Lizzo, Files Sampling Music Law Suit

Lizzo has slammed laws against sampling music, describing them as “racist”. The Truth Hurts singer called out legislators for “policing Black art” in an interview with YouTube series Million Dollaz Worth of Game. “The first time people started sampling was who? It was rappers in the ’80s and ’90s,” Lizzo began.

“They were sampling records because they didn’t have access to big studios. They didn’t grow up learning how to play bass and stuff like that. They created the genre of hip-hop through sampling records in their parents’ vinyls and stuff. There were no sampling laws back then.” She drew a connection between the evolution of hip-hop as a Black genre and the prosecution of rappers for sampling music they did not buy the rights to.

“I just feel like the theft of it all, putting theft on black culture, that’s the part that kind of turns me off,” Lizzo added. “Hip-hop’s medium was sampling. Sampling is a Black art that bred hip-hop. Hip-hop was born from sampling. And now sampling is synonymous with theft.” Warming to her theme, Lizzo described rappers and MCs running afoul of intellectual property law as “policing Black art”. However, she acknowledged that artists also needed to have their copyrighted work protected.

“They had to regulate some sort of thing, and there’s certain things that are fair and unfair,” she said. “I get it. But when you’re suing people off of a vibe, it’s like, man, that’s the vibe of my song.”