WHO SAMPLED?!?

The song that I chose is entitled, "The Birds Part II" by The Weeknd. The song uses a sample from Martina Topley-Bird called "Sandpaper Kisses." The Weeknd uses the bridge from the sampled song:
"Sandpaper kisses, paper cut bliss
Don't know what this is, but it all leads to this
You're gonna leave her
You have deceived her
You're just a bird"

The way in which The Weeknd uses this sampling is quite creative when you understand the context of the song. The original sampling is remixed with a higher pitch and tempo. I would not consider this stealing personally, I would categorize it as a creative remediation of an existing creative work. Even so The Weeknd notes on his record that the sampling was 'used by permission.'

If fair use can be categorized as being a portion of another person's content and then giving credit to the original creator then I would say that this song would be covered by fair use. However, if The Weeknd didn't have permissions, then there would be other limitations and exceptions that may or may not fall into the clause of fair use. Since The Weeknd did get permissions to use the sample, he dodged a potential suit from the original creators corporation, similar to the case of Universal Music Group against Stephanie Lenz for copyright infringement when she recorded her 18-month old son dancing to a Prince track and put it up on YouTube.

In the case of this song, The Weeknd uses most of his own creativity for this record and uses a remediated creative work from another creator as the bridge to enhance and even influence greater creativity throughout the current song or future song. The Weeknd as an artist uses a lot of samples in his music and at the same time, his own original music is sampled and remixed as well. When it comes to originality and authorship, in order to create new creative works we must be able to work off of one another but at the same time giving credit where credit is due for the original work that influenced the creative piece. That seems like one of the important and ethical ways for free culture and fair culture to be one.

A link to the sampling can be viewed and listened to at the following address:

[  http://www.whosampled.com/sample/111603/The-Weeknd-The-Birds-(Pt.-2)-Martina-Topley-Bird-Sandpaper-Kisses/  ]