Back in the day, tapes were physical objects, and not necessarily as easy to get as folks today might think. And actually, when it came to hip hop, I remember when going to Plan 9 in Richmond back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, all their hip hop was locked up in a segregated case that you had to ask someone to open. But the first copy of 3 Feet High & Rising I bought happened to just be beside the checkout at the truck stop in Simplicity when I stopped to get gas in high school one time. It was obviously a bootleg, because the cover was grainy, and once I bought it and opened it, there was nothing printed on the inside of the cover. Tape still worked though. I played the fuck out of that tape.
It’s interesting in retrospect that I bought a bootleg, which allegedly stole profits from the artists, but more likely stole from the record label, who stole from the artists. De La had a long, complicated process of regaining control of their masters and being able to reissue their stuff, including that debut album. But because of sample clearance, and who was going to pay for it – the label or the artist – there’s a lot of samples that have been altered or created in a different way than the original version. I honestly haven’t heard the reissue, at least not that I know, nor would I want to. Why would you willingly accept a remade version like that? And I know it profits the artists now, which is a good thing, but that overlooks the whole fact that sampling got fucked with by legal definitions of intellectual property, and an art form that was way ahead of the times in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s got permanently set back to where the collage technique of making beats has been deemed an economic risk. You can’t do it for commercial purposes, and sure, you could do it at home at your own risk, but if you ever blew up, the intellectual property masters would sick their legal bloodhounds on your ass.
I say all this because for some fucked up reason, even creative types now think in terms of getting paid and monetizing shit. Fuck that. Art should be for art’s sake. And I know we all gotta survive capitalism (what the fuck you think I’m trying to do over here?), but that doesn’t change the fact that a reconstituted not-the-original work recreation by the artist so they own the rights is not an improvement of actual art just because they reclaimed ownership from the shady ass record label.
Anyways, I hope you are still pirating shit, and buying bootlegs, and do not have some bullshit cultural supremacist attitude that “authentic” copies are somehow better than the weird illegal recreations that folks living a truly wild style life out here are pumping out. And this now has spilled into fuckin’ thrift store culture to where you got bougie ass “vintage” markets selling an old ass goddamn wrestling or biker t-shirt for $200. I saw some fake beard shithead defend this by saying, “Y’all said I was charging too much, but I can get it!” Yeah, fuck that shit, bro. Just because you can do something don’t mean you should. But only people with a heart full of real morals feel that. I ain’t living that way. Bootleg everything, pirate even more. Fuck intellectual property. I’m gonna steal some arts shit this evening just on general principle. And I got a whole pile of old vintage wrestling t-shirts on the back porch, just waiting to give away for free to the right person, who’s soul is not poisoned by what we call “culture” in dying ass empire America.
It’s interesting in retrospect that I bought a bootleg, which allegedly stole profits from the artists, but more likely stole from the record label, who stole from the artists. De La had a long, complicated process of regaining control of their masters and being able to reissue their stuff, including that debut album. But because of sample clearance, and who was going to pay for it – the label or the artist – there’s a lot of samples that have been altered or created in a different way than the original version. I honestly haven’t heard the reissue, at least not that I know, nor would I want to. Why would you willingly accept a remade version like that? And I know it profits the artists now, which is a good thing, but that overlooks the whole fact that sampling got fucked with by legal definitions of intellectual property, and an art form that was way ahead of the times in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s got permanently set back to where the collage technique of making beats has been deemed an economic risk. You can’t do it for commercial purposes, and sure, you could do it at home at your own risk, but if you ever blew up, the intellectual property masters would sick their legal bloodhounds on your ass.
I say all this because for some fucked up reason, even creative types now think in terms of getting paid and monetizing shit. Fuck that. Art should be for art’s sake. And I know we all gotta survive capitalism (what the fuck you think I’m trying to do over here?), but that doesn’t change the fact that a reconstituted not-the-original work recreation by the artist so they own the rights is not an improvement of actual art just because they reclaimed ownership from the shady ass record label.
Anyways, I hope you are still pirating shit, and buying bootlegs, and do not have some bullshit cultural supremacist attitude that “authentic” copies are somehow better than the weird illegal recreations that folks living a truly wild style life out here are pumping out. And this now has spilled into fuckin’ thrift store culture to where you got bougie ass “vintage” markets selling an old ass goddamn wrestling or biker t-shirt for $200. I saw some fake beard shithead defend this by saying, “Y’all said I was charging too much, but I can get it!” Yeah, fuck that shit, bro. Just because you can do something don’t mean you should. But only people with a heart full of real morals feel that. I ain’t living that way. Bootleg everything, pirate even more. Fuck intellectual property. I’m gonna steal some arts shit this evening just on general principle. And I got a whole pile of old vintage wrestling t-shirts on the back porch, just waiting to give away for free to the right person, who’s soul is not poisoned by what we call “culture” in dying ass empire America.
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