438 Sampling Benjamin J. Robertson Typically, sampling is the musical practice of inserting small bits of found material, or “samples,” into otherwise original productions (to the extent that we can understand any production, artistic or otherwise, to be original). Although sampling should not be simply confused with remix, we might best understand it at the present moment, when remix has become so prominent within American if not Western culture , as a particular form within this larger category (see remix). Like other remix practices , sampling involves an artist’s or producer’s use of material not original to her. However , unlike many remix practices, which required artists to rerecord or rewrite/copy that material, sampling makes direct use of its sources. Whereas a musician who quotes lyrics t from another act in her own voice, or one who reproduces a guitar riff on her own guitar, ff can be said to quote from a source, an artist who samples makes direct use of the source recording itself. Thus, Sugar Hill Gang’s use of the baseline from Chic’s “Freak Out” on their 1979 track “Rapper’s Delight” exemplifies quotation because the baseline was rere- fi corded specifically for that record. By contrast, The Beastie Boys’ “Rhymin’ & Stealin’” fi samples from Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” in that it makes use of the actual Zeppelin recording (or, at least, a copy of that recording). Among the specific forms of remix that precede sampling are collage in the visual arts fi (by Braque, Picasso, and others), collage in film (by Bruce Conner and others), plagiarism fi and cut-up in literature (by Kathy Acker and William S. Burroughs, respectively), and the use of recorded sound in musique concrète (by John Cage). Despite such precedence, same pling possesses historical, technical, and cultural particularities that remain entirely its own. This entry will briefly discuss two such particularities: fi fl rst, the manner in which fi sampling becomes possible through technological innovation and invention, and second, the manner in which sampling becomes the object of litigation in the music industry. Sampling of found sound rose to prominence in the hip-hop communities of the 1970s and 1980s (as Public Enemy’s Chuck D would later put it, rap “is a sampling sport”). Hip-hop DJs used turntables to isolate baselines and break beats from extant music (on vinyl records) for MCs to rap over. With two turntables and a crossfader, DJs found they could extend their use of small bits of sound over longer (in fact, theoretically infinite) periods of time by using two copies of the same record in tandem. Thus, the fi first technology of sampling was not so much an invention as an innovation, an integra- fi tion of an extant technology into a new economy of production. The importance of this S 439 Sampling innovation itself cannot be underestimated as it empowered an otherwise underprivileged community to make music and demonstrated the manner in which what had once been mainly a technology of consumption (the turntable) could be transformed into a technology of production. Interestingly, the distinction between production and consumption became further confused as DJs began to buy up and hoard records with classic break beats for use in their sets. The commercial availability of digital samplers, first in the 1970s and then more fi widely in the 1980s, extended the potential of this nascent practice for hip-hop DJs and others. Samplers provided sampling musicians with greater precision and flexibility in fl their productions. They also allowed sampling to move from the house party and the club, where it was a live and spontaneous practice, to the studio, where it would become another tool in the kit of the recording artist. By the end of the 1980s, albums such as Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and the Beastie Boys’ k Paul’s Boutique would take sampling to new heights. Inspired by producer Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” practice, Public Enemy, for example, created music out of multiple samples, many of which blur together to form a whole that is greater, or at least other, than the sum of its parts. As Christopher Weingarten puts it in his study of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, “Through sampling, hip-hop producers can literally borrow the song that influenced them, replay it, reuse it, rethink it, repeat it, recontextualize it. Some fl samples leave all the emotional weight and cultural signifiers...