I'm one of those artists that people take my music without my consent. People love to snatch my music and do things on their own. You got people that put me on beats I never rapped on. I just feel that it's a bad thing.
The reality is that people think it's okay to steal music.
Napster hijacked our music without asking. They never sought our permission. Our catalog of music simply became available as free downloads on the Napster system.
There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name, by just taking people's entire hit songs and rapping over them. It gave publishers license to get a little greedy.
I think the fact that Napster is stealing recorded music is something that we have to stop. It's taking money out of my kid's mouth. That is the way I look at it. It's inherently wrong. It's stealing.
The only thing that takes away from it is when they steal some music from one of my movies and put it in a TV commercial. I am not crazy about influencing TV commercials. But if I legitimately influence someone making a movie, I think that is really flattering.
I've seen so many beautiful, strong, talented women stifled by male ego in rooms, and I want every young woman who feels that their music is being taken from them to know that they have a voice, and they have the tools, and that it's possible.
When I listen to Radio 1 and hear five different tracks in a row using old disco samples, well that's plagiarism, that's taking other people's music.
It's so funny because if you tweet your lyrics and then you hear it in a song next week, you're like, 'Hey I had that same idea.' I'm very secretive with my music. We have to send emails password protected. Because once that song gets out, you aren't selling that thing.
So basically, Travis Scott took files from Tommy Brown and took them to Kanye and said he produced them and it was on video. He took a song I had written a hook to and took it to Teyana Taylor for her to do and change a little bit.
The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen.'
White artists have made millions of dollars off music they stole from black artists. I don't blame all the white artists. I'm a huge Stevie Ray Vaughn fan, and he was always very gracious about where he learned his music. But a lot of the time, you'd think the white guys thought it up. Hey, hasn't anyone heard of Muddy Waters?
I'm not in favor of stealing music.
No one likes to work for free. To copy an artist's work and download it free is stealing. It's hard work writing and recording music, and it's morally wrong to steal it.
I have been robbed of three million dollars all told. Everyone today is playing my stuff and I don't even get credit. Kansas City style, Chicago style, New Orleans style hell, they're all Jelly Roll style.
The thing that sucks the most about it is that everybody steals music. You spend thousands and thousands of dollars to make a record and all of these scumbags are just stealing it.
I wouldn't even say the internet is a gift and a curse for hip-hop. All types of music are bootlegged, including movies which are bootlegged.
I'm the most sampled and stolen. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, too... I got a song about that... But I'm never gonna release it. Don't want a war with the rappers. If it wasn't good, they wouldn't steal it.
I used to download music illegally. Everyone has. No one is innocent. Everyone has done that.
Back when Napster first came along, I started telling everybody Napster was like shooting yourself in the foot because you're stealing music. The record companies don't pay for us to make records - the bands do.
Piracy was kind of hard: It took a few minutes to download a song. It was kind of cumbersome. You had to worry about viruses. It's not like people want to be pirates. They just want a great experience.
We have a problem in the industry, I believe. This whole 'free' issue. The television industry doesn't have it, the movie industry doesn't have it, but the record industry has it.
Stealing music is not right, and I can understand people being very upset about their intellectual property being stolen.
Most people still steal music.
Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It's the same thing, people going into the computers and loggin' on and stealing our music.
