RHH: Do you think sampling restriction has hindered the quality of hip-hop in any form?

Not necessarily the quality, but it's definitely affected the purity of hip hop. That's the main reason why the Bomb Squad style of production died out. If every sample the Bomb Squad used got cleared, more time would have been spent clearing the samples than actually making the music. Nobody wanted to do that, so in the 90s almost every producer was sticking to a one sample per beat style, and eventually the keyboard beats started taking over. There's nothing wrong with keyboard beats (well, there is, but mainly because of the people making them), but that's not what hip hop is about. A hip hop beat should have a greater to connection to hip hop's origins than just the drums.