Recently I've seen artists like Joyryde, Malaa, Creation, Hucci and many more using lots of famous acapellas or chopped shouts from artists like Notorious, Chris Brown, Kanye West etc.
I noticed that they are all more or less pitched down, so my question is: Is there a way to be sure to avoid copyright infringement using these vocals? Or, at least, is there a way to test if my use of the acapella won't give me any problem?
It would be a real struggle seeing a track being removed for this reason when it's clear that somehow it's possible to avoid any problem.
Thanks in advance

 

Well, the legal situation is different from the best practice.
It kinda depends, really. In the genre I'm in it's usually fire and forget. I remember a buddy of mine sampling "the funk phenomena", pressing it as whitelabel and before it caused an uproar all copies had been sold. Just recently I made a track using a certain sample and I scheduled it to be released - but just a month or so before the release boss axis released a track based on the very same sample. There went that release ;)
Obviously, if you're talking about releasing on a major label, sample clearance is a topic.
If you're talking underground and non-commercial, things happen so fast and if it's out there it's out there, so it's usually fighting the losing battle for the ip holder.