Word: riffs
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...conclude: if Tone-Loc making millions from a riff and beat he took directly from a Van Halen record isn't "outright thievery," then what is? Ron Fein...
...Warner's editorial "Lies, Lies Baby" (January 7) misses the point completely with respect to musical "borrowing" of the type exhibited by M.C. Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Tone-Loc and other performers (mostly, though not exclusively, rappers). An injustice is not done to the public when these performers sample a riff or fill--rather, the injustice is done to the original artist. Thus, Vanilla Ice's stories about his ghetto youth are almost comical, while his blatantly false claims to writing the bass line to "Ice, Ice Baby" are chilling (his line differs by one half beat from a David Bowie/Queen...
...millions from another artist's work while giving James no credit whatsoever, that constitutes plagiarism. Anyone who has heard both "Jamie's Crying" by Van Halen and "Wild Thing" by Tone-Loc can easily see that Tone-Loc in the most obvious sense of the word stole the guitar riff and drum beat (Van Halen, understandably, sued...
...that kind of talk on top of a heavy riff and it could be another slick M.C. Hammer rap, the kind of bouncy, braggadocian tune that repeatedly hooked the top single spot for U Can't Touch This. Hammer, 27, is living a dream: superstardom in a flash; private jet between gigs; movie offers; and a record label, Bust It Management Productions, to call his own. And all this by being the first performer to forge an alliance between two warring camps: the poppers and the rappers...
...softening seems, in part, to be quite natural. Hammer became a born-again Christian in 1982, and he's simple and sincere when he says, "I attribute all my success to a blessing from God." But the softening is also calculated. U Can't Touch This takes a strong riff from Rick James' 1981 Super Freak (co- writing credit acknowledged and royalties paid) and works all kinds of electronic mixing wizardry on it. That "sampling," as the business calls it, produces an up-to-date, eminently danceable sound...