In 2004, one of the most notorious albums was made, The Grey Album. It consisted of Jay-Z’s Black Album and The Beatle’s White Album. DJ Danger Mouse created this mash-up album without the permission of Jay-Z or The Beatles. The album included acapellas and instrumentals from both of the albums. As of result of this, recording company EMI filed a cease-and-desist letter to Danger Mouse as he started to distribute and sell the album. A fellow music group by the name of Negativland released a song with the name U2 on the front cover. Negativland sampled the song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for” and outtakes from the host of American Top 40, Casey Kasem. Negativland never received permission to use any of U2’s work. As soon as Negativland released the album for retail, recording company Island Records and Warner-Chappell Music filed a lawsuit against Negativland and their record company. The lawsuit ended with Negativland recalling all the copies of the single and having to pay over $70,000 in damages and legal costs. Artists should not be allowed to use each other’s work. According to the case study, Negativland claims “Our work is an authentic and original whole, being much more than the sum of its samples”. In other words, Negativland does acknowledge that they in fact did use U2’s work but it should be looked at as more than that. Negativland’s work is not original and is just refurbished pieces of some other artist’s work. It’s been said that true creativity is impossible and that all artists steal from one another in some form. Even though this is true, in order to set their work apart as art, artists should have their own sense of originality. What makes art unique is that most of it is original and that’s what make art special. Although some may argue that artistic appropriation should be acceptable, I would argue that it is intolerable since it is unoriginal. Every form of art is a commodity and made for profit. Every album musicians make and every painting artists paint are meant to be sold to benefit themselves. Negativland claims that “their work is not a form of bootlegging intending to profit from the commercial potential of the subjects appropriated”. In other words, Negativland did not appropriate for the economic gain even though they sold their album. According to Andrian Adams, “In Negativland’s world, art and commerce are completely distinct entities. However, in our world of realism and logic, there is no distinction between art and commerce once the art is offered for sale”. Once Negativland put the album up for sale, it became a commodity. It was made for profit and not just for art’s sake.
Any form of art should be original and not derived from another source. What makes art unique is that it is original. That is the very essence that makes art great. Appropriation is lazy and gives the artist no incentive to create something new and to just work on a finished piece already. As the issues state “One of the arguments against Negativland was that their work not authentic art because it was not an original creator but rather a pastiche of things, of them created by other authentic artists” In other words, Negativland’s work was unoriginal and just sampled from original artists. Andrew Herman and John Sloop argue that “Negativland built their defense by redefining authenticity as free appropriation rather than individual expression” Negativland tried to make appropriate without having to pay a fee by the use of their words.
Artistic appropriation can be misleading to customers and can lead them to buy the wrong album or painting. Negativland released an album by the name of U2 on the front cover and easily could have been mistaken as a U2 album. As stated in the Island/Warner-Chappell Lawsuit “the defendants’ “U2 Negativland” constitutes a transparent use of deceptive packaging designed to dupe U2’s millions of fans throughout the United States into believing that this new record is the widely-anticipated new album by U2”. In other words, Negativland was trying to make a profit off the name U2 due to their worldwide success. Negativland knew by putting U2 on the front cover and gives every indication that this is truly a U2 album. Also stated in the Island/Warner-Chappell lawsuit “some unwitting consumers, upon purchasing and listening to the “U2 Negativland” recording, might well conclude that U2 has made a poor quality and offensive recording, thus further unlawfully tarnishing the band’s reputation and image, and the enormously valuable U2 name and mark”. With Negativland’s appropriation of U2’s work, it could potentially damage U2’s name with their fans and it could also lead to a tremendous loss of sales with their future albums.
Some musicians take certain songs and try to modernize or improve the original song but end tarnishing the song. In a certain style of music, it’s normal for DJs to remix songs as they see fit. Most of the time, they ruin the song and destroy the original. A lot of artists like Kanye West, Jay-Z, and J-Cole have tried to incorporate this style into their music and it has gone wrong for them. These artists tried to modernize the old tunes and it ends up backfiring for them as they end up losing fans because they have ruined the original. Kanye sampled the song “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday and received a lot of backlash for tainting the original and trying to make money by improving Holiday’s song. As Nicholas Troester states “the use of Strange Fruit is seen as either audacious-slipping a powerful song into a morally repugnant context-or offensive”. Kanye sampled a powerful song about racism and turned it into a song about degrading women. Kanye’s work was unoriginal and tried to do something new but just ended up tarnishing the original song.