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Sample Tuesday

June 22, 2021 — Leave a comment

People think of this as an “Eminem song”, a joke song, not “real Rap” or something like that; but I’m not sure they realize how important this was for Rap. When this came out, rapping slow and tight and over a beat like this was probably more of a fuck you than the words ‘fuck you’. Remember, at the end of the ’90s people were making party songs about about cars, clothes, and money; that was the period when it became accepted that you didn’t have to be a good MC to do Rap, you just had to look rich or be an “entrepreneur” or whatever. And a pop/rap song lived and died by the “beat”. To come out with something like this, with personal rhymes and, yes, goofy jokes was a more serious statement than anyone else was making back then.

“Well … Since age twelve
I felt like I’m someone else
’cause I hung my original self
from the top bunk with a belt”

• Eminem – My Name Is
• Labi Siffre – I Got The …

Sample Tuesday

June 15, 2021 — Leave a comment

The sample work, it’s like a proto-“you don’t know me”. But that break samples itself so …

• Carrie Lucas – Dance With You
• JohNick (Johnny D and Nicky P) – The Captain
• Armand Van Helden – You Don’t Know Me (feat. Duane Harden)

Sample Tuesday

June 8, 2021 — Leave a comment

Pitbull often picks great samples but I don’t understand why he uses samples at all: by the time his song is produced it sounds the same as all the other crap on the radio; whatever magic the sample added has been lost. If they won’t respect the context, or the sonics, or the production of the original song, why use it? It’s not even effective to capitalize off nostalgia because his audience (teenagers staring at phones) doesn’t know the original. Pitbull and his team could be just as rich and famous and sound the same just producing from scratch … I mean compare Steve Silk Hurley’s production to the other one—silk vs. sandpaper.

• Jomanda – Got A Love For You (Hurleys Club Extended Mix)
• Pitbull feat. Jennifer Lopez – Sexy Body

Sample Tuesday

June 1, 2021 — Leave a comment

Thank you Marley Marl

• Fonda Rae – Over Like A Fat Rat
• James Brown – Funky President
• The Honeydrippers – Impeach the President
• The Mohawks – The Champ
• James Brown – Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved
• Mountain – Long Red (Live at Woodstock)
• Eric B. & Rakim – Eric B. Is President
• Marley Marl – Classic Recipes (Recreating Eric B. & Rakim ‘Eric B. Is President’ w/ Akai MPC)

Thank you Blacksmith


• Tina Moore – Never Gonna Let you Go (Blacksmith Remix)

Leroy Burgess and Ray “Pinky” Velasquez; enough said.

• Bonus Track: Kraak & Smaak – My Mind’s Made Up (feat. Berenice)

Why does it always take someone from Europe to remember the heritage of American music?

Sample Tuesday

May 18, 2021 — Leave a comment

Do you ever play a song and the sample is so hot you want to start crying? Right now ain’t nobody better than Tina Moore and Blacksmith.

• Taana Gardner – Heartbeat
• De La Soul – Buddy (Remix) [feat. The Jungle Brothers, Monie Love, Queen Latifah & Q Tip]
• Ini Kamoze – Here Comes The Hotstepper
• DMX – It’s All Good
• Tina Moore – Nobody Better (Blacksmith R’n’B Rub)

Sample Tuesday

March 16, 2021 — Leave a comment

• E-mu Emulator II sound demos: Loon Garden
• 808 State – Pacific State (Original Extended Version)
• Bootsy Collins – *-Ing The ‘Luv Gun’

This quote originally appears in a story on http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/474-loons/ By Philip Sherburne
“At the time of recording “Pacific State”, 808 State were three heads: Gerald Simpson, Martin Price and myself. Martin brought “The Loon” to the table. I think he heard it on a Bootsy Collins album, What’s Bootsy Doing, which had just come out. I always thought it was an Akai Library disc, Wind Chimes Birds & Streams, but it would seem it is the Emulator II Library.
There is a theory that Akai licensed that library for the S900 series. The sampler we used for Pacific was the Casio FZ 1 and it’s probable that the studio had copies of various sample libraries reformatted for the Casio. Casio had its own similar disc with thunder, rain, ocean, birds and insects. We had recorded over that particular disc thinking we would never use such new age nonsense. Floppies were expensive and not easy to buy, so we re-used them.
I’m not sure which came first, “Pacific State” or “Sueno Latino”. I can honestly say I wasn’t aware of that record until afterwards, but Martin was onto every release because he had the Eastern Bloc record shop. I remember after the event they were often played together by DJs in a mix because they shared the loon. I also remember a couple of bootleg attempts at Pacific coming from Italy. The only thing they had right was the loon, so again, the sample library was common.
The Vinyl Telegraph was fast back then, even without the internet. The record we were most aiming to fit alongside, at least in my head, was “Open Our Eyes” by Marshall Jefferson. It was a massive tune at the Warehouse Parties and Clubs in Manchester. Its mood was tropical and humid, opening up with a full sample library of waterfalls streams and shakuhachi. I remember 808 banned any use of shakuhachi, a Japanese flute that every 1980s keyboard seem to have as a preset. It always struck me as funny that the Canadian loon—a very northern temperate bird—was our jungle mascot.
A typical mix cassette in my bag at that point would have pointed to the fact that bird song and B-movie jungle music was not unusual. Anyone will tell you what an Exotica nut I was back then. Exotica is a kitsch 1950s Hollywood view of third world music; its biggest artist was Martin Denny, whose albums were littered with fake bird calls and insect impersonations by a man called August Colon. Other copyists followed such as Arthur Lyman and Eden Ahbez.
Other electronic bands such as YMO and Throbbing Gristle also referenced Martin Denny in the ’80s. I think Exotica lived on into the 1970s in the fusion genre—artists such as Santana, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock, and Airto Moreira who would use similar vocal and percussion FX, like bird whistles, duck calls and cuica drum, and lush analogue synths for imaginary other worlds. And of course the common use of soprano saxophone, which “Pacific State” features. We would have loved Mati Klarwein to do our album covers. One of the first artists we did a remix for was Jon Hassel, who must have recognized our Fourth-World bent and reached out to connect.
Our pet loon got a second wind when the KLF used the extended ambient ending of “Pacific State” as an element in the Chill Out album. Chill-out and ambient would recycle a lot of 1970s new-age-type music—music we had been familiar with, such as Rainbow Dome Music by Steve Hillage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Tangerine Dream. ECM jazz records, such as Egberto Gismonti’s, were again full of nature sounds. We had all lit a few joss sticks and listened to double albums of echoing flutes in Egyptian burial chambers—well maybe not Gerald, who was at least 10 years younger. But the Venn diagram of our combined record collections met in a lot of places; everything became re-contextualized around the campfire of technology in 1988.” – Graham Massey