Project Director

Strickler, Jeremy

Department Examiner

Ward, Chandra; Deardorff, Michelle D.

Department

Dept. of Political Science, Public Administration and Nonprofit Management

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

The decline of hip-hop as a political medium has been a dramatic turn for the genre since its creation. The specific use of digital sampling was a mechanism in the genre's ability to express African American socio-political struggles. During hip-hop's "Golden Age," artists used sampling not only as a creative tool but as a means to politically empower communities, foster civic engagement, and revive historical messages of resistance. However, the rise of mass commercialization and the imposition of legal copyright restrictions—particularly through landmark cases like Grand Upright Music Ltd. v. Warner Brothers (1991) and Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films (2005)—dramatically curtailed artists' ability to sample freely. This research argues that these legal and economic constraints coalesced to dismantle sampling as a vehicle for political messaging, thereby stripping hip-hop of one of its most powerful expressive tools. By threading sampling's decline into existing scholarly discussions on commercialization and legal reform, this research provides a more comprehensive understanding of hip-hop's transformation from a medium of liberation to one of consumerism—and suggests that reviving its political voice requires reimagining creative freedom in the genre today.

Degree

B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.

Date

5-2025

Subject

Copyright--Music; Hip-hop--Political aspects; Sampling (Sound)--Social aspects

Keyword

Hip-hop; Sampling; Copyright Regime; Political Medium; Political Creativity;

Discipline

Politics and Social Change

Document Type

Theses

Extent

i, 39 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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