Social Justice and Co pyright’s Excess
Abstract
My life is real. So when I hear about an editor asking: What’s up with my output? I’m like: What’s up with you even commenting on my life? Niggas don’t know my life. That’s the bourgeoisie approach that I get offended by because this ain’t no bubble. This ain’t no vacuum we doing this music out of. That’s why people connect to the pain in it. Because it’s real. That’s the part they should respect. These radio hits, these charts, they don’t validate the truth and the message. That’s when I start to be like, “Okay, you ain’t got a record on radio. You ain’t put an album out officially, so you’re an underachiever.”
That’s where I get offended because let’s restart this whole situation. The metrics and the gauge of success, and of impact on the culture. It don’t got shit to do with Billboard, it don’t got shit to do with SoundScan. It don’t got shit to do with any of these platforms that the business created. This shit is a culture. This shit is our life. You understand? So in between my projects does it take a year or two, or another artist that live a real life? Does it take them a year to put a project out? Because he wants to retain ownership. He wants to do what they refuse to let you do and that’s control his own destiny. He don’t wanna be exploited by the music industry that been traditionally exploitive to our creators. Then he end up on lists like the Top 25 Underachievers.
-Rapper Nipsey Hussle, October 2013
Keywords
Copyright, Social Justice, creators
Publication Date
2020
Document Type
Article
Publication Information
6 Texas A&M Journal of Property Law 5 (2020)
Repository Citation
Rosenblatt, Elizabeth L., "Social Justice and Co pyright’s Excess" (2020). Faculty Publications. 2212.
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/faculty_publications/2212
