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If George Clinton’s music doesn’t sound familiar—just listen to Snoop
 

How much of George Clinton’s work has been lifted by other artists? If you’re a hip-hop fan it’s almost a dead certainty you’ve got a favorite track based on a P-Funk sample. Take the legendary “Atomic Dog”—from Clinton’s 1982 album Computer Games. “Atomic Dog” DNA can be found in over 100 songs including tracks by Herbie Hancock, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, I

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If George Clinton’s music doesn’t sound familiar—just listen to Snoop

 

How much of George Clinton’s work has been lifted by other artists? If you’re a hip-hop fan it’s almost a dead certainty you’ve got a favorite track based on a P-Funk sample. Take the legendary “Atomic Dog”—from Clinton’s 1982 album Computer Games. “Atomic Dog” DNA can be found in over 100 songs including tracks by Herbie Hancock, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Insane Clown Posse, Snoop Dogg, Sublime, 2Pac, Digital Underground, Redman, Notorious B.I.G. . . . well . . . you get the idea.

Clinton himself has always taken a benevolent view towards those sampling his work. He credits hip-hop with getting P-Funk’s sound back on the radio during the lean years of the ’80s. Ironically it was the songs that used the most recognizable –—and lengthy—samples from Parliament-Funkadelic that help revive the public’s interest in the band and propelled Clinton’s collective back on stage playing what he describes as “the long version” of his classic tunes.

Clinton has to date never sued anyone for borrowing his licks. However Bridgeport Music—a one-man operation run by Armen Boladian—filed hundreds of lawsuits after “acquiring” the rights for P-Funk tracks. Applying the well-known legal strategy of suing everybody in the phone book in your complaint, Boladian’s scattershot approach resulted in a slew of dismissals, more than a few lucrative out-of-course settlements and two major victories which set dangerous precedents which—if cited broadly—could effectively strangle the tradition of sampling so vital to hip-hop culture.

However it looks like the good guys have made some progress in recent years. In the last Congress, Representative John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan) introduced a bill designed help artists get paid for their music which—while currently in limbo—is set to be re-introduced this session, and Clinton won back the rights to some of his most-sampled albums from Bridgeport Music.

 

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