Dear listeners,
Today’s playlist is a celebration of a tried-and-true method of discovering new-to-you music: identifying the samples in hip-hop songs.
In his recently released book “Hip-Hop Is History,” Questlove recalls a story from his childhood that speaks to this experience. When he couldn’t fall asleep, he’d listen to the radio in the middle of the night, when D.J.s were free to play the most outré sounds. “During those years,” he writes, “I heard a song that was bizarre synth music, completely compelling, pure hypnosis on the airwaves.” He tried to tape it but could never correctly anticipate when it would come on. Several years passed and he still hadn’t figured out what that elusive song was, but then one day he heard it — or something like it — at a roller rink birthday party. When he asked about it, the D.J. was so taken with his curiosity, he gifted him the 12-inch single. “It was ‘Planet Rock,’” he writes, referencing the legendary track by Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force. “It sampled the Kraftwerk song I had heard, which I learned was called ‘Trans-Europe Express.’ That party and that 12-inch made my day, my year and part of my life.”
These days it’s much easier to track down the source of a sample, thanks to Google searches, apps like Shazam and websites like the invaluable database WhoSampled.com. But samples are still powerful portals between genres, cultures and music’s past and present. Sampling is the reason Dr. Dre is one degree of separation from the Scottish composer David McCallum, and why we know that Enya is a fan of the Fugees — and vice versa.
There are so many great and unexpected samples in classic hip-hop songs that today’s playlist should be considered only a brief introduction. (Perhaps a sequel will arrive in a future Amplifier, too.) If you’re a true hip-hop head, listen to the playlist before reading the descriptions below and see how many tracks you can name from hearing the source material of their samples. And if you’re more familiar with the originals than the songs that sampled them, make sure you also check out the hip-hop classics linked in the descriptions below.
We so tight that you get our styles tangled,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. David McCallum: “The Edge”
Last September, when the Scottish actor David McCallum died at age 90, many “NCIS” fans were surprised to learn that the man who played Dr. Donald Mallard for two decades on the police procedural also composed the song prominently sampled in Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s 2000 hit “The Next Episode,” among quite a few other tracks. (If I am breaking this news to you right now, you’re welcome.) In addition to his long, prolific career as an actor, McCallum was also a classically trained musician; the regal instrumental “The Edge” appeared on his incredibly titled 1967 sophomore album, “Music: A Bit More of Me.”
2. Herb Alpert: “Rise”
At the 3:25 mark of this unlikely pop hit — the seven-and-a-half-minute instrumental topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in 1979 — comes a warped, rippling sound that segues the track into a funky breakdown. Nearly two decades later, that sound and the song’s overall groove would be integral to the beat of the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize,” a single released a week before the rapper’s 1997 death that would become a huge posthumous hit. In a 2017 interview, Alpert’s nephew Randy (who composed “Rise” with collaborator Andy Armer) recalled that he made that sound by experimenting with an Echoplex tape machine. He also revealed that he had received other requests to sample “Rise” but had turned them all down until he was blown away by Biggie’s demo: “The Notorious B.I.G.,” he said, “he’s magic.”
3. Ann Peebles: “I Can’t Stand the Rain”
Missy Elliott and the producer Timbaland sample and interpolate this 1973 track on Elliott’s 1997 debut single, “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” — that otherworldly hit that recently became the first song beamed to Venus. Peebles’s original was already plenty futuristic-sounding when it was released, though, thanks to the raindrop effect created by an electric timbale.
4. Curtis Mayfield: “Superfly”
This slick soul classic has been sampled many times throughout the years — Whosampled.com counts 24 — but one of its most prominent uses comes in the Beastie Boys’ “Egg Man,” from their sample-heavy 1989 opus, “Paul’s Boutique.”
5. Tom Scott featuring the California Dreamers: “Today”
A wistful saxophone riff snakes through “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s classic 1992 ode to their late friend Troy Dixon. The sample comes from Tom Scott and the California Dreamers’ relatively obscure 1967 cover of the Jefferson Airplane’s “Today.” “When I found the record by Tom Scott,” Rock said in a 2007 interview, “basically I just heard something incredible that touched me and made me cry. It had such a beautiful bass line, and I started with that first. I found some other sounds and then heard some sax in there and used that. Next thing you know, I have a beautiful beat made.”
6. Stevie Wonder: “Pastime Paradise”
There’s a slightly uncanny quality to the string sounds in Stevie Wonder’s 1976 track “Pastime Paradise” that make them ripe for sampling. (In fact, they were created on a Yamaha GX-1, making this song one of the earliest to mimic orchestral sounds on a synthesizer.) Coolio sampled and interpolated “Pastime Paradise” for his 1995 smash “Gangsta’s Paradise” — and brought out Wonder out to sing the hook during a memorable performance at the Billboard Music Awards.
7. Labi Siffre: “I Got the …”
Regular Amplifier readers may recall that earlier this year, I started listening to the British musician Labi Siffre — and that I learned that his 1975 single “I Got the …” is sampled in Eminem’s debut hit, “My Name Is” (as well as dozens of other tracks). Siffre initially objected to the song’s homophobic and misogynistic content (“Diss the bigots, not their victims,” he said), but later signed off on a clean version — not realizing that this meant he was clearing the sample for the dirty version, too.
8. Kraftwerk: “Trans-Europe Express”
Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock” is in part a homage to Kraftwerk, interpolating (rather than sampling) the beat from the German electronic group’s “Numbers” and the chorus melody from “Trans-Europe Express.” Though Bambaataa and his collaborators did not initially get permission from Kraftwerk, once the song took off they agreed to give the group a dollar for each single sold. Cannily, the label owner Tom Silverman then raised the list price of the “Planet Rock” 12-inch from $4.98 to $5.98. “So basically it didn’t cost him anything,” the co-producer Arthur Baker later recalled. “All you guys who bought it paid Kraftwerk.”
9. Enya: “Boadicea”
Finally, the next time you hear someone dare to suggest that Enya is uncool, let them know that this eerily misty Celtic instrumental from her 1987 self-titled album forms the basis of the Fugees’ menacing 1996 hit “Ready or Not.” Because the Fugees initially (and naïvely) didn’t credit Enya for the sample, she considered suing them, but she decided to grant approval and settle out of court because she liked the song. As she said of the Fugees in a 2016 interview about sampling, “I think they’re wonderful musicians.”
The Amplifier Playlist
“9 Surprising Songs Sampled in Classic Hip-Hop Tracks” track list
Track 1: David McCallum, “The Edge”
Track 2: Herb Alpert, “Rise”
Track 3: Ann Peebles, “I Can’t Stand the Rain”
Track 4: Curtis Mayfield, “Superfly”
Track 5: Tom Scott featuring the California Dreamers, “Today”
Track 6: Stevie Wonder, “Pastime Paradise”
Track 7: Labi Siffre, “I Got the …”
Track 8: Kraftwerk, “Trans-Europe Express”
Track 9: Enya, “Boadicea”
Bonus Tracks
Want to hear 15 more songs sampled in well-known pop and hip-hop tracks? David Renard compiled this great list for The Times a few years back. As he puts it, “the best samples collapse music’s past and present into one moment, and light up paths that like-minded listeners can follow backward into music history — to the obscure, the forgotten, the I’ve-heard-it-before-but-not-like-that.”
Also, call your brother: The lads of Oasis are finally reuniting for a 2025 tour!
The post 9 Surprising Songs Sampled in Classic Hip-Hop Tracks appeared first on New York Times.
