Certainly not.
It blows me away that most of the samples in Paul’s Boutique were actually cleared and paid for. They had a few samples they didn’t clear (such as the Beatles’ samples) but they were of the “fuck it, it would be awesome if the Beatles sued us!” attitude.
I’ve read a few places that the cost for all the licensing and clearing of samples ended up being a relatively cheap sum of around $250k (about $500k in today’s money) – basically the bulk of their production budget. That’s a steal given that today you’d need to add another zero or two to that number (not to mention you’d massively dilute any potential royalties in the process).
About the only way to make an album like that these days would be to use the DJ Shadow route of using mostly obscure or heavily obfuscated samples or the Girl Talk “are you feeling lucky, punk?” path of “sue me if you want, but if I win, you’re setting yourselves up for a world of hurt”.
