i looked around a bit and it seems early on he definitely didn't give a crap good quote:
"Do you ever run into troubles with sample clearance?
Nah, I'm not on no big label. We ain't no Def Jam. Somebody might pay attention, but not yet. And I don't sample no Rick James or shit like that.
But if you sell a beat to, say, Common or Busta, you're going to have to clear that, right?
They're going to have to clear it. But half of the time I can't even remember the record I sampled! When I make beats, I just pick a record up and go. A lot of times I don't even look at what it is."
thats from and interview he did with scratch pretty good read:
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?...92&__preferredculture=en-US&__ipculture=en-US
seems like on some of the newer stuff there were some delays due to clearance and i even read that alot of his beats won't be released because he doesn't want to deal with clearing some of the samples.
pretty interesting also was this dude put up a sample pack of all the samples from Madvillainy and madlib freaked out and immediately requested that it be taken down. i think 76 people got to download it before it got yanked, i'd really like to hear that pack, word is most of the flips were insane.
http://kevinnottingham.com/2008/03/18/all-samples-are-not-cleared/