While promoting the recent release of his memoir Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You?in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, Parliament-Funkadelic bandleader George Clinton addressed his stance on being sampled by Hip Hop producers.
After running through the early stages of his decades-long career and some of his 1970s highlights, Clinton described De La Soul’s sample of Funkadelic’s hit “(Not Just) Knee Deep” as the first time the group was paid for being sampled.
“It’s the first song we got paid for sampling,” he said. “De La Soul, they gave us a $100,000 when they used it to make ‘Me Myself And I.’”
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Clinton added, “The concept of sampling is legit and is cool, we are very alright with sampling.”
Explaining how he continues to glean inspiration from his own records being sampled by others, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee admitted to sampling samples of his own music.
“Whenever we see kids doing something new, we start biting off of them while they think they biting off of us,” he said. “We be biting back. If it’s somebody sampled our record, I’ll sample their record back with our song on it.”
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Listen to the full interview with Renee Montagne on NPR.
In 2012, George Clinton spoke with Complex about his favorite Hip Hop songs sampling Parliament-Funkadelic records. After mentioning the De La Soul example, Clinton detailed his work with Dr. Dre who sampled the same song for “Fuck Wit Dre Day.”
“As for Dre, I’ve worked with him since the beginning of his career,” he said. “He’s used every song we had out. Him, Snoop, Cube, 2Pac, all of them have always been cool with me. In fact, I first met Pac when he was still working with Digital Underground. A few years ago, Interscope Records bought Casablanca, which was the label where Parliament orginally [sic] put out ‘Knee Deep.’ Since then, they’ve used our songs at will, which is one of the reasons I’m currently suing them.”
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