 minutes long It's a YouTube video and the title is video explains the world's most important six-second drum loop. Wow, so it gave rise to jungle NWA straight out of Compton use that yeah

cold-cut used it yeah and Third base famously used it as well and hundreds of others. Yeah, I like third base And that was because we want to give due to some of these folks who created this stuff That was Gregory Sylvester Coleman who was the actual drummer that played that lick and that was the Winston's yeah The Winston's excellent Gregory Sylvester Coleman. So yeah, I think what you're originally saying is some producers are saying like, you have ever heard of Gregory Coleman? Yeah, exactly.

So they're bringing some of these folks out of obscurity and giving them their due. And I'm sure selling some records for him here or there. Yeah. So that records really hard to find, obviously. Well, they need to press it again. Maybe they should. Okay. So you take an LL Cool J, ladies love Cool James, for instance.

Is that what L.O. stands for? Yeah, you never knew that? No, I haven't listened to him extensively. He was James something, and you know, the ladies love Cool James. Or E.O. Z. Cool J. Cookies I'm Bad. So you know, no, I did know. I've just fallen off like you. Okay. So you take the funky drummer from James Brown's song and you take Slian the Family Stones trip to your heart, the background vocals, and then basically

you loop those over and over and over and you have a little song called Mama said knock you out. Oh, we better hear that. Well, we're gonna hear him separately obviously. We already played the funky drummer and now this is uh... the trip to your heart backing vocals from slian the family stone whom i love uh...

and alright so that's it dude over and over and over with ladies love cool james wrapping and you got a huge, huge hit. Yeah, oh, that was a big one. Oh, yeah, huge. I wasn't a big, a local J-Ga though. I like the one, I don't remember what's called,

but it had like the boom box on the cover of the tape. The album artwork was a boom box. Yeah, that was good. It had, I'm bad on it. Oh, I did. Okay. It's not always songs that you're sampling. the boom box. Yeah, that was good. I had, I'm bad on it. Oh, I did. Yeah. Okay. It's not always songs that you're sampling.

Sometimes you're sampling stuff from like a TV show or a movie or like the living color song cult of personality, remember that? Yeah, they had like an FDR speech. I think it was Kennedy. Or no, it was FDR, ask not what I could think. I had Kennedy too. Okay. But that was Kennedy. Or he said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Yeah, yeah

Doubting Thomas they were like a skinny puppy offshoot. They sampled I Think the day the Earth stood still sure Extensively throughout this one album that they they create it was pretty good well in guns and roses on their song civil war Remember at the beginning of that they played the cool hand Luke bit Over the you know guitar and then axles weasley little voice comes through Oh, and metallic is one oh, yeah, yeah sample Johnny got his gun. That's right in the video too Right, so those are all samples you might just think oh, that's a snippet from a movie, but it's a sample just like you would use The amen break right okay So those are all samples. You might just think, oh, that's a snippet from a movie, but it's a sample just like you would use the Amenbreak. Right. Okay

The first sampler if you want to go back in time a bit was the melaton Yeah, the actual not not the person but the machine that someone used that was creative for sampling, right? Yeah, I mean it was it was the first time that they had ever, you know, it's basically a little keyboard. They're very basic. I wish I had one, they're really sweet. And it has a volume, a tone, and a pitch control,

a low and high octave you can switch between, and then three samples. A, B, and C, flutes, violins, and cello. And it was the first time that they basically had ever sampled anything like that. So you press the keyboard key, and it plays back a pre-recorded loop of a single note, of that single note on a flute, let's say.

Okay. Which seems, you know, you take that for granted now when you buy these keyboards, or you can do a million different things. But back then, the melaton was huge. Oh yeah. And even before that, people would take magnetic tapes,

like real, real tapes, and literally cut and splice them to create their own samples. Well, and if you want to hear a classic example of the melaton flute, and I do, listen to this little clip right here. Is it aqua long no ready aqua long no that was the intro for the Beatles Strawberry Fields and that was Paul McCartney playing

the flute sample of the melaton on the melaton. Crazy. Pretty cool, huh? I always thought it was just flutes. And then like King Crimson and yes and Genesis, like they went crazy with the melaton. Yeah, Genesis was awesome early on. Yeah, they stayed awesome, but in a different way. You know?

Yeah. A very different way. Very. Okay, so you talked about the origins with the tape splicing Yeah, yeah, I mean you you can go back even further than the melaton was at the 60s Yes, there were these two dudes they were the two piers. I call them Pierre Schaefer and Pierre Henry, but probably but probably Pierre, Henri. I bet. And they were, I guess what you would call

a couple of avant-garde musical artists, and they created what's called music concrete. It's freaky stuff, did you hear any of it? Yeah, I did. There's, again, the YouTube factors in heavily in this episode. Yeah. If you want to find out a little bit about music concrete,

check out the 1979 BBC documentary, the new sound of music. That is very awesome. I did watch that actually. Yeah, that guy was a really great host. Yeah, he really laid it down. So he talks about music concrete where it's basically like these people, before there were tape recorders even.

I don't know how they were doing this, I guess, real to real. Yeah, it was really real. And then these guys were doing splicing They they would record the sound of a can falling or the sound of a metronome or you know a piece of music off of You know the radio and then they would splice it all together into something that's like barely listenable Right, it was it was electronically reproduced music Yeah, and it formed the basis of everything that came after it that had anything to do with electronic from pink Floyd to all electronic music, to the residents,

to silver apples, to all these people who craft work, who created electronic music. It's all based on these two guys creating this in like 1948 or something like that. That's crazy. Did you see the part of the video where they took the tape by hand and we're dragging it through?

Yeah. That ended up sounding like, and I think was sort of the origins of record scratching. That's what it sounded like to me as well. Of course, it was produced back in the day, so they didn't say it was before record scratching. This is about to give rise to this. Actually, it was coming out at the same time, so it was 1979. And that's when like DJ Cool Herc and Grandmaster Flash were starting to get really good. Yeah.

They were playing high school, so people were taking notice. That is true. So, jumping back again in 1961, James Ten blue-sweight shoes from Elvis Presley and Have you heard this thing? Yeah, it's very avant-garde is the way to put it. Yeah, that's a good way to put it into collage number one Was what he called it and it it is in many many parts virtually unrecognizable Yeah, oh, yeah, it's really hard to listen to. It is very hard to listen to. It's a piece of electronic music that's deconstructed. It's blue swage who's deconstructed. Yeah, big time.

And I mean, if you look back and you're like, holy cow, the video on YouTube shows like the guy sitting in front of his setup. Yeah. And it's like pretty extensive. And I think I was obviously out of his mind. Yeah, lots of drugs wasn't he? But when you look back at it and you're like, And it's like pretty extensive. And I think I was obviously out of his mind. Lots of drugs wasn't he? But when you look back at it, you're like, oh, that was what 1961?

That's pretty impressive work. Yeah, exactly. I'm Dickey Goodman and Bill Buchanan in 1956 had a more commercial version of, I guess, you would call it music concrete with Flying Saucer. Did you listen to that one? I did. That was the stuff we heard on FM Radio growing up. Remember all the mash-up stuff they used to do? Like, a bet-middle is from a distance with like the during the first goal for? I don't know, I don't remember that.

Now I mean like when the radio stations would do these, well let me go and say what it was and play a snippet. Flying saucer, they took rock and roll hits from that era and mashed it up with a fake news report about aliens landing from outer space. Yeah. And it sounded a little something like this. We interrupt this record to bring you a special bulletin. The reports of a flying saucer hovering over the city have been confirmed. The flying saucers are real.

Real where I feel what my heart can't conceive. That was the clatters recording to real. We switch you now to our on the spotter reporter downtown. So that's the stuff that we heard on FM Radio. They would do, I remember when I was a kid, they would say like, we're going to call someone so right now and they would say, hey, how you feeling a kid, they would say like, we're gonna call someone so right now and they would say, hey, how you feeling and all of a sudden you'd hear, but I couldn't sleep at all last night

and then they would ask him another question and it'd be like an interview and the answers were snippets from rock songs and answering, which is really like, I mean, it had to say day in the 70s and 80s for sure. I don't have a clip, so I'm gonna have to describe it, but the bet-middle or thing was slightly different. It would be like bet-middle is from a distance,

interspersed with patriotic speeches. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that. You remember that? Yeah, yeah. That was sampling. I guess so. It's most jingoistic form. At the very least it was a mashup, right?

Those, oh oh by the way those flying saucer guys you can and in goodman yeah they went on to do a lot of those things like they did one during the energy crisis of 74 I remember crisis of 79 yeah but it'd be like how much gas will be rationed just enough for the city dude I remember that that's what I was remembering. You remember? Yeah. I was eight years old. I was not cognizant at that time.

I had a lot of like poop on my hands from like playing with it when you were thinking, wow, this is really neat stuff. Yeah. I was a little radio kid back then. Oh, also, I want to say one more thing. I went a little deeper in the music concrete thing. And apparently, Phillips, the manufacturing concern, they tried to get into electronic music in the late 50s and had this whole little wing that led a couple of guys just go to town

trying to make popular electronic music. And if you search acid house from 1958 on YouTube, these guys did a pretty good job of it. Really? It is very clearly like the predecessor of like, it's listenable, it's not just like, yeah, yeah. It's not even avant-garde, it has like a beat to it and a melody and it's just, it's really neat.

Interesting. I don't have that clip either. We should do a podcast on the moog. That should, okay. That'll be coming. Didn't you guys do that on the B side? I think so, but we'll do it up. Okay. We've gotten requests for more music stuff. That's why I picked this one out.

Oh, gotcha. So, you flash forward a little bit and you mentioned Cool DJ Herk, and Graham D.J. Graham Master Flash, who a lot of people think that was the group.J. Graham Master Flash, who a lot of people think that was the group. It was Graham Master Flash in the Furious Five, if you remember. And they hit it big in 1980 with the song Freedom, which sampled Get Up and Dance by the Band Freedom. Yeah. Pretty straight up.

Well, that kind of took this whole thing into mainstream. Well, and that's when this whole thing into mainstream. Well, and that's when scratching started, too, wouldn't it? Yeah, Graham Master Flash definitely started scratching. DJ Cole Herc started sampling very clearly, like he's the guy. He's from Kingston, Jamaica, and he moved to New York in 1967, I think,

and started bringing like his turn tables to block parties. And he would just, he'd find like his turn tables to block parties, and he would just, he'd find like a drum break or something, and then a drum break from another song, and he'd just keep like putting them together. So it was like one long drum break, maybe bring in a little bit of a bass line, and I went back and listened to some of it,

and it was good stuff, man. And he's doing this in like the mid-70s, and yeah, he started sampling as we know it, like turntable sampling. Crazy. Innovating Josh. That's even better than crazy. Marley Marl is someone else we should mention

if we're talking about the early heyday. He was a house producer for the juice crew, which was Big Daddy Kane and Bismarkey among others. But he also produced Eric Bienrockim, uh, Elo Cool J, and he was like, he's often cited as like, the early leader.

What about Redhead Kingpin? I don't know that, what is that? He's like in there somewhere. Oh, is he? Yeah. Big Daddy Kane, man, you just blasted me within nostalgia. Oh, yeah. Remember the hat? Yeah. Remember the Gum the hat? Yeah.

Remember the gumbee haircut? Yeah, oh yeah. The, what do they call that? The high, high right? Oh I always thought it was called the gumbee. That's what you call it. Huh. Well they make all the gumbee haircut, I don't know.

And Toledo. It's a fade essentially. Big daddy came. The Beastie boys, see what I was talking about like back in the day in the 80s, late 80s, they were constructing full songs from dozens of samples. And this was before you had to pay permission rights and stuff like that. So you get a song like, Hey Ladies from Paul Sputik, which is, if you ask me, the pinnacle for the Beastie Boys.

Paul's Boutique or Hey Ladies? Paul's Boutique. Yeah, I don't know if it's the pinnacle. I think it's one of several pinnacles. Well, check your head was great too, but Paul's Boutique was great. Hey ladies, you've 16 samples, and that was not on the low side,

but Terminator X of Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys would craft songs out of dozens and dozens of samples and that's That's DJ Herrick can you're given props to he's the Beastie boys DJ? What's he always I believe so okay, but I think they all like wrote the stuff together okay As we'll find out because the the court case against the Beastie boys was Newton versus diamond Ouch and we all know who diamond is Dustin diamond because the court case against a BC voice was Newton versus Diamond. Ouch. And we all know who Diamond is. Dustin Diamond. Mike D's brother.

No, no, no. Groups like Daylust Soul, Public Enemy in the B.C.s. were crafting these songs, whereas nowadays, partially because I think they're not as good and creative, and partially because you have to pay rights. You'll get like a kid rock who just plays this one loop over and over and that's the sample he uses in a song. Yeah. So it's not like he's crafting these songs out of dozens and dozens of samples. Well, public enemy even said like after all these lawsuits and threats of lawsuits, if you're crafting a song out of 17 other songs, you basically have to figure out something else

because you can't do it anymore. And I mean, what a buzz kill, too, to make a song, and then take it to your record company, Overlords, who say, like, okay, we can get this cleared. We can get this cleared. This one we can't clear. No way we're ever clearing this one. So go back and read it.

We can get this way, really. So you have, I don't know, two thirds of your song is intact, but the other third is, it has holes in it, you know? That's, it kind of takes away from the whole thing. But at the same time, I mean, again, it's breaking a law. It's a copyright law. And it's not an arbitrary law. It's not a superfluous law. There is validity to it, you know? Well, let's go ahead and talk about it then.

Okay, copyright law. The one that changed everything, it was not the first copyright law suit. I think those guys who did the flying saucer thing were the first to start attracting copyright lawsuits. But the first one, as far that changed hip-hop, I guess, was Bismarkey landed a beef from one Gilbert O'Sullivan who wrote the song, Alone Again, Naturally. And what did he use it for? For, you got what I need or whatever? No. Alone Again.

His 1991 song, From I Need A Haircut, that album, it's called Alone Again. And Bismarcky lifted pretty heavily from that. And he was signed to Warner Brothers. And Warner Brothers got sued by the owners of Alone Again naturally, right? And the judge ruled in the copyright holders' favor against Warner Brothers. So all of a sudden, Warner Brothers, big business, big company, starts circling the wagons like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're really exposed right now because all of our hip hop artists are running around sampling anybody they want to. And now we can get sued for it. And the judge caught a lot of flack because

he said, and not only, not only am I ruling in your favor, I think that this should go to some sort of criminal prosecution. Wow. Right? Because this is, their defense, where our brothers' defense was, it's rampant. Everybody's doing this. We've been doing it for 10 years. Right. What's your problem? And the judge was like, well, if that's the case, and we need to really start looking into this, and that shut everything down. That's when Sampling went from art to business. Yeah, I'm surprised it took that long for people to catch on.

Yeah. And it was money, is what did it? As sales, it was just like DJs and Queens was no big deal in the 1970s and early 80s. But all of a sudden these artists, these hip-hop artists were making money on work that was previously recorded by other people, and people saw green, essentially.

It's true. It's all dollar signs. They do. But let me ask you, should the original people, the original artists, like I can understand, just hating on corporations because they didn't create this at all. Right. It just happened to own it or whatever. But should the original artists

expect some sort of compensation for somebody who's making millions of dollars by taking some of that original work? Do they deserve any kind of consideration? I think so. I think I agree too. Depending on how, like, what degree the work has changed. Right.

I say use the crap out of it, but get permission and pay royalties. Yeah. Like, if that's the genre, if that's what you're choosing to do, like no one's forcing these people to do that, that's what you're choosing to do, then you've got to play by the rules.

That's what I think. And then go out with it. Well, I guess that's kind of like the status quo now and that's not working necessarily. It's leading to like your beef with Kid Rock. Well, my beef is, he's just not very good. It's larger than that. You'd be careful, man. He gets him fights and stuff.

Yeah, waffle houses in Atlanta. Yeah. So, he knows where we live. I saw Bismarkey at the airport one time, by the way. You may hung out with Bismarkey once. Yeah. Yeah, so he knows where we live. I saw Bismarkey at the airport one time, by the way. You mean hung out with Bismarkey once? Yeah, yeah, played PlayStation. Yeah, so I'm on the little internal train and I was like, is that, yeah, that is. I mean, I thought for about a half a second and I was like, that's it. Sit me and worry that grave curly powdered wig. No, no, he didn't. Bismarkey. All right, so let's talk about what the cost of it is. Ten dollars.

No, not ten dollars. At first, it was something, it was called a buyout. So you purchased rights to sample a song. It wasn't that much money. But like I said, as sales grew in the rap and hip-hop world, and Rock Band said it too. They started to pay a roll over rates, which is you got to pay per your sales, which all of a sudden, you know, the bill got larger and larger and larger. Yeah. And you're not necessarily just paying one person.

No, no. You might pay the copyright owner of the composition of the music. And if you use a specific recording, rather than record that composition yourself and use it, then you have to pay the owner of that particular recording, which aren't necessarily one in the same. And they both might want equal amounts of money rather than giving you a deal, you know? Or if you're vanilla ice, you would just slightly alter a queen's famous baseline from underpressure, not even so much as credit them on your album, forget asking for rights. He didn't even say like special thanks to

Queen and set a lot of court eventually for an undisclosed sum of money. He races jet skis now. Under the name of vanilla ice. Does he? He has a home renovation show too. Does he really? Yeah. Oh yeah, he flips houses. Yeah. It's pretty weird. It's not weird. It's weird for him to do it.

MC Hammer. Very famous for his sampling of and can't touch this. And his pants. Super free. Oh yeah. Did he pick games? Did he pick games? No, he did. Okay. That was all on the

up and up. He's in red right now. Is he really? Yeah. He was back then. Well he's got a great angelist. He got a prey just to make it today. Right. So is Ron from Run DMC. Really? Yeah. And and I size baby is out there flipping houses. Yeah. They all got to do something. And Dustin Diamond from Save By The Bell. It was not a rapper. He was evicted. He was in the process of being evicted. He had, he launched a web campaign to save his house.

I remember that. I wonder what ever happened. I don't know. The drum intro for Led Zeppelin's When The Levy Breaks, that thing has been sampled dozens and dozens and dozens of times. Yeah, but it's so massive and it's so immediately recognizable that it takes over a song.

You know what I'm saying? I don't think it's a, it just, it's basically like, oh, this is Led Zeppelin's sample, rather than like, that's a great thing about a Membrother it's like no one ever heard of that, but it was a perfect drum break Yeah, that led that love when the levy braces just it's too Led Zeppelin so too recognizable and you're off of it Yeah, I just started thinking about Robert plant right I think they were down with it though Jimmy Pagemy page i remember was uh... totally cool that

yeah yeah with them using that course it wasn't his leg no it was john bonnet uh... he's not around to say anything no In 2003, the B.C. boys, I said the landmark case, Newton V. Diamond. They did a sample and we'll hear it right now. The very beginning of past the mic contains this six-second flute stab. Did you hear that?

It's like three notes on a flute. They got the sample rights for the sound recording, but not the compositional rights, because they were like you know this guy played it so we'll pay him but it's three notes on a flute like we don't feel like we should have to pay compositional rights yeah i've always thought of something like eight notes was the cut off or something like that like there's a number of notes i remember that from being a kid i don't know why that would have come up when i was a kid but i think you remember that well the bc

boys won their case, actually. And the judge said that the brief composition consisting of three notes separated by a half step is not sufficient to sustain a claim for copyright infringement. So that was, we already played the clip, didn't we? Yeah. So that was it. And also, you didn't not only hear it at the very beginning of that song, but you hear it underlying the entire song.

It's the best sample of all time, best use of a sample. Your favorite, how about that? Doesn't have to be best. You know what? My favorite is from the BC Boys. Hey ladies, remember when it's from ballroom blitz, you know that song? Ballroom blitz? Yeah. A terrible, terrible song.

That's a sample, BC Boy sample that song and Hey ladies when they break that one part down and it goes, she thinks she's the passionate one. That's from ballroom blitz. Huh, wow. Yeah, so that's my favorite one. I definitely wouldn't have ever, ever caught that. How do you still love the BC boys back in the day?

Have you ever heard the pop will eat itself? Yeah, back in like the early 90s, they're kind of like, they had a song, they're one big song, psychosexual. Actually, sampled a classical composition, Eric Sati's Junapeeti. It's really awesome. I'd heard, I love Junapeeti and I love psychosexual and then one day I just heard it just where I was like, oh my god that's that. That's one of my favorites. Favorite, like probably of all time was ice cubes good day

using the Isley Brothers footsteps in the dark. Yeah, that was good. And then Dr. Dre's The Chronic was like, that was just the soundtrack of one year of my college life. Oh yeah. And that was a lot of George Clinton in there. Tons.

And Dre was actually one of the first people to stop sampling and start recreating stuff with live musicians himself. Which is called producing. Yeah, you're right. And now he has his own line of headphones. Should we talk about Danger Mouse real quick? Sure. The Grey album.

Yeah. He famously in 2004 did a mashup of the Beatles' wide album, Jay-Z's The Black Album, and called it the Grey album. Very creative. And EMI, who owned the Beatles recordings, even though Jay Z and Paul McCartney were totally fine with it, they shut it down and said, you're not selling this. No, but it made his career.

Yeah, and it got around on the internet such that he was like, fine, I'm not selling it, but everyone's going to hear it anyway. I'll go hang out with Celo and do some stuff in MF Doom. And we'll just make some money from that instead. Oh, Chuck, what about cover songs? Yeah, since 1909, you can cover songs. You can play a song faithfully, especially live. Yeah.

And not pay the owner of the composition ascent. As long as you don't alter it, like, play it in a different language or something like that. And there's a lot of people who say, well, wait a minute, that's like, that's a sample and it's entirety. This is crazy.

What is the deal? And everyone has said, we don't know. We'll figure it out in another 10 years. You know what bugs me? Is when these new country artists will cover a song that's like a year old, like another song and release it to great acclaim. Well, that used to happen like a lot. Like more than one person would record the same song and they'd get released about the

same time, like in the 50s and the 60s. So just be glad you don't live then, because you'd be going crazy. That's true. And just so you guys know, the reason we're able to play these clips is because something called Fair Use, which we've talked about a lot with Jerry. Yeah. So just put your pens down lawyers, because we know what we're

doing. It's only in the United States. And it is the exclusive right granted to us to play a snippet of something without acquiring permission as long as we use it as commentary, criticism, research, teaching, or news reporting. Well, wait a minute. This is what we're doing. Does that mean that if this is heard in Australia though,

does that, are we still covered by fair use? That I don't know. Well, we'll find out. All right. Well, that's it for music sampling. This turned out better than I thought. You got anything else? No. I mean, you got any more samples to put in? No. I'm putting my turntable back in my pocket. Okay. And you know, they have those little iPhone turn tables now. Yeah. Which is, hey, come on. Jerry, it was, if you want to learn more about music sampling, you can

type that into the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Oh, before listener mail, Josh, I want to point people who are into sampling in the history of sampling to go to whosampled.com. I'm glad you mentioned this. I'm meant to mention it too. It's a really awesome website and it allows you basically, you can search for artists who have sampled and who have been sampled and search for songs and they basically throw them upside by side as two turn tables, like the original sample or the original, you know, break or whatever, then how it was

used. It's pretty cool. Are you complaining on simultaneous? Yeah, it's awesome. It's something. So that is whosample.com. Yeah. Alright, Josh, I'm going to read this.

It's kind of a long one. But this is about spies. Ooh. And this is from Tom. And he said that his family has a strange tendency of being arrested on suspicion of being Kiwi spies, New Zealand spies, in France. They all wear trench coats. The first story concerns my parents on their honeymoon in 1985. It was immediately following

the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor by French sabbatours. My parents were traveling into France from the UK when they were arrested and detained on suspicion of being New Zealand counter-terrorist. Nothing could be further from the truth, by the way. They were held in separate holding cells for two days when French agents would come inside the cell, smoking cigarettes and yelling at them in French. It was pretty terrifying for my mother who was only 21 at the time. And after two days, they were released

and dropped off at the New Zealand Embassy where they learned of the incident back in Auckland. So that's one incident. The second story is my comes from a great, great anti-an or sister Marie. She's a nun with the order of the little sisters of the poor and she is 98 years old this year and is still going strong. Her story originates with the Nazis. She had been with her fellow nuns in rural France looking after the elderly who had been

abandoned as the Nazis approached. They were also sheltering three to four British airmen who had been shot down nearby. When the Nazis arrived, they rounded up the nuns and the airmen accused the nuns of being spies. She and her fellow nuns, of which she was mother superior, were taken to a POW camp interrogated by Gestapo officers. He's nun. Yeah. Eventually, she was marched into the Comedance Office, told she was being taken away, Gestapo officers. He's nun. Yeah.

Eventually she was marched into the Commodont's office, told she was being taken away, believing she was going to be shot, she told them she would not cooperate unless her nuns were also set free. Turned into a pretty hostile negotiation and she stuck to her guns, even though at one point she was looking down the barrel of one. Wow. The Commodont finally agreed and bundled all the sisters together on a freight train, but they believed they were going to be executed together.

Suddenly, the trains stopped. The guards on the train threw the nuns out one by one into the snow. The doors closed and the trains sped off. A systemary eventually led her nuns to the convent where they spent the last two years of the war, not only helping the elderly, but also sheltering and feeding members of the French resistance.

So he said, Tom said, if I could read this on the podcast, I know Antian would really appreciate the airtime, the convent in which she is dedicated over 70 years to. And I would appreciate letting people know about why nobody and my family feel safe in France. Man. So 98-year-old anti-an, the nun, we thank you for all your work over the years. And I hope you make it to 120.

Yeah, way to thwart the Nazis. Yeah. Nice. How about that? That's from Tom R. Thanks a lot Tom for letting us know that. We appreciate it. Wow. I guess if you have a cool family story we want to hear that, we're always up for those.

And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast. At iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are where every listen to your favorite shows. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in In my new podcast, IcedEast Daily Game, I'll be dropping some daily wisdom and personal insight that I believe is essential to achieving success in business, love, life, hustling, whatever. I'll be coming to you every single weekday

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So start every week day morning with me and get inspired. Listen to IEC's Daily Game every week day morning with me and get inspired. Listen to I.C.'s Daily Game every week day on the I.H.R. radio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and start your morning with me. What's up? This is Chris Rudiger. I am the owner and co-founder of the 615 House and you're listening to my new podcast, the 615 House podcast.

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