Questlove has compared generative AI in music to the rise of sampling, speaking on Billboard's On the Record podcast, as relayed by the agency BGNES. The drummer and director of Summer of Soul and Sly Lives!, who has a film about Earth, Wind & Fire on the way, traced the practice from early-1970s drum machines and the synth work of Kraftwerk and Prince to a loosely policed spell from 1988 to 1991 that ended after the Biz Markie copyright case. Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back showed him what sampling could do, he said, and while rock borrowed from older music too, it was hip-hop that ended up in court.
Turning to today, he pointed to catalogue sales aimed at sampling and interpolation, and to producer Metro Boomin's use of an AI-generated track during the Drake and Kendrick Lamar feud.
He doubts how fully AI-made music sounds, but sees it as heir to sample culture, and wants openness and fair pay for those whose recordings train it.
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