This article focuses on the rhetorical strategies employed by The Roots and ?uestlove in relation to hip hop authenticity. Specifically, Marshall finds that "sampling," connected as it is to the roots of hip hop, has come to stand in for "authenticity" in hip hop. ?uestlove and The Roots, privileging live, recorded instrumentation yet seeking legitimacy as hip hop, deliberately quotes, invokes and yet criticizes sampling in his music. The Roots' more recent has included more electronic tones, presumably to recall sampling and position their music more firmly in the hip-hop tradition. Yet the business of sampling -- the licenses fees only major artists like Jay-Z and Kanye West can afford -- makes ?uestlove question its presumed authenticity in hip-hop: "B

etween paying the record labels, who typically own the mechanical rights to sound recordings, and the writers and/or companies who own the publishing rights—none of which, of course, necessarily goes to the samplee—most hip-hop artists with limited (if not nonexistent) budgets could never hope to afford such a pricey but prized production technique." ?uestlove for that reasons often mocks copyright law and practice in his music, an "underground," subversive move that further confirms his authenticity among his fans, who privilege The Roots' idiosyncratic status in hip-hop. Thus by playing to both sides, The Roots complicate notions of what is real and authentic, trying to make room in hip-hop for a variety of expressions.