i wish we could have a discussion about how black and asian culture is jacked in vaporwave without calling sampling Stealing because it skirts around the fact that intellectual property law in music quite literally only ever benefits an upper class group of owners and almost never aids any small or independent or working class artist and that it's designed that way on purpose. the concept of using a song being "stealing" it directly upholds the sociological concept that music is property, and private property at that, and it's worth noting that in the world we live in, the only private property considered sacred by the law is that of the wealthy and most often only that of the white. the same is true for music as private property. it also upholds the idea that violating intellectual property law is a moral failing, which i hate and think causes more problems than it solves.
and don't get me wrong here i think the way vaporwave has acted as perfectly exemplary of how black and asian culture is developed, discovered by white people, severed from its source and then repackaged is very good reason to have a long and serious discussion about its place in pop culture. i just wish that people weren't taking "ah, so copyright infringement bad and that's why vaporwave bad" out of said discussion because i think it both fails to address the actual problem with the heavily sampled style and enforces a law that deliberately hinders marginalized music artists