The integrity standard calcifies generational theft of black creatorship – overwhelming data proves they disparately target black creativity, encourage vulnerability to exploitation, and serve no utility

"We thought sampling was just another way of arranging sounds.Just like a musician would take the sounds off of an instrument and arrange them their own particular way ... [W]e had to change our whole style. "' In this quote, Chuck D expresses the frustrations he and his rap group, Public Enemy, experienced in the early 1990s when trying to create music for their new album. Public Enemy created a new sound on their previous records with the aid of music sampling, a fairly new practice in which musical artists incorporated "samples" of sound recordings from other musical works. This technique, in utilizing musical sounds of the past, created whole new works of musical collage. Public Enemy's creative process has been described as "a songcraft from chipped flecks of near forgotten soul gold. [A] guitar vamp from Funkadelic, a moan from Sly, a growl abducted from Bobby Byrd aren't rhythmically spliced in but melodically sequenced in colorful narratives. Think of Romare Bearden."2 When major record companies became conscious of rap's musical sampling phenomenon, they began charging prohibitive prices for the use of sound recordings they owned.' As a result, Public Enemy suffered artistically as their style of simultaneously sampling a multitude of different sound recordings finally became too expensive under this new regime. As a consequence, Public Enemy's later records utilized fewer samples.4 Public Enemy represents only one of the many Black performers and musicians that have been affected by a copyright law that is structurally incompatible with their creative process. The Black musical tradition works in a "trope of revision," that is, it is a highly creative tradition that builds and improves upon the music within its community.5 Copyright's confines do not reward this specific type of composition, however, since it rewards musical works of minimum creativity, minimum originality, and those works fixed in a "tangible medium of expression., 6 Moreover, copyright acts to the detriment of those who create new works out of the old by granting the author of the original work a monopoly on the creation of such "derivative" works. Hence, the modern day Public Enemy resembles the frustrated blues singer of the 1930s who stopped performing because he could not earn a livable wage for his work, or the stymied early R&B singer who could not produce and promote his hits fast enough to compete with the rock'n' roll imitation of his own work. The body of copyright law, with its vast revisions and amendments, was originally intended to encourage creativity and protect creators' work. Yet the Black musical idiom has been and continues to be excluded from such benefits because it does not fit into copyright law's construction of ownership and composition. Copyright's requirements have stood in the way of Black musicians' integrity as artists and their economic reward, since copyright law has historically granted a limited ownership to those who can conform a musical work into standard musical notation. Copyright's notions of authorship and composition undermine the Black musical customs of (1) community composition, as exemplified by oral tradition and call-and-response; (2) rhythmic and musical complexity; and (3) improvisation The combination of this cultural clash and America's history of racism has prevented Blacks from receiving recognition for their musical contributions or copyright's promises of compensation. Additionally, by failing to incorporate the Black musical idiom, copyright law heightens Black musicians' vulnerability to exploitation in a social milieu already accustomed to exploiting Black labor. The stories of stolen song credits, unconscionable contracts, and unpaid royalties, though numerous, are not the primary focus of this Note. However, such circumstances added to the already burdensome plight of the Black musician who tried to maneuver in a copyright regime that was not adaptive to his cultural musical idiom. This Note contends that the American copyright regime's failure to incorporate the Black musical creative process has devastated the integrity and economic potential of generations of Black musicians. This Note begins with a discussion of copyright law and then examines Black musical traditions and how they have conflicted with American copyright law through the years. Part I explains the history of American copyright law and its theoretical underpinnings. Part II relates common Black musical traditions in more detail. Part III illustrates how the foundations of Black musical traditions can be found in Negro Spirituals. Part IV outlines the notion of Black music as it evolved in ragtime. Part V describes how copyright undermined the traditions of blues, jazz, and R&B. Part VI explains how rock 'n' roll's prominence embodied copyright's clash with the Black musical tradition. Part VII portrays the history of the hip-hop musical phenomenon and illustrates how copyright's negative treatment of digital sampling continues to denigrate the Black musical tradition. PartVIII discusses the need for a more culturally inclusive copyright regime. Part IX concludes the Note by discussing the importance and benefits of amending the current copyright laws.