My understanding is that there was a court case that made it too expensive for artists to use so many samples and that basically means the 90s were the golden age for this sort of thing.
There were a couple of big cases in the late 80's, that ended the free-for-all, and laid the foundation for properly crediting, and remuneration for the original writers of, and mechanical copyright holders of a recording that is sampled.
On the one hand, that is the right an proper thing to do. On the other hand it has noticeably stifled creativity.
There's a certain magic in the creative manipulation of a well chosen sample, but as a cost cutting measure (and sometimes for technical reasons) we're frequently hearing "re-versions" , which is code for re-recording / recreating the part, and if you get busted for ripping off another song, claiming it's an original piece, not a sample - then settling out of court, and giving a song writing credit to the original artist.
This is also why modern pop songs have so many songwriter credits, which means nobody is making great money out of it - where there might have been a sole songwriter, or perhaps a song writing duo in a band in the past; modern pop songs tend to be written by a team of writers, and the points are further diluted by credit going to artists / creators sampled in a way that constitutes a significant contribution.
The big cases in the 80's were ABBA pursuing The KLF over the use of "Dancing Queen" on their track "The Queen and I", which in addition to punitive costs meant they had to destroy every copy of their album "1987" (I seem to remember them dumping the entire lot off a ferry, into a Swedish fjord. The album was deleted, though eventually versions without the offending track were surreptitiously pressed - but when The KLF left the music industry in 1993, they immediately deleted their entire back catalogue).
The other big case was regarding James Brown, which really opened the door, and famously De La Soul were so heavily sued by absolutely everybody sampled on "3 Feet High, and Rising" that the record - which was a colossal global hit - lost a fortune, and bankrupted them.
Whilst I'm sure that personal growth, and wanting to change things up, were contributing factors, you only have to listen to a second of De La Soul's follow up album, the appropriately titled "De Is Soul Is Dead" , or any of their subsequent albums to hear the effects of that legislation in radically altering the identity of the group - and that affect is apparent from that point forward in Hip-Hop, and Dance Music.
www.youtube.com
