You rarely hear anyone cover the Beastie Boys. Is it because their songs rely so much on samples that they’re impossible to recreate legally without making a profit? How did they not get sued into oblivion with hundreds of samples used? Where do those royalties go today?
28 Comments
xxce2AAb@feddit.dk · 41 pts · 305d
By definition one cannot improve upon perfection, so what would be the point?
Yezzey@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 305d
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social · 27 pts · 305d
If anyone ever tries it, MCA shows up their house with a few of his people.
Yezzey@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 305d
I like his beard it looks like a billy goat.
everett@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 305d
ooo-ooo
stringere@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 304d
Is my disco call
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 305d
so you're saying I can summon MCA and a bunch of friends anytime I want to party?
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 305d
Paul's Boutique was a landmark record in music law. The Beatles did sue them. It's largely thanks to that album that sampling isn't a legal liability and allowed the practice to continue. It's one of the most important records of all time IMO.
SaraTonin@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 304d
The Beatles thing is a myth. Nobody connected to the Beatles has sued anybody over Paul’s Boutique. Most of the samples on Pauls’ Boutique were cleared, especially the most obvious ones.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/pop-hiss/story/2012-05-10/beastie-boys-sampling-in-pauls-boutique-again-in-spotlight
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 304d
Huh, TIL. I even glanced over the Wikipedia page before I posted that. Thanks!
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 304d
For a modern example of something similar, Avalanches took like 15 years to release their second album, Wildflower because they had to clear hundreds of samples, including the Beatles.
Outstanding album though.
Yezzey@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 305d
https://youtu.be/iySa7HTWgSI
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 305d
I found a torrent years ago with every song they sampled on this album, I highly recommend it. Absolutely phenomenal collection of music that goes so much deeper than you expect.
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 305d
I don't think hip hop songs in general tend to get covered, or at least not that I'm aware of (am absolutely open to being corrected on that).
I guess a lot of the rhymes are often very specifically about the person rapping, so someone else doing it might be a bit weird.
That said, I do know of one good example in eLZhi's Elmatic a remake of Nas' Illmatic. It has significantly rewritten lyrics though.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club · 9 pts · 304d
Yeah. There isn't a tradition of covering someone else's rap because the rapper was originally supposed to be both writer and performer. A lot of Beastie Boys songs are written in that perspective.
That being said, not all of their songs are like that and there is some cross genre mixing with rock. I can see Fight For Your Right or Sabotage getting easily covered.
callouscomic@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 304d
This Sabotage cover was always great.
https://youtu.be/N95bs9kwXFU
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org · 4 pts · 305d
I hve a few in my playlist and i assume there are more. It's just by bands you don't listen to
JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 304d
I realise this is a parody, not a cover, but it immediately came to mind when I saw this post.
Slip n Slide by the Beastie Boys.
FreeAZ@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 304d
Not covering it, but I am currently working on a song that samples "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun".
CaptDust@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 305d
everett@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 305d
With all due respect, this couldn't be wrong-er. Copyright just wasn't enforced on sampling back in the Beasie Boys' heyday, it really wasn't on people's radar yet. You'll hear people say "There's no way you could make [seminal hip-hop album] today!" due to how much it would cost to clear all the samples that went into something like Paul's Boutique or Three Feet High and Rising.
CaptDust@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 305d
You're right, I was misinformed
everett@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 305d
All good! Yeah, the wild west days of sampling really showed the art we could have had if sampling was licensed like song covers are.
Yezzey@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 305d
Someone should do this on the dark web. Start a music industry on the dark web with no copyright rules and no money, just bitcoin and pure inspiration without stupid rules.
everett@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 305d
I should note that we still got more of this stuff thanks to the regular web, mostly from the early 2000s onward, once digital tools for creating and sharing got better and cheaper. But yeah, mainstream modern platforms with content matching do make sharing more complicated.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 305d
What did it say?
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 304d
But would a cover require the original score?
There was a famous remix of Jay-Z's Black Album called the Gray Album that used Jay-Z's vocals against samples from the Beatles' White Album. It is possible that a full cover could include both new vocals and a new set of samples.
There are also cases where the sampled track can be played by live musicians. A lot of work produced by Dr. Dre can be performed by a live funk band; this was shown in his Super Bowl Halftime show. Some Beastie Boys songs had the group play as a band.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 304d
I don't think you could produce a punk album in the late 00s if it didn't include a cover of "Gratitude".
Treczoks@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 304d
Maybe they are so bad or nieche that it does not make sense to cover them?
I mean, a piece is usually either covered because it is extreme popular, or because someone has a serious idea of how to improve it.
ripcord@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 304d
Did you just call the Beastie Boys niche?