Evolution Of Hip Hop

As the world evolves so does music. In the late 70’s hip hop was becoming more popular due to DJs. DJs began to use samples to scratch records at parties. Eventually rappers took this style of scratching and turned it into digital sampling. Sampling is taking portions, or instruments of a song and incorporating it into a new one. This style of producing changed how music sounded, and gave it its own unique style. Sampling will change the way of music throughout the years. Hip hop has changed over the years with the development of sampling, sampling changing music, and the copyright issues with sampling, through artists such as Grandmaster flash, N.W.A, and Public Enemy.

DJ’s started the evolution of hip hop. In the 1970s artists like

N.W.A did not just sample they changed music with their lyrics (Roberts). Dr. Dre, a member of the group, produced tracks for the group that used funk beats. Ice Cube, another member, who wrote most of the groups lyrics, wrote about the struggles of living in Compton. “N.W.A looped old tracks by James Brown, Ray Ayers Ubiquity, Wilson Pickett, and others as way to document turf battles, drug violence, and most famously in “… the Police,” the abuses of the Los Angeles Police Department.” (Roberts). Although the beats were nice, the lyrics caused some discrepancies between the group and the police. They continued to push their limits with music especially with sampling. As they became more known lawyers noticed their work. Record labels were suing for the use of their music. Copyright of music became a new issue in the music

Public Enemy and their music producers the Bomb Squad created new music from sampling. Since sampling was used so much in the 1970s and the 80s it was not second guessed later. In the late 1980s record labels and lawyers were catching on to the use of sampling. In 1988, Public Enemy released “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” (McLeod). Although this song did not use an entire rhythm of a song, it used a great number of instruments and beats. This caused a copyright issue for the group. Corporations were charging thousands of dollars just so artists could have rights to a sample. This legal issue caused Public Enemy to have to change their style, since their music heavily relied on samples. They had to think of a new style and create their own samples. Sampling has revolutionized music through the