Seeing and being involved in a few different eras of different art forms, it is safe to say that there is a fine line between biting and being inspired. Inspiration is the process of being motivated to do or feel something, especially something creative. When an artist, no matter the genre, is inspired to do something, the thing that gave them their inspiration serves as their permission or their “green light” to create. Inspiration is the “why.” Inspiration is the heart. Inspiration is the story.
In the early days of hip hop, biting was a huge crime. There are several synonyms for biting: style stealing, swagger jacking, copycatting, and sharkin are a few. In short, biting is copying somebody else’s idea, work or style and passing it off as your own; the professional equivalent would be plagiarism or infringement. Over the years biting has become more and more excepted to where the popular business model is to see what is "hot" in the market then just duplicate that. Most of the time there doesn't even have to be a twist.
One of the ways that biting has survived is by being passed off as “paying homage.” In rap, a rapper can get away with reciting a line that another rapper has said if they pass it off as paying homage to the rapper that originally said it. There is a fine line between biting and being inspired because there is a skill in being able to flip somebody else’s line while putting your own spin on it, but everybody isn’t good enough to pull that off.
In fine arts, some art teachers use pastiche as a method to help students develop their ability to pick up on details. According to the Oxford online dictionary, pastiche is an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period. When doing a pastiche, the student is to pick a work of another artist and do his best to reproduce an exact copy of the work. There is a fine line between biting and being inspired because a good pastiche means the student did a great job of copying. Pastiche is a good exercise for developing artistic techniques but it does very little for the streak of creativity.
Bitten material lacks the “why”, heart and story. A produced work has to have a hint of originality to make it credible. I’m sure there has been a time where someone has came up with something on their own merit and down the line found out that what they came up with has been done before. There is still credibility in those situations because one person didn’t hijack the other person’s idea, one person just though of something before another person. “No idea’s original, there’s nothing new under the sun, it’s never what you do, but how it’s done.” – Nas People are going to come up with similar ideas. The execution of those ideas is the important factor that will show what is bitten and what is not. There is a fine line between biting and being inspired. If it’s true then the inspiration will show.