Grand Upright Music v. Warner — Biz Markie sample ruling reshapes hip-hop production

Why it matters

December 17, 1991. Federal judge Kevin Thomas Duffy ruled in Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records, Inc. that Biz Markie's song "Alone Again," which sampled Gilbert O'Sullivan's 1972 hit "Alone Again (Naturally)" without clearance, infringed O'Sullivan's copyright. The opinion famously opens with the words "Thou shalt not steal." Cold Chillin' was forced to pull Biz Markie's album from shelves. The case is the moment unlicensed sampling stopped being a thing the major-label rap industry could do. The consequences for hip-hop production are hard to overstate. Pre-1991, the sample-stacking approach the Bomb Squad had perfected on It Takes a Nation of Millions and Fear of a Black Planet was just how some people made records. Post-1991, every recognizable sample had to be cleared, which meant paid for, which meant the dense collage style became economically impossible at the major-label level. The whole next twenty years of hip-hop production (cleaner samples, originally-composed loops, the rise of producer-as-songwriter) is in part a response to this ruling. You can hear it on every record after 1992. The records sound emptier. Sometimes that is good. Sometimes it is what we lost.