[whinenot]

> A lot of these tracks were also recorded over unlicensed beats/samples

That's the killer, right there. For example, the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique probably could not be released today as it samples an incredible number of other artists.[0]

[0]https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7kI8XoDoiHcrG0aGmtvq1g

[S_A_P]

A lot of hip hop still has unlicensed samples in it but the slices just keep getting smaller and less recognizable. And believe it or not a lot of the samples in Paul’s Boutique were licensed. I do agree with you though that (maybe until recently as I think the price of sampling is softening somewhat with sites like tracklib) Paul’s Boutique would be expensive to release today. Then there are stories like the Mark Ronson song ooh wee that he owns -25% of[0] because the boney m string riff took 100% of the publishing and Dennis Coffey drums took another 25%. So he theoretically lost money each play. Public enemy’s it takes a nation of millions to hold us back is another album that would lose money to make today.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooh_Wee_(song)

[PerryDigital]

Just to note for the two posters above, and anyone else, Paul's Boutique is now on Spotify :)

(So is three feet high and rising by De La Soul)

[zhengyi13]

On a similar note, Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" remixing Jay Z's The Black Album over samples from The Beatles' White Album... Amazing.

It's pretty findable, but it's unfortunate that there's no canonical source.

[waldothedog]

Somewhere I have a dead iPod shuffle with the grey album on it. Listened to that non stop in undergrad. Have not been able to find another bootleg of it :(

[zhengyi13]

I know I'm late here, but YouTube has 'em; you can ask for it by name.

[lawgimenez]

I have an old mp3 Wu-Tang vs The Beatles, I think it is not available on streaming. Not sure if the same artist who remixed it but it was fire.

[dendrite9]

The original shows is available on mixcloud for anyone who wants to hear any of the interesting commentary that went with the playlist. It looks like the It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back Breakdown is up too, but I can't see the De La Soul one.

https://www.kexp.org/breakdown/paulsboutique/ https://www.kexp.org/breakdown/publicenemy30/