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Steinski
Despite the fact that their legendary Lessons tracks were never legally commercially released, Double-Dee (Douglas DiFranco) and Steinski (Steve Stein) are one of hip-hop’s most influential ’80s production teams. They inspired a wave of sampling, breakbeat and mash-up artists with a sound collage of disco, break dance, soul and funk beats, plus obscure spoken clips. This week, New Jersey’s Steinski comes to darkroom to play Sang and PaulInChicago’s new Out of Order party. We asked him about copyright law and other fun topics.
Time Out Chicago: Did anyone ever question your place as a white guy in the early hip-hop scene?
Steinski: It was pretty much accepted. Douglas and I had been going to the Roxy. We made the records, and almost everybody who owned the record labels were middle-class white guys. The people doing the remixes were black and Latin and white. We were a novelty because we were old white guys, but no one ever questioned our authenticity.
TOC: You created Lessons in an eight-track studio. Have you been excited about the upgrades in recording and sampling technology?
Steinski: I have embraced each one with both feet. Absolutely. Douglas did the work on tape. Once we moved into the digital realm, we both could have a shot at it. That was very liberating for me. I have been working digitally since the late 1980s. It gives us a lot more directions to move in. I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around and says, “Oh yeah, with tape, it was more genuine.” Fuck that; fuck tape.
TOC: Is there the same sort of excitement about sampling even though it’s not much of a commercial force? You don’t hear it as much.
Steinski: Well, Girl Talk seems to be able to do quite a bit with 100 percent of his stuff made out of recognizable samples. Shadow is using samples, but it’s probably off private-press records. The Avalanches used quite a few things. There’s a lot of people doing it still. But you’re right; in mainstream hip-hop, if it is sampled, it’s going to be a big glossy sample that somebody paid a whole lot of money for. Down here in the shadows, it’s still happening, but it’s so far below the radar I don’t think we are hurting anybody. It’s artistic experimentation at this level and defensible.
TOC: Has your conception of copyright and sampling stayed consistent over the years?
Steinski: It hasn’t stayed consistent. I didn’t care and still don’t care about the legality of it. From the time I started until the late 1990s, my attitude was I like being a romantic intellectual-property thief, and it’s quite wonderful, and I don’t give a shit anyway because I’m just going to make these records. That has changed because I read a lot of stuff by the guy who started Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig. It has changed to: There’s a huge artistic and social validity to sampling. If copyright does not protect my work and the people whose original work we are talking about, then what is copyright for?
Steinski spins at Out of Order on Thursday 26.
