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In 1991, there was a major lawsuit against Biz Markie and his label over his use of Gilbert O’ Sullivan’ s“ Alone Again.” What changed because of that case?
Flashmag! Issue 177 October 2026
case because Biz was trying to recreate something. It wasn’ t simply about using a sample. Pop song structure had not fully been incorporated into hiphop yet. There were a few moments in 1991 and 1992 when hip-hop began adopting a more conventional song structure. Rick Rubin’ s major contribution was helping establish that format. Before LL Cool J, most hip-hop songs were made for the club. They could be eight or twelve minutes long. Rick came from the school of the Beatles, 16-bar verses, a chorus, another 16 bars and a fade at three minutes. Through LL Cool J, he helped establish the standardized album format and the three or four-minute song. Biz was paying homage to the Cold Crush Brothers. He had a routine based on Alone Again, naturally. The double-edged sword is that so much music is derivative of an earlier time. Rock took many of its ideas from earlier music. Look at Led Zeppelin’ s history with records from the 1930s. They were sampling, too. The difference is that when hip-hop did it, people sued us.
I’ ve been thinking about where the modern era of music production began. Sampling and drum machines arrived within roughly a decade of each other, and digital audio workstations became widely adopted in the early 2000s. Where would you place the major turning point?
The big bang of technology probably starts in 1971. In my film about Sly Stone, one of his biggest innovations is that he was among the first people to use a drum machine. At first, people used drum machines as metronomes to keep a drummer from speeding up or slowing down and to keep everyone on the same rhythmic wavelength. Sly found innovative ways to use one. Sly and the Family Stone’ s There’ s a Riot Goin’ On introduced a kind of postmodern electronic culture, and suddenly everyone began following. Kraftwerk’ s development in the mid-1970s was also important.
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