Music Made Easy

Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of more kids' getting turned onto sampling instead of more traditional forms of music. "The 10 brightest people who [sample] still don't have the level of intelligence I do," says jazz critic and purist Stanley Crouch. He acknowledges that their work is sophisticated, but adds, "The fact that it's hard to do doesn't make it of value." Still, this is clearly the future; as old-school hip-hoppers would say, you can't stop the bumrush. Just as the sampler let producers mine old songs for new hits--that's the basis of Sean (Puffy) Combs's career--MusicHall 2000 and its sure-to-follow competitors are taking that musical revolution to the masses. So forget turntables' being the instrument of the future: as software like this takes off, it's all about the laptop, baby.

© 1999