Sampling in Authentic Hip-Hop According

¶ … Sampling in Authentic Hip-Hop

According to J.D. Williams, "DJs and producers have always used sampling in hip-hop and, as a result, it has become synonymous with authentic hip-hop" (Williams 2007:12). Yet, according to 50 Cent, hip-hop "is in a struggle of being artistic or [having] authenticity" (Conway 2010). For 50 Cent, hip-hop's authenticity is not in its artistic delivery but rather in its lived experience: "When I offer aggression, I offer it from an author, a real place" (Conway 2010). Hip-hop, therefore, may be viewed in two different lights: first, as an artistic medium; second, as a mode of musical expression used to convey real life histories. At the center of hip-hop is, then, a problem: does the music (whether or not it uses sampling) make it authentic? -- or does its authenticity come from some other place, like, for example, the street? This paper will show that authentic hip-hop can be seen in either way -- as a music genre that fits a precise style (i.e., uses sampling), or as a music genre that exposes something real and true about a particular rapper's struggles and real-life experiences.

Discovering the Root of Authenticity

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa observes that "since music borrowing is a pervasive feature of musical composition across various traditions and times, the derivative work concept, combined with the emphasis on originality…is at times problematic when applied to music" (Arewa 2006:571). What this means is that "sampling" is nothing new to music, even if it is particular to hip-hop. Musical artists have borrowed or sampled other passages of musical compositions from other artists since music began to be recorded (whether on page or on record, tape, CD or digital medium). Arewa notes how, since the time of Bach, musicians have built on one another's compositions without in any way reducing the authenticity or originality of the artist's work. In other words, sampling does not invalidate authenticity, according to Arewa. In a sense, sampling is essential to the nature of composition. Brahms did several variations on a theme by Haydn. To suggest that composers not absorb other composers' work into their own oeuvre would be like saying Brahms violated some sort of copyright law by building on his predecessor's body of music.

Thus, to say that hip-hop is in anyway unauthenticated by sampling would be illogical. But a separate question arises which takes the problem to its alternate extreme: What if hip-hop does not use samples? Can it still be authentic?

This question compels us to look at the very nature of hip-hop itself to discover the source from which its authenticity is derived. If it is derived from its particular adherence to the tradition of sampling, then one must answer that hip-hop cannot be authentic if it does not use sampling. However, if, as 50 Cents describes, hip-hop's authenticity is derived from lived experience, then particular adherence to genre styles and traditions is not necessary for authentication.

For, by, and From the Street

50 Cent argues that the lived experience is more necessary for composers of hip-hop to be authentic than the artistic style of sampling that is used in the music: "A lot of them that write music that has a street-life theme to it haven't actually been exposed to very much of that. it's starting to feel like it doesn't matter. I'm watching it, and I'm like, Okay, it sounded great, but ya lyin'" (Conway 2010). Lyrical honesty and sincerity are what make hip-hop authentic. Being grounded in the urban upbringing that so many young people experienced in the latter half of the 20th century is what gave hip-hop its sense of identity. To deny its roots is to deny authenticity -- at least according to an artist who observes that there is altogether a good deal of posing going on in hip-hop.

Walter Fluker states that "rappers often point to Malcolm X's phrase, 'no sellout, no sellout, no sellout,' as the touchstone of a black cultural consciousness intent on preserving the authenticity of black cultural expressions, and as the basis for a true black nationalism" (Fluker 1998:100). What Fluker expresses is the fact that hip-hop is a kind of cultural/artistic extension of the social and political message of Malcolm X More than a mere genre of music, hip-hop represents (in one sense) the oppression of urban blacks at the hands of white elitists. As Steven Best and Douglas Kellner observe in their essay "Rap, Black Rage, and Racial Difference," the race war between whites and blacks in post-war America is far from extinguished and rap artistically illustrates and comments on its continuance: "A significant part of hip hop culture, rap articulates the experiences and conditions of African-Americans living in a spectrum of marginalized situations ranging from racial stereotyping and stigmatizing to struggle for survival in violent ghetto conditions" (Best, Kellner 1999). Hip hop is the artistic expression of the ongoing violence (economical, social, and political) against blacks -- but it is also an assertion of racial solidarity. Like the Malcolm X approach, which was a call for unity and solidarity, hip hop attempts to unite blacks with a post-war racial identity whose common ground is rooted in suffering at the hands of a racist and unjust social system.

Hip-Hop's Authenticity in Its Message

In the opinion of Derrick Alridge, hip-hop is the link between the militancy of social rights crusaders like Malcolm X and the struggles of minorities today. Hip-hop is the medium by which authentic life experiences are shared with others and a message is conveyed. "Since the early years of Hip Hop, SPC hip hoppers have continued to espouse many of the ideas and ideology of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Freedom Struggle, but in a language that resonates with many black youth of the postindustrial and post-civil rights integrationist era" (Alridge 2012:226). Alridge notes that hip hop uses rhyme and rhythm to describe inhuman atrocities: Michael Franti, he notes, raps, "Oh my, Oh my God, / Out here mama they got us livin' suicide…" (Alridge 2012:226) and the lyrics "are potent, analytical, and reminiscent of the critiques and ideas of…Malcolm X" (Alridge 2012:227). Hip hop emerged, like the Phoenix, out of the ashes of the works and message of Malcolm X

Yet, what separates Malcolm X from some of his hip hop descendants is that while Malcolm X rejected a Christian spiritual message, many in hip hop fall back on a Christian creed of ethics and find their strength in spirituality. For Malcolm X, strength came from a different source. In a sense, his strength came from the image he held of his father preaching to a congregation: "The image of him that made me proudest was his crusading and militant campaigning with the words of Marcus Garvey. As young as I was then, I knew from what I overheard that my father was saying something that made him a 'tough' man. I remember an old lady, grinning and saying to my father, 'You're scaring these white folks to death!'" (Malcolm X 1999:8). Malcolm X would embrace the militancy of his father and use it to confront the social order that oppressed his people. But hip hop -- especially in the music of Tupac Shakur -- would embrace a different aspect of the black experience: its suffering and the fact that suffering was the one common element that united all people everywhere on earth.

As Jake Brown observes, "Tupac Shakur was a holy being -- omnipotent in Hip Hop, the 'Black Jesus.' He spoke for his people in motion picture, lyrical scripture…in Tupac's second coming as hip hop's first prophet, he would raise a generation up on his shoulders and carry them to a promised land…his music was his generation's heaven…he spoke a universal language" (Brown 2005:xv). In other words, Tupac's hip hop was a kind that emphasized togetherness rather than difference. Tupac, like the Black Panthers, wanted to be a positive force in the black community. Like Malcolm X, he believed in a righteous way: "We don't part the Red Sea, but we walk through the 'hood without getting shot. We don't turn water to wine, but we turn dope fiends and dope heads into productive citizens of society. We turn words into money -- what greater gift can there be? So I believe God blesses us, I believe God blesses those that hustle. Those that use their minds and those that are overall righteous" (Brown 2005:xxi). Tupac, like Malcolm X, recognized the plight of his people, and like Moses he wanted to lead them out of their servitude in a system of social, economic, and political slavery and into a promised land.

Sampling an Identity

Yet, hip-hop also has a style that is at times more viewed as equally as important as the street essence that gives the genre its particular quality. As William Eric Perkins states, "It is sampling and mixing that gives rap music its self-renewing character" (Perkins 1996:8). On the other hand, there is the opinion of Ice Cube, whose "Jackin' for Beats" is a "humorous song that describes sampling other artists and producers as outright armed robbery" (Perkins 1996:121). In the "hard-core" sub-genre of hip-hop, one sees a much clearer emphasis on street and urban authenticity -- rather than on sampling. For N.W.A., hip-hop is an expression of lived life -- a kind of militant message passed down to urban blacks from men like Malcolm X

But not all hip-hop comes from such types. The Beastie Boys are an example of hip-hop artists who thrive on a different message. Much of their music is centered on adolescent/teenage angst -- white suburban kids enraged by suburban living, but moved by urban beats. They inter-mingle their own white perspective with samplings from an assortment of other artists -- thus making their mark on the hip-hop scene. Their aggression appears to be real, like 50 Cent's -- even if it is different in its source. The Beastie Boys are, of course, legends in hip-hop -- but Mickey Hess denies that their authenticity comes from their own perspective as white suburbanites. Hess states that "hip-hop's imperatives of authenticity are tied to its representations of African-American identity, and white rap artists negotiate their place within hip-hop culture by responding to this African-American model of the authentic" (Hess 2005:372). Of course, Hess' argument makes sense on one level because just as sampling is a major part of hip-hop so too is its black identity.

This identity, however, is in a way sampled as much by whites. There was Vanilla Ice in the 1990s, whose "fabricated biography" allowed him to seem like a black rapper who had "lived the life" even though he was nothing more than a pre-packaged faux-rapper (Hess 2005:372). Today, there is the opposite of Vanilla Ice in Eminem -- a hip-hop artist whose life story is magnified by "his whiteness… [and] his struggle to succeed as a hip-hop artist" because of race (Hess 2005:372). In Eminem, one finds a hip-hop artist who samples not just music (his sampling of Dido was very popular) but also of the traditional hip-hop identity narrative.

Indeed, Hess observes that "the reaction against Vanilla Ice changed the way white rap artists confront their whiteness, such that newer artists have developed a more critical awareness of the problem of constructing white hip-hop as 'real'" (Hess 2005:373). In other words, 50 Cent is right in way: what makes hip-hop authentic is the narrative behind it -- the author, the artist. Even if the art of hip-hop looks and sounds like hip-hop, it does not necessarily make it real authentic hip-hop. Its authenticity comes not from its samples -- whether of music or of narrative -- but from the authenticity of the hip-hop artist himself. Hip-hop's authenticity, according to Hess and 50 Cent, resides in the artist: if he is real, so too then is his hip-hop.

In this sense, hip-hop exists not in the sampling, but in the man and the story behind the words put to the sample. The problem with Vanilla Ice was that he not only sampled music ("Ice, Ice, Baby" was set to the tune of "Under Pressure") but that he also sampled an identity. Had Vanilla Ice been authentic in his own person, it is possible that he may have been seen as a credible and authentic hip-hop artist. In the final analysis, however, he was viewed as a fraud. Eminem, on the other hand, has succeeded in establishing himself as an authentic hip-hop artist not merely because he adheres to the sampling principle of hip-hop but because the identity he professes is authenticated by his story.

Sampling Song

But, of course, what has always been part of hip-hop is the art of sampling music -- and, as has already been stated, sampling is part of all musical endeavors. But "because of copyright-infringement litigation, some of these artists…have had to give up" (Marshall 2006:1). The problem is that because of copyrights, that which has made hip-hop artistically unique is now being rethought: "De La Soul's unauthorized use of twelve seconds from the Turtles' 1969 single, "You Showed Me," ended in a $1.7 million settlement in 1989…Biz Markie's unauthorized use of twenty secons from Gilbert O'Sullivan's 1972 ballad…was ruled a criminal theft" (Marshall 2006:1). None of this boded well for hip-hop -- and, yet, even the biggest names in hip-hop still continue to use samples in their work, whether they are Kanye or P. Diddy: working for a major label allows them the ability to pay the licensing fee of whatever sample they choose to use. Even "underground producers such as DJ Premier base their very style and voice on a commitment to keeping hip-hop…alive" through the use of artistic sampling (Marshall 2006:2).

Yet, one voice -- that of Questlove -- rises to assure hip-hop critics that authenticity does not reside in the art of sampling, but rather in the desire to make authentic hip-hop: Questlove "suggest that for 'traditional' musicians like himself, sampling is not worth the trouble when 'original' material, performed within certain stylistic bounds and properly recorded, can be just as authentic" (Marshall 2006:2). Of course, Questlove is a hip-hop artist who desires to be seen as one who thinks outside the box -- as one who embraces originality in an artistic way. He is not out to prove his authenticity through identity or narrative -- but through the very music he makes. If new laws mean that he cannot sample in the traditional way, at least he can still manufacture hip-hop rhythms that reflect traditional hip-hop style.

Questlove's approach is to "critically reconstruct hip-hop's established storyline, debunking too circumscribed an idea of hip-hop's boundaries and recovering significant, overlooked practices" (Marshall 2006:2). Questlove does not deny the fact that sampling has always held a central role in the art of making hip-hop -- but he also reminds the hip-hop community that "traditional instrumentalists" have also been an important factor in "hip-hop's history" (Marshall 2006:2).

Of course, not all hip-hop artists embrace Questlove's perspective. To those who fail to appreciate his sense of authenticity, Questlove states: "For those who speak out against live instruments in hip-hop is plain ignorant to me. That spits in the face of the work that I've put in for the last decade. Not to mention that must mean that [Doctor] Dre's work is underestimated and unappreciated (you think Dre is using samples? Nope)" (Marshall 2006:2). Indeed, Questlove goes on to call out a number of influential hip-hop artists who used instruments as opposed to samples. The point is that hip-hop's authenticity cannot be established by adherence to form: the authenticity of hip-hop comes from the substance of the artist and his art as well as from his identity and his narrative. Authentic hip-hop is hip-hop that is real because the passion and struggle and pain and love behind it are real. Hip-hop that is inauthentic is hip-hop that is manufactured -- artists like Vanilla Ice, artists pretending to be something they are not. In the end, "hip-hop's fascination with authenticity is unique to the genre and is the function of its roots as the cultural expression of socially and economically marginalized African-Americans" (Williams 2007:3).