Author
Amir Said
Amir Said (aka Sa’id), is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Art of Sampling and the creator and series editor of the Best Damn Hip Hop Writing book anthology. A writer, publisher, and beatmaker/rapper from New York (now living in Paris, France), Said is also the founder of BeatTips and the co-founder of the publishing company Superchamp Books. He is an author with a number of books to his credit, including ‘The Art of Sampling,’ ‘The BeatTips Manual,’ ‘Ghetto Brother,’ and ‘The Truth About New York.’ He is also a recording artist with a number of music projects, including the albums 'Soul Review' and 'The Best of Times.' Follow him on Twitter at: @amirsaid and @Art_of_Sampling.
Borrowing didn’t just occur randomly in music in eighteenth century England, it was standard practice, even for great composers the likes of Bach and Mozart:
o this day when people hear the name Mozart, the image of Amadeus’ whimsically…
Sampling, AI Training, and Fair Use: The Misplaced Notion of Ethical/Non-Ethical Training
Immediately after any new major technological advancement emerges, people take sides. They become entrenched in hardcore positions that are based more on their opinion (what they feel) and far less on fact. And more often than not, the…
Fair Use and the Music Industry
With regards to fair use and the music industry, particularly as it pertains to sampling, there has been a huge disconnect between what fair use is — i.e. its fundamental purpose and what it was intended to protect— and what most music…
Originality and the Presumption of A Proprietary Authorial Impulse
What if I told you that your concept of originality isn’t really your own, would you believe me? What if I told you that the concept of originality that you have — that most of us have today — is actually the concept of originality held by…
Musicianship (Creativity) Above Technology
The mythology of music making gives cover to those who make music. Put another way, most musicians benefit from the aura of authority and perceived genius, whether they are geniuses or not. People perceive composers and musicians as having…
Grandmaster Flash Battled Mozart At the Fever, and Mozart Got Burned
A note about the title of this article:
Battles are an important part of hip hop culture. In hip hop/rap music specifically, head-to-head battles have taken place between rappers, DJs, and crews traditionally at park jams and clubs. The…
Hip Hop/Rap Art Music vs. Club Music; Favoritism vs. Empirical Evidence: How Taste and Sonic…
Marley Marl, Easy Mo Bee, DJ Premier, RZA, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, Large Professor, DJ Quik, DJ Toomp, J Dilla, Madlib — These are all important figures in the beatmaking tradition of hip hop/rap music. But one’s sonic preference for and…
Source Material As A Black Cultural Space: The Link Between Continuum Record Collections and the…
Marley Marl, the father of hip hop/rap’s music modern beatmaking tradition and the man who spearheaded hip hop/rap music’s major sampling era, remembers his early source materialfor sampling this way:
he reason I even used, went back to…
The Matter of Atonality and Sampling
Why sampling has no partiality to traditional musical tonality.
Was It Fair Use? Kool G Rap & DJ Polo – “Road To The Riches” (prod. by Marley…
Released in 1989 as the title track off the album of the same name, “Road To The Riches,” produced by Marley Marl, features a sample of Billy Joel’s “Stiletto” (1979). Kool G Rap & DJ Polo and Marley Marl were never sued for copyright…