The hit-making machine defends the idea of “co-opting” a song for your own ends.

Mark Ronson took his turn on the TED podium recently to give a talk about sampling, arguing that recycling other people’s sounds shouldn’t sound like “hijacking nostalgia” but should always bring something new into the equation.

To demonstrate, he remixes 15 previous TED talks into an audio-visual collage before tracing the evolution of Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s ‘La Di Da Di’, the fifth most sampled song of all time.

He also talks about avoiding pastiche while working with Amy Winehouse on her second album Back To Black, and comments on Miley Cyrus’ recycling of the ‘La Di Da Di’ hook on ‘We Can’t Stop’.

Watch the talk below.