Category Archives: sampling

katrina: the protest remix

boing boing posted about it a few weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article about it today. A rap song by The Legendary K.O., samples Kanye West’s “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” comment on NBC. K.O.’s song (free for download) was, in turn, sampled by Marquise Lee who used it as a soundtrack for his video remix of the Katrina disaster. After watching Lee’s video (which is truly amazing) read the Washington Post‘s transcript of Kanye West live on network TV.

The song and video have been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of “readers” who heard about the work through internet and other media channels. What does this mean for the future of the book? The New York Times sums it up nicely with this quote:

“A. J. Liebling famously commented that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one,” said Mike Godwin, legal director of Public Knowledge, a First Amendment group. “Well, we all own one now.”