That's what rap music is about-- taking bits and pieces of older songs and repurposing them into something new. The song's produce, Doug Rasheed, is the one who did the sampling, so he's responsible for lifting so much of Wonder's original song structure. Coolio wrote and performed the lyrics. It was the interpolation of Wonder's music over a hip hop beat, and the content and flow of Coolio's words, that made the song a hit. Otherwise, radio stations would have still been playing the Wonder original, but it had long since faded into obscurity, only showing up, infrequently, on the stodgiest of oldies stations. Once Coolio's song came out, Wonder's song also experienced a resurgence, from which he profited. For him to also get all the money from Coolio's song strikes me as unfair.
Compare Coolio to Frank Sinatra. Sinatra nearly never wrote any music or lyrics. He primarily sang covers of songs by others, for which he had to pay the standard statutory royalty fee. Does that seem reasonable, by your logic?
Coolio writes an entirely new song from a lyrical standpoint, and Doug Rasheed creates an entirely new rhythm section for a song, over which they layer elements of Stevie Wonder's song, and Wonder gets 100% of the profit, while Frank Sinatra (or Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Michael Buble, whoever) sings someone else's words over someone else's music, and keeps all but 9 cents per sale (the current royalty fee)? Seems off to me, almost as if hip hop is unfairly singled out as the art form where it's ok to screw the creator.
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seagal72 (1962)
2 years ago
Gangsters Paradise isn't (even by your own description) an entirely new song (hell, it's not even a song)
I've been listening to rap music since I was around 9 years old (back in 81-82) I don't need an explanation of what 'Rap Music' is (or isn't) Some of my favourite rappers have all had to pay royalties in the past (even the late, great. Biz Markie eventually had to...resulting in his follow-up album called 'All Samples Cleared') Christ, around 60% of all rappers (favourite or otherwise) owe their careers to the likes of James Brown or Bob James (actual content creators....who deserve every royalty they get)
Frank Sinatra was a crooner, who likely paid his writers (or the content creators) for *THEIR* work (not his own) Everytime he brought the house down with 'New York, New York'...Fred Ebb and John Candor were paid accordingly. Sinatra had his fingers in other pies too (so didn't just rely on the works of others)
Coolio, on the other hand...
Plus (as far as I'm aware?) Sinatra never released a track called 'Gangsters New York' in which he used the hook, structure and general lyrics of 'New York, New York', but added around 60% different lyrics (so I'm baffled as to your comparison of Sinatra recording recognised 'covers' to Coolio's limited would-be re-imaginings?)
Little point in going back and forth with this amigo (I need to sleep) I just (sincerely) hope you never have any original content of your own 'stolen, borrowed, sampled or "made new" by lesser talents than yourself (without renumerations for your own initial hard-work and creativity?)
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kwestmo (4385)
2 years ago
Your well thought out post has logic and reason, but you can't reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
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