[kaeruct]

Some sampling might be lazy, but there's plenty of impressive producers which take the art to the next level. Some suggestions you can sample: DJ Shadow, J Dilla, Madlib, The Avalanches, Statik Selektah. And as a bonus, an artist definitely not hip hop which makes beautiful use of sampling is Jens Lekman.

I will be charitable even though you called rap "lowest common denominator" poetry.

If you are genuinely interested, I suggest you look into the history of hip hop. IMO, the point of early hip hop was not to create sophisticated music, but to connect people by using sounds they were already familiar with. More important was the message and vocal delivery of the MC.

[Ylpertnodi]

I use the Roland 505ii looper, and do massive 'samples' - whole verses etc, great for song analysis, practice etc. If I could incorporate something into a hit song, I'd happily pay the royalties to the 'samplee'. I rather suspect the early days of sampling/ hip hop etc, it was the "how do we get paid...they're ripping us off" panic that created issues. Now, the money-flow has been standardised, and sped up, there are considerably less problems. Oh, my favourite example of extreme sampling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYeSpyRpRA&list=PLXa6-G1Tk7...

[lawgimenez]

May I add some awesome producers: Sounwave, DJ Dahi, The Alchemist, Kanye West, DJ Premier, 9th Wonder