Remember the Vanilla Ice hit Ice Ice baby or what ever it was called. When that track was sampled a few notes were changed and he still got hit with crazy fees. You really have to change it up. Look at boom bap style sampling, no matter how you chop that sample up you are still going to have to pay something. With recreating a track I would say use the same chord progressions and stuff like that but play a different melody that has the same feel as the original that is 100% legal. Its something like a Rhythm Changes. Every Jazz composer has made a song based off of those chord changes changes ie "I got Rhythm" by George Gershwin. Many Jazz composers flipped that tune and made something "new" Oleo by Sonny Rollins, Cotton Tail by Duke Ellington, or even Anthropology Charlie Parker ft. Dizzy Gillespie to name a few. Hell, even Meet the Flintstones by Hoyt Curtin was flipped from I got rhythm. All the same chord changes or progressions just with different melodies. Check those tunes out on youtube and it might turn out to be a good history lesson on the originators of sample I mean tune flipping before the MPC lol.
Peace