samples, samples everywhere

Sampling in music is a curious phenomenon. The term “sampling” describes using another piece of music - usually just a snippet - in one’s song; it’s used for a variety of reasons, including as a pop reference to another popular work or simply because it’s a good musical idea that warranted expansion and/or revising.

Sampling is most notable in hip-hop music, where pioneers in the 90’s began using cutting bits of popular songs and choruses to serve as hooks for a rap. Jay-Z, for example, was noted - and acclaimed - for much of his sampling work, including the 1998 “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem),” which took the hook from the Broadway musical Annie.

But sampling also brings up a bevy of ethical questions about how and why one uses other pieces of music in a supposedly original work.

A recent single released by Miami-area rapper Flo Rida, for instance, features a prominent sample from electronic dance music artist Tim Bergling, more commonly known as Avicii. “Levels,” the Bergling song in question, was an undeniable hit over the summer, not only with EDM fans but with the greater mainstream music scene. “Levels” played - and still plays - everywhere, and became an emblem for growing mainstream acceptance of EDM genres of music.

Flo Rida’s “Good Feeling” is a strong track on its own, but as a huge supporter of EDM, I can’t help but feel that it smacks of piggybacking. It’s been a while since Flo Rida has a legitimate superstar hit on the radio charts - his David Guetta collaboration “Club Can’t Handle Me” was arguably his last big track - and to come back with a lead single that very heavily samples “Levels”? This isn’t a throwback Broadway sample we’re talking about.

Where do we draw the line between ingenuity and originality? Clearly, it was a brilliant move from a support standpoint to sample “Levels”; it’s an intensely popular track that many listeners would recognize, and does mate well with Flo Rida’s bombastic Miami-swag-party style of hip-hop. But how much of it was motivated by genuine artistry, as opposed to inspiration from a moneymaking standpoint?

Using an obvious sample, as Flo Rida does, is one issue. Another, though, is much more low-key - using largely unrecognizable tracks as the source material, for instance. This is something that Kanye West does brilliantly, but it also brings up questions of musical ethics.

After all, what’s worse - blatantly “ripping off” a popular track, or using so much sampled material - much of it difficult to identify upon listening - that it’s hard to identify whose musical idea a song features? Upon first thought, it seems to be the former. But I’d be willing to say that the latter can be more insidious, as most people will believe the music to be solely of the artist, such as Kanye West himself.

Going forward, artists are going to have to struggle with how to protect their integrity while using others’ musical ideas. It’s clear that sampling is an accepted, and often ingenious, technique in songwriting. But a fine line does exist, and we need to question intent behind such decisions.

a very bieber christmas - an album review.

Justin Bieber’s new album Under the Mistletoe is an interesting proposition. It’s curious that he’s decided to release a holiday-themed record as his second full-length work. And it’s even stranger that, for a Christmas album, the traditional songs aren’t particularly great.

Take his version of the classic “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” for instance. It sounds stylistically and musically like an odd and unremarkable caricature of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and features background singers pitch-corrected into saccharine submission.

When Bieber sings Shake it, shake it baby, over and over in the bridge, it doesn’t feel fun; rather, it comes off as cliché.

And why include a note-for-note rendition of Mariah Carey’s 1994 chart-smashing “All I Want for Christmas Is You”? It’s an inoffensive duet cover from Carey and Bieber, but the inclusion seems vaguely lazy, as if the pair just couldn’t think of a new song to tackle.

This laziness isn’t confined to just that track. Though there might be musical creativity in covering traditional holiday songs, Under the Mistletoe often feels like it’s simply going through the motions.

Even some of the originals can be aggravatingly bland. Is the country-crossover tune “Home This Christmas” easy to listen to? Sure. But the song is also mind-numbingly predictable in structure, sounding like a diluted rip-off of Taylor Swift’s lesser works.

And although “Mistletoe” might be the album’s lead single, it’s not much to behold. The distinctive faux-reggae feel of the song, coupled with the chorus ripped straight out of “I’m Yours,” leaves only one logical conclusion: Bieber went back in time and robbed Jason Mraz at gunpoint for his music.

Thankfully, when Bieber chooses to execute his signature, eclectic, R&B-laced, pop sound, it’s a different game.

“Only Thing I Ever Get for Christmas” is a brilliantly melancholy album-opener that shows off Bieber’s newly changed voice, now huskier and darker. And “Christmas Eve,” co-written by Chris Brown, is a seductively brooding slow jam that proves Bieber is an R&B force to be reckoned with.

Of course, how could we forget the surreal “Drummer Boy”? It’s an unpredictable jaw-dropper, if only because of the return of “Shawty Mane,” Bieber’s so-called rapping alter-ego.

It’s weird if you haven’t heard him rap before, and some lines, like It’s crazy how some people say they don’t care / When there’s people on the street with no food, it’s not fair, are more than a little ham-fisted, but the sheer ridiculousness of the track works, especially when Busta Rhymes jumps in with his fluid, machine-gun flow.

Paradoxically, although big-time collaborations with artists such as Usher and Boyz II Men help strengthen Under the Mistletoe’s tracks, they also undermine Bieber’s independence as an artist. Sometimes it feels as if a guest was brought in to prop-up an otherwise unremarkable song.

Inexperience and a lack of vision also shows in the haphazard album, which stumbles from Christmas carol to country tune to acoustic pop and so on. The instrumentation suffers from it too; though the production is slick, the backing tracks often sound generic and unfocused.

Under the Mistletoe proves that what Bieber needs most is to find his own direction — not the record company’s, nor the producers,’ but something that’s his and only his. There are flashes of brilliance here and there, and it’s clear Bieber is a superstar who’s here to stay, but his immaturity as an artist is a puzzle he hasn’t quite cracked.

As a sophomore, full-length album, Under the Mistletoe is the equivalent of the color beige: It’s hard to be really compelled by it. There’s simply not enough of the memorable music that shot Bieber into the pop-culture stratosphere in the first place, although those already infected with Bieber fever will argue otherwise.