Years ago, the BBC ran an article about the effects that sampling copyright has had on De La Soul’s back catalog. Their two hit albums, “3 Feet High and Rising” (1989) and “De La Soul Is Dead” (1991), cannot be found in a legal streaming format due to the massive number of audio samples that they used. The problem is that their contract stipulated their use on “vinyl and cassette” only.
As of 2020, De La Soul and the record company that holds copyright on the original recordings had yet to come to an amicable solution. This would be less surprising if it were a lesser-known artist. Their first album is considered a masterpiece of the genre and introduced a number of now-accepted formats (it even introduced the skit-track format).
This leads to two questions when it comes to more obscure 80s and 90s hip-hop records: how many have suffered less-publicized fates?