By: Francis Yoon

After an eight year hiatus and a chaotic three year rollout plagued by leaks and complex clearance battles, A$AP Rocky finally released his fourth studio album, Don’t Be Dumb, on January 16, 2026. The album’s success was immediate, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 and breaking streaming records for the year. Yet, for many in the industry, the album’s protracted journey remains a sobering case study in intellectual property gridlock. Behind the scenes, the project was reportedly paralyzed for years by the administrative burden of sample clearances, a process that grants recording owners absolute discretionary authority to block a release. Rocky’s public admission that “sample clearances” were disrupting the album underscores a growing crisis in music law: the absolute “veto power” of sound recording owners and the conspicuous absence of a compulsory licensing system to protect transformative art in the digital age.

The “Two-Tiered” Trap of Music Copyright

To understand the bottleneck, one must examine the two distinct copyrights inherent in every recorded song. The first is the musical work, which encompasses the compositional “DNA” of the song, including melody, lyrics, and arrangement. Under Section 115 of the Copyright Act, musical works are subject to “compulsory license,” a vital safety valve that allows an artist to record a cover of a song without seeking original owner’s permission, provided they pay a government-set statutory rate. This system ensures creators receive compensation while preventing them from impeding the progress of science and useful arts by gatekeeping a melody.

The second copyright is the sound recording, often referred to as the “master.” Unlike the composition, sound recordings are governed by Section 114, which offers no such compulsory mechanism. The owner of a recording has absolute discretion to say “no” for any reason, demand 100% of a new song’s equity, or simply ignore a request indefinitely. In Rocky’s case, this discrepancy meant that while he could easily cover a song, his attempt to sample existing recordings turned his creative process into a multi-year hostage situation.

The Legacy of Bridgeport and the Death of De Minimis

The current “veto power” is not just a statutory quirk; it is the product of a rigid judicial history. In the 2005 case Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films, the Sixth Circuit famously decreed, “Get a license or do not sample.” This ruling effectively killed the de minimis defense for sound recordings, which is the longstanding legal principle that the law does not concern itself with trifles. While a filmmaker might display a copyrighted logo in the background of a shot under “fair use,” a musician today cannot use a one-second audio fragment or a distorted snare hit without risking suppression, as exemplified by the injunction ordering Biz Markie’s album I Need a Haircut to be pulled from sale.

This creates a massive “holdout” problem. Because there is no legal “safe zone” for even the smallest snippets, legacy labels and rights holders are incentivized to extract “ransom” prices as seen in the dispute between The Verve and ABKCO Records over the song “Bittersweet Symphony.” The labels and right holders know that a global superstar’s entire rollout, including merchandise deals with Puma, film collaborations with Tim Burton, and worldwide tour dates, is at the mercy of a tiny audio fragment. This is an administrative nightmare that prioritizes legacy gatekeeping over modern market efficiency.

The Absolute Property Counterargument: Absolute Control vs. Cultural Ingredients

During the development of this analysis, a fundamental challenge arose: “If I own the rights to a theme as iconic as Star Wars, shouldn’t I have the absolute right to say no to anyone else using it?” This represents the strongest argument favoring the status quo. It is rooted in the “Moral Rights” tradition, the principle that creators should maintain complete control over how their “spiritual child” is presented to the world. Under this view, if A$AP Rocky wants to use someone else’s property, he must accept the owner’s rules, no matter how protracted the negotiation becomes.

However, this “absolute property” model ignores the unique way that music, and specifically sampling, functions as a conversation across time. When we treat a three-second audio fragment with the same legal weight as a full-length film or a symphony, we create an intellectual property “thicket” that makes new creation nearly impossible. A compulsory license wouldn’t constitute appropriation but rather would replace an absolute injunctive right with a remunerative right. Just as a homeowner can’t always prevent the city from building necessary infrastructure through their land, provided they are fairly compensated, the law should recognize that once a sound becomes a part of a genre, the original owner’s “veto power” should yield to a fair, standardized compensation system.

Market Failure in the Era of Perfect Enforcement

The problem has been exacerbated by the arrival of near-perfect enforcement technology. In the 1990s, artists could “flip,” pitch-shift, or bury samples so deep that they became unrecognizable to the human ear. Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones Pt. II” (1995) remained one of hip-hop’s greatest mysteries for 16 years because the producer, Havoc, “buried” the sample so effectively that even the most dedicated crate-diggers couldn’t identify it until 2011. However, by 2026, AI powered digital fingerprinting has become a ubiquitous “digital dragnet“, catching even the most transformed audio textures. This combination of zero tolerance law and perfect detection technology has eliminated the “human” element of risk taking that built early hip-hop.

When transaction costs for clearing a brief sound exceed the value of the sound itself, the market has failed. The manual process of tracking down every sample owner, who may be spread across different labels and estates, creates a barrier to entry that disproportionately affects independent creators. For every superstar like Rocky who can eventually afford a three-year delay, thousands of independent artists see their projects simply die in an inbox.

Conclusion: A Compulsory Sampling License to Safeguard Innovation

The solution lies in creating a “Compulsory Sampling License” similar to the existing framework for cover songs. The law should provide a tiered statutory rate for sound recording fragments based on the length of the sample and the degree of transformation. By creating standardized pricing for samples below a certain threshold, the law would eliminate years of manual negotiation and prevent the “veto power” from being used as an anti-competitive weapon.

A$AP Rocky’s Don’t Be Dumb is a triumph of persistence, but its journey shows that our IP laws are currently built for protection at the expense of progress. By maintaining absolute veto over fragments, we are not just protecting property; we are stifling the next generation of masterpieces. It is time for the law to recognize that in a world where art is increasingly a “melting pot” of styles and sounds, a few seconds of audio should not be enough to stop the music.