A good sample makes a good hip hop track - an easy rule that is almost always accurate (although how Will Smith managed to butcher ‘Rock the Casbah’ for ‘Willenium’ is beyond me…). Another good rule is that 95% of good hip hop is sample based. So basically without a great musical past to pilfer from hip hop is fucked - proper fucked, like the big rabbit. With this in mind, I would like to share with you what I consider are the most important/creative/best sample based albums of all time. I think you only really need to consider three – you could argue that there are more, and there are, but these three were milestones for the art and nowt else can really touch them…so in chronological order here are the beautiful plates of wax –
1. 3 Feet High and Rising – De La Soul
Probably the first album on any list milestones in sampling, simply because it was the first REAL milestone. I mean you could argue that Grand Master Flash’s Adventures on the Wheel’s of Steel was the first milestone, and you’d have a reasonable point, but loads of DJ’s were doing that shit at the time (maybe not quite as well). That album was more of a summation of block party DJing and an advert for the scratching…not real loop digga shit.
The story of 3 ft is certainly well told so I might aswell tell it again…but with less focus on the songs and more the records used to make them.
Prince Paul, DJ with pioneering hip hop band Stetasonic, hooks up with two and emcees and one DJ that bounced to a slightly different beat than the then crop of rap groups – they called themselves De La Soul. Rough demo’s of tracks such as ‘Potholes…’ were already in the bag but the Prince Among Thieves holed up with De La in their Amityville basement and caned their parents’ record collections, Paul’s records, Disney soundtracks, comedy records, TV shows, basically anything they could nick… It must have been quite exciting because nobody had really strayed too far away from you basic James Brown/funk/jazz sample stock before. The results were bad ass. It’s a cliché but the album is psychedelic. Samples triggered at every turn; killer sampled, not programmed, drums; and just a different sonic feel due to the amount of pop and rock samples thrown into the mix.
This album basically made it ok for everybody to start sampling anything. This was mainly down to the naivety of the De La and, probably more so, the fucking genius of the older and wiser Prince Paul. It was also a hit which made it even more influential as C.R.E.A.M and record companies now had proof that there was more to the music side of hip hop than James Brown. There was another big influence on sampling however – law suits… The Turtles got pissed off when they heard one of their tracks used and so sample law was created and would be a constant thorn in hip hops side from that day on.
There is loads more I could write about this album but to be honest it’s all been said before, so there are its basic achievements which are pretty fucking massive.
2. Paul’s Boutique – Beastie Boys
Straight up fucking funky white boy shit!
I went threw a phase about six years ago of trying to collect every sample used on this album and I must have achieved about 90% of my goal. This meant only one thing – I was fucking broke! There are so many samples used on this record its untrue. I bloody love it man, I really do.
Paul’s Boutique has to be one of the funkiest albums of all time. If 3 ft was a naïve, fresh use of sampling then this was it older (even though they were released in the same year), cooler, slicker brother who was really down with the funk. Musically created by the Dust Brothers for the Beastie Boys to have fun over, this album is a straight up lesson in how use samples with style. Classic funk breaks mixed with some quality crate finds give the album a huge sense of fun…although it isn’t all funk – ‘Sounds of Science’ is built entirely on Beatles samples with some cracking scratching from DJ Hurricane (‘Hurricane, got clout, other DJs, he put ya head out…’) and is still as funky as fuck. Couple all these seamless funky ass beats with three emcees that fired rhymes off each other for fun and you’ve got one hell of an album, which is quite simply essential.
Oh and I haven’t even mentioned the mighty 9 part, near 20 minute hip hop tour de force that is ‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse’. Built on drum machine beats and killer samples like The Isley Brothers ‘That Lady’, it beautifully rounds of the albums amazingly funky, fun mix of beats and rhymes.
3. Endtroducing… - DJ Shadow
Trip hop is a dirty word, and this album single handedly created and destroyed it in one fell swoop. Created it was probably the first instrumental hip hop album of any real quality and destroyed it because it was also by so far the best, that nothing before or since can even sniff its farts without having to ask permission.
Shadow really schooled suckers with his debut long player. As with Paul’s Boutique this album contains an absolute ton of samples, but they are used in a far more subtle manner than that employed by the Dust Brothers - they flow in and out of each other in beautifully layered loops. This album really destroys the stupid ‘sampling is stealing’ line, as Shadow really does create something aesthetically wondrous and new. The album could be described as ‘progressive instrumental hip hop’ but it is best described with the title of another DJ Shadow track – ‘Hardcore hip hop’, for that is quite simply what it is.
It’s not only the way the samples are woven together so well, it’s the crate depth needed to make the album. Put it this way, Mr. Davis owns more than a couple of records and he also makes a point of only sampling from original source vinyl – no reissues or comps, bitches! The samples used cover a vast time period too. Aswell as the obscure funk, jazz and psychedelia you’d expect from such an album, there is also room for snatches of Bjork and even U2 drums. It’s not only this huge open minded palette of source material that makes the album work. It’s also the respect Shadow has for the records and artists he uses – he describes the basement of his favourite record shop as a ‘graveyard of broken dreams’ (or similar words to that effect anyway), and it really shows in the astonishing album he created with them.
So there they are, three milestones in sample based hip hop albums. One innocent, naïve and utterly fun; one funkier than three day old shit and slicker than the Exxon Valdez; and one more beautiful Salma Hayek’s fresh shaven fanny! There are other leaps in sampling out there though, like Double Dee and Steinski’s Lesson series of seminal singles and remixes; or Coldcut’s Journey’s by DJ which was a great mix album. But it’s the three gems above that that showed their producers to be real masters of their art. Enjoy.
STYLEZ OUT
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