I would like to shoot out a bunch of uninformed, unsolicited options.
1) The key is not giving the wrong impression. Nobody minds sampled hip hop beats, because it is now understood that this is the genre. The same goes for sampling. The problem with lifting canned beats is that it's not clear that you aren't claiming authorship for them. If you could indicate the parameters of your music somehow, it would seem acceptable. You might name your songs after the preset names, or insert vocal samples talking about lifted beats.
2) I think we can all agree that any problem you have composing beats would be easily solved if you regularly spent time beat boxing into a tape recorder or sampler.
no subject
1) The key is not giving the wrong impression. Nobody minds sampled hip hop beats, because it is now understood that this is the genre. The same goes for sampling. The problem with lifting canned beats is that it's not clear that you aren't claiming authorship for them. If you could indicate the parameters of your music somehow, it would seem acceptable. You might name your songs after the preset names, or insert vocal samples talking about lifted beats.
2) I think we can all agree that any problem you have composing beats would be easily solved if you regularly spent time beat boxing into a tape recorder or sampler.