Copyright Criminals is a documentary about sampling in hip hop music. The film features such Clyde Stubblefield (James Brown’s drummer and the world’s most sampled musician), George Clinton, Public Enemy, De La Soul, the Bay Area’s own DJ Qbert, and many many others. It looks and the history, controversy and implications around building songs from music created by other people and the question of “ownership” of sounds.
This Thursday, September 23rd at Mighty in San Francisco there will be a showing of Copyright Criminals followed by a panel discussion featuring legendary hip hop dj Steinski, then performances by Steinski, Amp Live (whose unauthorized remix of Radiohead’s In Rainbows album is now available for free online), and others.
In the mid-80’s Steve Stein (aka Steinski) & Double Dee made a series of groundbreaking hip hop records that were entirely composed of samples. They were a direct inspiration for basically all hip hop DJ’s since (see Turntablism) and lots of sample-heavy electronic music producers. Below he talks about his whole career, including his current work using software like Ableton and Pro Tools.
