James Brown: ‘hip-hop was all from me’
While the ‘Godfather of Soul’, James Brown, was sitting in a prison cell in 1989, halfway through what would eventually be a reduced two-year sentence on assault and drug possession charges, a compilation of some of his old recordings went supernova in the underground hip hop world.
In the Jungle Groove, which had been released by Polydor Records a few years earlier as a direct attempt to cash in on the popularity of James Brown records among hip hop DJs, had achieved its goal by the end of the decade. The album included remastered and remixed versions of some beat-heavy dance tracks like 1970’s ‘Funky Drummer’ and 1969’s ‘Give It Up or Turnit A Loose’, both of which surged in popularity as go-to ’80s house party jams, so much so that rapper Kurtis Blow famously nominated the latter as “the national anthem of hip hop”.
Technically speaking, it was the work of drummers Clyde Stubblefield and Nate Jones that DJs were usually honing in on when they sampled his records, but Brown, as everyone knows, was the maestro of his band in every way, and by the time he got out of prison in 1991, the ‘Hardest Working Man in Show Business’ had his team of lawyers hot on the trail of this new goldmine of potential rap sampling royalties.
“We’re working hard on that right now,” Brown told Spin in the summer of ‘91, “Trying to get some fair compensation from all these groups. I think it’s very flattering when someone uses, you know, whatever, a drumbeat or a melody of something, but they got to give something back. A lot of these guys are building their careers on my career; it’s not right. MC Hammer is the only guy who made sure I got paid.”
It might seem strange 35 years after the fact, but MC Hammer would have been the most important rapper to collect royalties from in 1991, being the biggest mainstream rapper in the industry at the time, and fortunately, Brown was also his idol, so those negotiations went down pretty well. In some other cases, bearing in mind that Brown and his lawyers had already counted at least 135 examples of his music being sampled on rap records at the time, it wasn’t so easy to get an artist to fess up or pay up when it came to sampling.
You might say that he should have had better things to do with his time anyway, but despite his own iconic status, the 57-year-old had a couple of divorces in the rearview, not to mention more than one serious run-in with the law. Having just regained his freedom a few months earlier, he was on the hunt to cash in on his new hip hop ubiquity any way he could, both through reasonable royalty claims and more outward personal claims.
“I like [rap] all right,” he told Spin, “It’s the next thing, but it’s all from me, and I deserve recognition for that.”
Brown, despite his own history of domestic violence and drug abuse, was also adamant about communicating a positive message in his music, and wasn’t thrilled about his sampled music being used for different, less godly purposes.
“Too much of it, you know, they’re not saying anything positive to help people,” he said, “I don’t like that. Music is a powerful force, and if you use it wrong, it’s no good. I always try to do something positive with my music.”
In the end, regardless of his own misgivings about rappers recontextualising his music, his legacy may be unavoidably, but profitably, tied to that dynamic. In 2021, the late singer’s estate inked a deal with Primary Wave Music, at the reported cost of $90million, for a stake in Brown’s master royalties and publishing going forward; a clear sign of just how valuable those assets remain well into the 21st century.
