As the oldest of old-school hip-hop fans (I bought the Sugarhill Gang album the day it came out!), I will maintain until my dying breath that the height of the genre was the decade between the mid-80s and the mid-90s, when everything was brand new and no ground rules had been set. Most importantly, sampling had exploded faster than copyright laws could keep up, so for a brief few years, the world was treated to some of the most uniquely creative music ever created. DJs and producers combed their record collections for cool breaks and odd sounds, combining them in ways their creators never envisioned to come up with a totally new kind of musical composition.
Of course, eventually the copyright lawyers found their footing and made it financially impossible to release complex audio collages like De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising or Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. In the meantime, the sampling boom had produced some of the best music that the genre has ever turned out. I spent many hours wondering where these guys had discovered the crazy stuff they were turning into hip-hop gold.
As it has with much of human endeavor, the Internet has made that job a lot easier. A handful of intrepid crate-diggers and DJs have created YouTube videos that juxtapose the original samples with the rap tunes they turned into. There are lots of great examples out there, but I’ll highlight a few of my favorites.
Some American hero put together this nifty exploration of the samples in the Beastie Boys’ sampling masterpiece Paul’s Boutique. While it doesn’t exactly contain EVERY sample in Paul’s Boutique (a rival put together this over 30-minute Paul’s Boutique sample compilation that’s more exhaustive and exhausting), it does do a fantastic job of mixing the pieces together so you can clearly hear how the original tune was used.
Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet gets the sample once-over in this fantastic exploration:
Finally, here’s a video that delves into the truly wild samples on the Madvillain masterpiece Madvillainy. While not as densely layered as the other two albums featured here, the sheer rarity and oddball nature of some of the samples is really something. It starts with Sun Ra and goes from there…
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