Copyright law. It’s a pain in most electronic musician’s asses. I remember as a kid discovering the samples used in my fave Hip-Hop songs and being so excited – like discovering a little secret. I also remember when Biz Markie got sued and the whole game changed. Nowadays due to copyright law, a lot of the classic albums of the late 80s could never be made (It Takes a Nation of Millions for example). There would just be no way to license every sample they used.
That being said, it is appropriate that this documentary focuses on Girl Talk. I always wondered how this fellow put out these albums of 2000+ samples of popular songs and not get destroyed by lawsuits. I always assumed he had some sort of influential family in high places or something.
This documentary dives into copyright law and how it changed over the last couple decades under the pressure of big business like Disney. It is fairly naive in it’s presentation at times, almost like 30+ years of rap music never happened and Girl Talk and Negativland are the first people to ever slice a beat. But for every infuriatingly dumb thing said about music, you can learn a little something about copyright. And if you are an aspiring producer you prolly should.
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