sample innovation.

A while back I came across this post on current.com. The actual post itself is really cool and interesting. But what got me thinking a bit more was one of the comments left about one member's feelings of conflict over sampling. You can scroll down and read her comment and also see some of my thoughts. I'll probably repeat myself here as well.

Sampling definitely irked me at times. There's the obvious dislike for when someone does a poor job sampling something or takes something you feel is a classic that should never be touched and samples it. But what has been, at times, more troubling is the feeling if discomfort about sampling more generally: the feeling that when someone samples something there is a lack of innovation or creativity.

When kanYe first came out and everyone was talking about his sampling, I was kinda disappointed for a minute. I felt like: hey, here's this great music but it lacks originality. Originality is something I think we all respect, admire, and sometimes seek out. I think we want to be original, we want to be the first or we want to come up with it on our own.

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the types of individuals he calls "innovators" and the role they play in causing an epidemic to explode. [If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it] I'm not going to attempt to critique his writing or really give a detailed description of who he considers an innovator. But I know that a part of me, as I read the book, wanted to be an innovator.

But with time and thought and most importantly a little learning, I feel I've gotten past the discomfort I felt earlier. Originality, innovation, and creativity are all great. With sampling I think it is still possible to posses all of those. Sampling involves a creative process all its own and, to be done well, requires the building upon something from before but taking it to a different place. It can be an art all it's own and much of creation and art is based upon learning from and building upon what came before.

When you look at some of the things kanYe samples, I don't think many people would ever think to so what he does. Not only that but he was able to successfully sample Michael Jackson's P.Y.T. (which is the greatest song ever), a feat I thought impossible (you just don't mess with MJ, there's no need for it).

This is not meant to be a defense of kanYe but just thoughts more generally about the place of originality and innovation in our world. More accurately, it's a critique on how those ideas are defined and thought of more generally. To take something that already exists and make something new of it or with it is innovation itself, it requires a certain level of creativity and original thinking, because it was not used that way before.

Obviously it's easy to screw up. Sometimes sampling is the result of a lack of creativity, originality, etc. For example, The Departed was a great movie but I felt like Scorsese didn't deserve nearly the credit he got (especially an Academy Award) because of how it was a clear copy of the movie Infernal Affairs. [While I won't give Scorsese credit for his work, I definitely do think the actors in the movie did a marvelous job and deserve much credit for their work] But there shouldn't be any rush to disregard something "sampled" until inquiring into how what is sampled is used.

Anywho, I'm gonna go see what's on the food network and make myself hungry and then eat. Also, I've started yelping! hehe.