I write songs completely from the ground up, however I often sample vocal passages from certain news broadcasts, documenteries (mostly from the 50s), industrial films, and b movies, to help to prove my point, and it actually adds emotional weight to the ideas which I'm trying to get accross (let them hear it right from the mouth of the enemey instead of whining endlessly about it myself).
Sampling doesnt take anything away from the artistic merit of a project in itself, as long as it is done is a way that is artistically important. You could go as far as saying that if you press a CD it's crap because it's just a sampling of the audio, and the only real way is to litterally cut an LP with a lathe, because that's making the sound in a physical manner (That IS fun tho). Sure, at times I could do the part myself, however sometimes, for example. that amen break, or sample from jerry falwel is perfect for what you envision for the art piece, and would drive the point further home in a way that explaining it lyrically until your lips fall off, wouldn't accomplish.
Regardless of playing ability or the process involved, great art is great art. I don't really know anyone who samples music who just takes it and rips it off without making it their own, or using some form of artistic flair and emotionality, aside from some really lame 80s mainstream shit like vanilla ice. Some of the most moving music I've heard is by people who aren't basically musical instrument playing machines, but people who really understand music, and how to express themselves with it, regardless off the methods and tools that they use to achieve their goal. Music is a language, and not everyone is fluent in it. Even many of the classical composers that we treasure, aside from the ususal bach, mozart, and bethoveen (that I know of), where criticized for their strange methods and sensibilities, yet the people who criticized them remained the king of their little shit pile for a few years, and other than their rediculous quotes, their names and work have been lost in the course of time, while the artists who truely understood music that they shat on live on in imortality.
On a more modern note, listen to people like DJ Shadow and tell me with one of his projects called UNKLE he doesn't have artistic merit, the songs are very emotional, and done in a very heartfelt way, and are every bit as much relevant artistically as that swell beatles or pink floyd tune (sorry) that everyone ejaculates uncontrolably from the sound of. He uses A LOT of samples, however, given his classical musical training, and his understanding of the emotionality of the art of music, he intelligently uses them in a way that creates a new artistic statement, very different to the sampled material.
To say sampling isn't real music, is the same as saying that the bauhaus art movement was not art. Some of their found object pieces, and general rebelion was quite profound, and have such an emotional statement to say, which is what real art is anway, reglardless if it's traditional, or not. Besides, without sampling, we wouldn't have ANY electronic music, that's where it started in the 30s and 40s.
Besides, most "real" musicians, rip off the same stupid riffs and chord progressions as everyone else and write one more piece of borish drivel that nobody will give a shit about, and generally has no purpose for existing, with nothing at all to say, no real emotion behind, and no point to it other than to enable the self centered creators to tell the world that "I want to drink a lot of beer and have groupies with AIDS and herpes polish my knob for me." That's hardly more origional than vanilla ice, even, who at least had a really "bitchin" hair do, and he DID get stabbed in the butt, which makes for at least something of a chuckle to think about, in a purely entertainment value way.
And btw..I AM a real musician, I play about 5 instruments, most of them in projects professionally over the course of my musical adventure, and have since an early age. Don't discount other people's artistic expressions if it was meant in that light, it just makes you sound like an old jaded fogey, bitter because everyone doesn't want thngs to be done the exact way they grew up doing it, and due to your depesperate attemts to hang on to what you have, cause yourself to miss the real point of things. ART, not technique.
I fucking hate hearing people put down artists if they happen to sample anything in their music. Just stop, kay?