There's a quiet strength in borrowing. Not theft. Not imitation. But a creative, deliberate act; drawing from what has been said or sung before, not to replicate it, but to reframe it. Borrowing as a homage. To respond. To carry forward.
The contemporary tendency to dismiss modern music as "uncreative", where sampling is branded as antithetical to true musicianship, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how culture actually evolves.