Although newer artists and producers continue to breathe new life into the endless possibilities of sampling, there’s been growing criticism of contemporary popular music reaching back to sample the most obvious music in the most reductive ways.

After decades of brilliance from producers across a spectrum of popular music, particularly hip-hop music, sampling shouldn’t need to be artistically defended or creatively qualified. One listen to the freewheeling whimsy of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High & Rising, the crate-pillaging “chipmunk-soul” of early Kanye West albums, or the flurry of dark and disparate sonics that make up a masterwork like Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition should crush any conception that sampling can’t be art of the highest order.

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