H&F: That's interesting.

CM: It's true. I mean, it's raw music. He's working on a [Minimal Wave-esque] album right now where it's his beat or his interpretation of [the genre]. He called me up one day and he said, "I need a singer for this." I'm like, "Well, who do you want on it?" He's like, "I don't care. Anybody, as long as they're white." I said, "Oh. I can sing on it."

H&F: I feel like there's been a lot of weird grey areas about the legal proceedings involving sampled music in the industry. For example, with "Blurred Lines" and Marvin Gaye's family. Although, I really didn't enjoy that song at all, there is a sentiment that the rules are being rewritten, almost. I was just curious if you had anything to say about the future of music publishing in regards to copyright infringement.

CM: The sample thing is definitely strange. I mean, even the fact that Marvin Gaye had a lawsuit with Pharrell, I didn't see the outcome turning out the way that it did. I mean, there's just so many songs that sound similar to other songs; just the feel of it. In that case, it was the cowbell and the way the drums were recorded. It wasn't even the melody or anything like that. It was just the feel of it. That was a bummer to me because what it does is it makes artists afraid to mention who their influences are. [Pharrell and Robin Thicke] were talking about in an interview and were like, "oh, we really like that song, so we wanted to create something with that feel." They basically incriminated themselves by saying that.

Beyond that, yeah, I mean, everybody's influenced by somebody, somehow, some way. It just doesn't promote a healthy creative environment. I feel like samples should be treated the same way that covers are, where when anybody does a cover of somebody [else’s song] there's just a statutory rate that they pay, but with samples you can get sued for whatever that person wants to hit you up for. For Biz Markie or De La Soul to lose out as high as they did on money, it was just really scary. They sampled and they got hit so hard that it made people not want to sample anymore. The Quasimoto album that I put out, or J Dilla’s "Donuts," those would never come out on a major label because anybody that was sampled in the creation of those albums would come after the label [if it’s] a major label who has a lot of money but [the records don’t] even necessarily make that much money. It's more just a reflection of the U.S. law system, where the lawyers really just rule everything. Everybody's afraid.

H&F: What advice would you give to somebody trying to start a record label in 2015?

CM: I mean, I would just say "Don't do it."