A Remix Manifesto

This week watching, A Remix Manifesto, I had a personal connection to it. The debate on whether you are stealing someone's music or making something of your own is something that is discussed with my parents a lot. Growing up, both of my parents worked in the music business. My mom has worked for the biggest Hip-Hop and Pop record labels in the United States and my father has worked for many different radio stations all across the country. In my mother's line of work, this discussion comes up often. Working for Atlantic Records, the biggest names in Hip-Hop are signed to this label and my mom runs the whole midwest. Choosing which songs she thinks will be the number one hit off of the artist's albums. When an artist decides to drop an album, their is many things that come into factor and one huge thing is whether this artist is stealing someones beats or has a lot of the same lyrics because that can back fire not only on the artist but the record label as a whole. Along with music sharing sites such as Soundcloud where artists use beats produced by non famous producers on their upcoming album; but this is a two way streak. If a Soundcloud artist is using the beats of an famous artist and it gets a lot of traction many lawsuits are filed. One huge controversy was Drake famously stealing the flow along with switching up a little bit of the beat of XXXtentacion's widely known song "Look At Me Now." In the newest album, he released a song called "KMT" and was ripped apart by the media because of the song's beat and flow only being slightly changed. XXXtentacion was unable to do anything based on Drake only changing a little bit of pitch of the beat. Even though fellow artists and the media believed that their should be some sort of legal action taken place since this is part of Drakes reputation.

Photo by The Come UP Show via Wikimedia Commons