The story may be the different but the subject is still the same: uncleared samples. The accuser in this incident is Geoff Barrow, main member of Portishead and hip hop collective Quakers. The song causing all the trouble is The Weeknd’s latest single “Belong To The World”. Barrow’s claim is that it uses a sample of Portishead’s “Machine Gun” and after a quick listen, that’s pretty evident (it’s the heavy drumfill). According to NME, Barrow revealed they initially said no to the Canadian artist’s request to use the sample but he went ahead with it anyway, leading to a bit of a Twitter storm between Barrow and The Weeknd’s fans. Regardless of how good or bad the sampled track turned out, Geoff said no and that should have been respected. If it had been used and kept on the downlow (ie. left unreleased), that would have been fine. But it’s not fair to straight out ignore a “no” like that and even worse than artists who don’t ask.
What do you think?
Update: It would seem that there was no infringement after all, but Barrow thinks otherwise.
(via NME)