Shawn Setaro spoke to Deborah Mannis-Gardner, the woman who was instrumental in clearing the samples for De La Soul‘s classic catalog:
How long did this process take?
It actually took one year. We got on board in January of 2022.
Unfortunately, not 100% of your efforts were successful. Someone involved in the process confirmed to me there were at least a few replays. Can you talk to me about that?
In some of the handful of songs where they replayed the uses, the conversation we had was: “Hey guys, this is a copyright holder who may not be understanding; or it might financially drain you; or you have so many samples, and a sampled master holder takes a percentage of artists’ net or gross receipts for third party licensing, and you want to leave a piece for yourself.”
I know maybe some of the fans are disappointed if something was replayed, but the cost of samples are a lot different now. Back in that day, we used to be able to get James Brown for a $500 buyout. We used to get these things at a much lower cost.
Sometimes you have to replay, sometimes you have to interpolate. These were creative decisions that I had nothing to do with. My job was to give guidance and advice and let them know if I had any concerns or thoughts. Then they knew what to do.
Damn, imagine only having to pay $500 to clear a James Brown sample. Regardless of the failures, the successes more than outweighed them so thank you, Deborah!