Is sampling and scratching theft or merely traditional cultural appropriation? That’s the central question of the new documentary Copyright Criminals, premiering Tuesday at the Toronto Film Festival as well as on PBS’ Independent Lens series.
When Public Enemy’s legendary 1988 release It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and De La Soul’s epochal 1989 effort 3 Feet High and Rising exploded the possibilities of sample-based sound collage, no one had a clue that hip-hop would become a multibillion-dollar global industry and spark lasting, devastating copyfights.
Were those copyfights legitimate, or simply ruthless attempts to cash in on a zeitgeist that knows no limit? Benjamin Franzen’s Copyright Criminals explores the subject through in-depth interviews with hip-hop’s finest talents, from De La Soul and Public Enemy to DJ Spooky, Jeff Chang, El-P, Mix Master Mike and many more.
The documentary makers even tracked down Clyde Stubblefield — James Brown’s original funky drummer, whose beats have been extensively borrowed to form the backbone of many hip-hop songs. Stubblefield says he has yet to see a dime from all the sampling, as he explains in the Copyright Criminals trailer above.
Like Doug Pray’s Scratch and Brett Gaylor’s RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Franzen’s Copyright Criminals sheds further light on hip-hop’s revolutionary merge of music, technology and culture, and the legal tangles spawned by its creation. Don’t miss it.
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