Hey, I'm Michael Langer and this is the On the Media Podcast Extra.

This month it was announced that DayLawSoles amazing music is finally streaming, just in time

for the 50th anniversary of hip hop.

Today, this morning you could actually listen to the DayLawSoles catalog.

It's an amazing, amazing thing to have.

To say listeners are overjoyed would be an understatement.

Only a few days after their 2023 streaming debut, their 1989 album, Three Feet High and

Rising, soared to number five on the UK album chart, even topping their original 1990

high of 13.

And this should be no surprise.

The group had a towering presence in hip hop in the 80s and 90s.

Their playful ingenuity and eccentricity inspired so many great artists, like the Beastie

Boys, Childish Gambino, Outcast, and the Far Side.

But what kept DayLawSoles music off Spotify and Apple Music and thus largely out of the

public imagination was copyright law and record label infighting and legal restrictions surrounding

sampling.

You know, DJs and hip hop producers taking snippets of records and stitching them together

to form sonic collages and infectious beats.

In an interview from 2018, DayLawSoles members TruGoy the Dove and Macyo reflected on a series

of copyright battles.

The biggest fear is almost feeling like you're being written out of history.

That's how being written out of history, let alone financially being taken advantage of,

...