Copyright law is complicated, not complex. People often mean *complicated* when they say complex, but there's a difference. To help you understand, think of it like this: Relationships are complicated. Rocket ships are *complex*. You can understand copyright law with fact-based knowledge and historical perspective; you can't really understand how rocket ships work unless you're a rocket scientist. But there are those who want you to believe that copyright law is terribly complex (like a rocket ship). They want you to believe that copyright law is so complex that's it's not even worth your time or effort trying to learn about it; that such knowledge is not attainable by everyday people; that such knowledge is better left to lawyers, copyright law scholars, and music industry folks. And as if that wasn't problematic enough, there remains the socio-psycho reality that people often believe that they know more than they actually do, and therefore, they randomly spread inaccurate information.

Screwball - “H-O-S-T-Y-L-E” You’d be forgiven if you’d never heard of Screwball. The 4-man supergroup of rappers from Queensbridge was really one of hip hop/rap’s most intriguing anomalies. If you were in the streets in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, or Harlem in the early/mid-‘90s, chances are, you’d ran across at least one of the group member’s names. Blaq Poet, KL, Solo, and Hostyle were all known separately. And if you paid careful attention to the echoes of other known Queensbridge figures at the time, you knew Blaq, KL, Solo, and Hostyle were always there. And yet, it would seem like Screwball missed out on the ‘90s, the seminal era that turned some of their Queensbridge contemporaries into household names. Although each member of Screwball was active (musically and otherwise) before they came together and formed some time around 1995/1996, they wouldn’t officially release an album until 2000. Screwball’s debut album, ‘Y2K: The Album,’ is a hip hop/rap classic (even if it’s not as widely known) that bridges two eras (the mid-‘90s and the ‘00s); and it’s an album that demonstrates the timeless nature of sample-based hip hop/rap music. “H-O-S-T-Y-L-E,” produced by the formidable Mike Heron, is one of my favorite songs on an album loaded with stellar moments.

Nicky Thomas covers Syl Johnson’s - “Is It Because I’m Black” (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1973) If it can be said that music is often in conversation with other music, then you will find no better direct example of this than the cover song. Despite the mechanical licensing rules that apply to the permissibility of cover songs, there are an infinite number of ways to do a cover song; ergo, to do your own *version and unique interpretation of a pre-existing song. The tradition of covering songs spans every genre. But in Jamaican music (ska, rocksteady, reggae, dancehall), the tradition of Jamaican music artists covering Black American soul songs is a special medium. I call it the “Jamaica-fying” of soul songs. Here, in Nicky Thomas’s cover of Syl Johnson’s “Is It Because I’m Black”, we hear (and feel) the powerful force between two distinct music forms whose histories are deeply intertwined.

A Tribe Called Quest - “Check the Rhime” I defy anyone to say that this beat, this song *isn’t dope. That it’s *not timeless. Or that it’s somehow lacking because it features 2-bar loops of samples (perhaps recognizable to some) but not multiple micro-chops. More often than not, the “genius”of a beat is not necessarily found in how many micro-chops that it has, but in the essence of the overall feel and composite of the beat *and that rhymes that accompany it. Recently on X (Twitter), I came across a post that stated that when it came to hip hop/rap production, *Q-Tip was not in the same league as DJ Premier and J Dilla*. Ostensibly, the post was in reference to Q-Tip’s alleged lack of ability to micro-chop, as most of A Tribe Called Quest’s centered on core 1-4-bar loops. While I immediately understood the sentiment behind the post, I didn’t agree with the false equivalence. In hip hop/rap music, the only thing that really matters is whether the beat, and the *overall song*, is dope or not. If you do 8 micro-chops of a single note, sound stab, or some other musical phrase, that’s cool; but that doesn’t guarantee that the beat, and subsequent song will be dope, or that it will be *more dope or better than a beat that doesn’t do the same. A beat that uses 1-4-bar looped samples (a compositional style that makes up the vast majority of all sample-based hip hop/rap beats ever recorded), can be equally appealing, often even more impactful. There are a number of different ways to make a beat and a hip hop/rap song. But in the end, it comes down to whether you *feel the music or not. And A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhime” is one of those songs that all hip hop/rap fans feel and appreciate.

GZA - “Liquid Swords” At the beginning of the bonafide hip hop/rap classic song “Liquid Swords,” off of the equally classic album of the same name, RZA says: “See, sometimes you gotta flash ‘em back…See, niggas don’t know where this shit started. Y’all know where it came from. I’m sayin’, we gonna take y’all back to the source. Do the knowledge.” The unflinching focus of taking the “source” (as in music as source material, feeling, and history) and building new music from it, a focus shared by so many sample-based hip hop/rap music artists, is personified by “Liquid Swords.” This focus on the “source” — sampling, engaging with and giving commentary on history — is one of the timeliness things that makes hip hop/rap music so durable and endearing; and it’s one of the things that helped Wu-Tang Clan standout. And here on “Liquid Swords,” GZA and RZA exemplify exactly why.

Talking Heads - “Once In A Lifetime” Brian Eno borrows Fela Kuti's and Tony Allen's rhythmic genius for Talking Heads’ most enigmatic Song. When I first heard the Talking Heads classic “Once In A Lifetime” (1981), I immediately knew that it would have a profound effect on me musically (and culturally). Although at that time I’d only had some minimal familiarity with African multiple rhythmic styles, I hadn’t yet gotten into Fela Kuti, the towering Nigerian figure and creator of Afrobeat. So hearing “Once In A Lifetime” was like being smacked with five walls of rhythm, all at once. Also, “Once In A Lifetime” is one of those examples of when musical borders collide beautifully.