I didn’t realize until I thought back over music history and the Biz Markie case that hip hop’s East Coast “jazz and chill” phase that TTQ, De La Soul, and other Native Tongues artists brought to the table probably resulted directly from samples going away.
Without samples and sequencing being the primary production technique, suddenly real instrumentation and organic musicality became the thing. Hip hop started building on covered riffs and musical passages more than straight up samples (I’m guessing the licensing was easier).
That also gave us Check Your Head from Beasties, as the follow up to the pioneer sample-laden album Paul’s Boutique, where they famously played their own instruments again and became even more popular. The Native Tongues scene also gave us Prince Paul/Dr. Octagon, which gave us Deltron 3030 and Dan the Automator, which gave us Gorillaz, which…
There really was a lot I suspect would’ve gone quite differently without that court case.