Hip Hop: The '90s

When 1990 came along sampling was still the main force in hip hop music with songs such as "Impeach The President" by the Honeydrippers, "Funky Drummer" by James Brown and "Funky Worm" by the Ohio Players being particular favourtites. Much like a rock guitarists is expected to be able to play the main riff from "Smoke On The Water", any hip hop DJ was expected to own these records and know them in-and-out.

The pratice of sampling had been going on for many years with very few legal challenges toward such blatent copyright infringement occuring. Most record companies were usually unwilling to take action against a group for sampling in fear of setting a nasty preceedence. Most, if not all record companies had bands or affiliate labels on their roster that used samples in their music.

The practice of sampling didn't become a public issue until Vanilla Ice was once asked why he "stole" the music from "Under Pressure" by Queen for his hit song "Ice Ice Baby". Vanilla Ice replied by stating that he stole nothing, the two songs are completely different. This was obviously untrue.

By 1992 a scheme was put in place where an artist that used samples would declare the sample and the original artist would usually recieve a royalty.