Party & Bullsh*t: This Week in Nashville Hip-Hop [Gummy Soul vs The Man]

Ultra-mega-bullshit alert! I sure hope you guys downloaded Gummy Soul’s 2012 remix project Bizarre Tribe: A Quest to the Pharcyde when you had the chance, because the forces of lameness are afoot and trying to scrape that shit off the Internet. Yep, in a classic display of music industry ignorance, Sony Music is throwing around take-down notices like it's 2003 because the GS crew sampled A Tribe Called Quest tracks. Which is hilarious, because they didn’t use Tribe’s beats — they reworked the beats from the original samples that Tribe used, which is NOT the same thing. Anybody who’s ever heard tribe can tell you that these are not the same tracks; similar but not the same — but who would expect these music lawyers with itchy cease-and-desist fingers to actually listen to the music first.

And yes, somebody out there has a meritorious copyright claim, but frankly I don’t think it’s Sony Music. Sony Pictures Classic, who distributed the film Beats, Rhymes & Life (which is sampled on the GS album), might have a claim. The artists and labels sampled on the album definitely have claims they could file, but the idea that Tribe is the sole source, that the album just jacks beats wholesale, is ridiculous and dispelled with a couple of moments of listening. And while I don’t really think that the album falls under “fair use” as the band advocates (see full statement below) just because they are posting it for free and aren’t see monetary gain from the vinyl pressing, I do think Sony is overstepping its bounds and trying to bully a small, independent artist. Ya know, pick on someone your own size and all that shit.