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With Timbaland and his sampling of Middle Eastern and South Asian music still trending on Twitter, I'm going to share some academic texts that give context to that early 2000s moment and Timbaland's specific sound...1/9
For me, one of the foundational texts that gets at the heart of the “Timbaland sound” (at least as it appears during the mid-to-late 1990s) is @jasonkingsays' “Rap and Feng Shui: On Ass Politics, Cultural Studies, and the Timbaland Sound”: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470998809.ch25 2/9
Now, if you’re looking to get more context on this early 2000s moment of Middle Eastern and South Asian samples in rap, and the complexities around cultural appropriation/exchange, a great place to start is @nitashatsharma's book *Hip Hop Desis*: https://www.dukeupress.edu/hip-hop-desis 3/9
And as an aside (somewhat), @nitashatsharma's article "Down By Law: Responses and Effects of Sampling Restrictions on Rap," which wades into the convo of copyright infringement and/in rap, is worthy of your attention as well:
https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1525/pol.1999.22.1.1 4/9
https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1525/pol.1999.22.1.1 4/9
Now to get into specific Timbaland produced songs like "Big Pimpin," & the sampling of "Khosara Khosara,” @wayneandwax has been writing about the complexity of the case & sampling in general for a long time. Check one of his blog entries on it: https://wayneandwax.com/?p=180 5/9
And while not on Timbaland, @wayneandwax and Jason Beaster-Jones really dig into the complicated mess that was Truth Hurts’ song “Addictive” and its sampling of the Bollywood song “Thoda Resham Lagta Hai” and the high-profile lawsuit involved with it: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14746689.2012.706015
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And I can’t talk about “Addictive” and furthering complicating how we approach the appropriation conversation around that song without citing T. Carlis Roberts’ fantastic book *Resounding Afro Asia* & their chapter on "Addictive": https://global.oup.com/academic/product/resounding-afro-asia-9780199377411?cc=ca&lang=en& 7/9
Coincidentally (and shameless plug), I talk about “Addictive” and Timbaland’s sampling of South Asian (and to a much lesser extent Middle Eastern) music during the early 2000s in three chapters of my book *Sounds from the Other Side*: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/sounds-from-the-other-side 8/9
To end this thread, I’m going to plug another work of mine where I discuss the ways that Timbaland, following some high profile copyright infringement lawsuits (eg Big Pimpin), adopts new sampling techniques to creatively circumvent U.S. copyright laws https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190281090.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190281090-e-29 9/9
