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I wish I was a little bit taller....I wish I was a baller
Re: the propriety of quoting lyrics and riffs, popular dance music has been doing that farther back than people even thought that music was entitled to copyright protection. Soloists in Dixieland jazz bands could get a cheap rise out of a dance hall crowd by throwing in a improvisational lick from popular song B while riffing on popular song A. The artist didn't have any sense of responsibility for whether every single listener realized it was a quotation, because music doesn't have footnotes. In that sense, sampling and plagiarism has a proud history that predates recorded music.
To put it into your generation's terms, BB, don't condemn the Beatles for throwing that cut from La Marseillaise before "All You Need Is Love." Even if your comrades fought and died while singing that song on the battlements of Paris.
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