Comments on: Last night a sample saved my life

Last night a sample saved my life

gwint — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:26:54 -0800

50 Greatest Samples in Hip-Hop History with full original tracks. (via)

By: jquinby

jquinby — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:29:50 -0800

Oh hell yes.

By: deezil

deezil — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:32:12 -0800

YES PLZ.

By: Perplexity

Perplexity — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:33:03 -0800

Fantastic.

By: sciurus

sciurus — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:35:07 -0800

[tig]

By: penduluum

penduluum — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:37:29 -0800

Oh hey, cool, you just posted basically the best thing in the universe. I have been wanting to do essentially this website for a couple years, except in reverse. Take popular contemporary song, ID sample, trace use of sample backwards through other songs, end up with original recording. Give some background on the songs / producers / DJs & MCs along the way, with an eye towards kind of making a little narrative out of why that sample ended up in all those places. Why it matters. Good to see the internet has once again managed to do a thing better than I ever would have. Although who knows. I still might throw that together, put it up in Projects on of these days.

By: cashman

cashman — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:37:51 -0800

Hip Hop is Read posted the full list (and a critique) 50 David Axelrod - Holy Thursday 49 Les Demerle - A Day in the Life 48 Clyde McPhatter - Mixed Up Cup 47 The J.B.'s - The Grunt 46 Bob Azzam - Rain Rain Away 45 Richard Popcorn Whylie - Both Ends Against the Middle 44 Monty Alexander - Love and Happiness 43 David Axelrod - A Divine Image 42 Brian Bennett - Solstice 41 Placebo - Humpty Dumpty 40 David McCullum - The Edge 39 Brethren - Outside Love 38 Eugene McDaniels - Jagger the Dagger 37 Third Guitar - Baby Don't Cry 36 Billy Garner - I Got Some 35 Heath Bros. - Smilin' Billy Suite Pt. II 34 Billy Brooks - Forty Days 33 Jack Wilkins - Red Clay 32 Gwen McCrae - 90% of Me is You 31 Weldon Irvine - We Gettin' Down 30 Tom Scott - Today 29 24 Carat Black - Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth 28 Minnie Riperton - Inside My Love 27 Ray Bryant - Up Above the Rock 26 Ronnie Foster - Mystic Brew 25 Kool and the Gang - Who's Gonna Take the Weight 24 Bernard Wright - Haboglabotriben 23 Manzel - Space Funk 22 James Brown - Mind Power 21 The Meters - Look-ka Py Py 20 The J.B.'s - Pass the Peas 19 Isaac Hayes - Walk on By 18 Bill Doggett - Honky Tonk Popcorn 17 Thunder and Lightnin' - Bumpin' Bus Stop 16 Cymande - The Message 15 Kool and the Gang - Let the Music Take Your Mind 14 Kid Dynamite - Uphill Peace of Mind 13 Babe Ruth - Mexican 12 The Ohio Players - Funky Worm 11 Foster Sylvers - Misdemeanor 10 Kool and the Gang - Chocolate Buttermilk 9 Maceo & the Macks - Soul Power '74 8 The Meters - Cardova 7 James Brown - Funky President 6 Manzel - Midnight Theme 5 Isaac Hayes - Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic 4 James Brown - Give It Up or Turnit a Loose (Remix) 3 Skull Snaps - It's a New Day 2 Melvin Bliss - Synthetic Substitution 1 The Honey Drippers - Impeach the President

By: MidAtlantic

MidAtlantic — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:40:34 -0800

WOO.

By: cdmwebs

cdmwebs — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:40:45 -0800

Who Sampled? is a pretty awesome little site, too.

By: chococat

chococat — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:48:06 -0800

Cool.

By: squasha

squasha — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:51:11 -0800

fan-freakin'-tastic...I'm only up to 41, but I'm going to force myself to get some sleep and come back on the weekend. too late to be processing such an excellent collection.

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:53:08 -0800

the-breaks.com is pretty awesome too. Without it I'd have never discovered some of the essential jazz behind some of the essential hip-hop, like Cannonball Adderley's "Fun" (sampled by Gang Starr in "The Place Where We Dwell").

By: dnesan

dnesan — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:57:34 -0800

Dear gwint, can we be best friends? I made you this bracelet... you know... if you want to, like, wear it or something. hugs, dnesan P.S. This is amazing, thanks for this.

By: cashman

cashman — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:59:42 -0800

Who Sampled? is a pretty awesome little site, too. That's neat - I hadn't seen that before. the-breaks has been around forever, but I was always disappointed that he didn't include rap songs sampled by other rap songs. Who Sampled at least tries to list rap songs that sampled other rap songs. They miss a ton, for example, with who has sampled Eric B & Rakim's "I know you got soul", but they have a pretty substantial list. Cool.

By: cashman

cashman — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:02:52 -0800

Also, no Funky Drummer just kind of invalidates the whole thing. I'm sure they're kicking themselves over that one.

By: amyms

amyms — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:03:47 -0800

50 David Axelrod - Holy Thursday Who woulda thunk Obama's senior advisor was such a happenin' guy?

By: griphus

griphus — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:06:29 -0800

Also, no Funky Drummer... Or for that matter, the Winstons' "Amen, Brother." Although, I guess that's more of a D&B thing?

By: Tenacious.Me.Tokyo

Tenacious.Me.Tokyo — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:12:27 -0800

Common Man by David Ruffin. Sampled in Jay-Z's classic Never Change.

By: randomination

randomination — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:15:58 -0800

Next step is for somebody to record a song featuring all 50 and post it to Music.

By: brand-gnu

brand-gnu — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:31:37 -0800

Ditto griphus. Missing the most ubiquitous sample ever: The Amen break, taken from The Winstons' Amen Brother.

By: NiteMayr

NiteMayr — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:33:09 -0800

Clearly they have not seen Funktual's performances, his bombastic style of revealing the sample sources is awesome, it betrays a deep love of music that the plain text simply doesn't convey DJ Funktual's Channel He even runs down the history a lists the big tracks that use the samples, all while making it a big performance for his audience. I cannot promote him enough, especially in light of this post on the blue.

By: xedrik

xedrik — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:35:20 -0800

This is fantastic, and is really going to make my Friday fly by. Thanks so much for sharing this!

By: orme

orme — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:38:24 -0800

This is one sweet shopping list.

By: Copronymus

Copronymus — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:44:49 -0800

This is some really great stuff, but I can't help but feel like it'd be more accurately titled, "50 Greatest Samples in Hip-Hop Between 1990 and 1995"

By: rocket88

rocket88 — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:50:27 -0800

Shamefully missing: Liquid Liquid - Cavern

By: The Mouthchew

The Mouthchew — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:52:18 -0800

I ❤ David Axelrod.

By: mhoye

mhoye — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:53:12 -0800

Can I get a hell yes? Oh hell yes. Can I get a hell yes, please? YES PLZ! This is great, this is great, fantastic post Plus forty nine favorites as of just this post On the blue, not a soul gonna diss [tig] Tell it cashman! Hip Hop is Read posted the full list Shout outs from MidAtlantic WOO CDMwebs drops Who Sampled; and it's fan-freakin'tastic. Bluecevalo drops the-breaks, and does him one better, And then the thread's all up in dnesan with a love letter No funky drummer? No amen brother? Common Man, TMT drops another, yo. Click NiteMayr's link, click preview click play; Today'll be a good day.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:53:25 -0800

I'm always found hip-hop (in my better days we called it rap) samples to be an unending source of new music discovery. a great list. thanks! Having said that ... I don't know how you can have a list called "greatest" without Chic's "Good Times" or George Clinton/Funkadelic. You can call it "The Best 50 Hip-Hop Samples" and it's a good list, but not "The Greatest." It is pretty damn good. I have to say when I first saw the post, No. 40 and No. 5 jumped in my mind and there they were. ... but 'cmon: Funkadelic - (Not Just) Knee Deep Average White Band - Pick Up the Pieces Mighty Ryeders - Evil Vibrations Parliament - Mothership Connection Banbarra - Shack Up Fred Wesley and the JBs - Blow Your Head Lyn Collins - Think (about it) familar? I think if you say "greatest" you have to include some of the big mainstream stuff like Jamie's Cryin and Superfreak. Still, great list.

By: carter

carter — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:53:35 -0800

Cool, thanks!

By: symbioid

symbioid — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:53:40 -0800

penduluum: "Oh hey, cool, you just posted basically the best thing in the universe. I have been wanting to do essentially this website for a couple years, except in reverse. Take popular contemporary song, ID sample, trace use of sample backwards through other songs, end up with original recording. Give some background on the songs / producers / DJs & MCs along the way, with an eye towards kind of making a little narrative out of why that sample ended up in all those places. Why it matters. Good to see the internet has once again managed to do a thing better than I ever would have. Although who knows. I still might throw that together, put it up in Projects on of these days." Heh - A couple years ago I had attempted a wiki called samplesource on my site, but it never got users, and fell prey to spammers (I'm not a very good server admin for that, I guess) I think it's still a great idea, and hope someone gets around to doing it.

By: Kirk Grim

Kirk Grim — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:06:16 -0800

I don't know these guys, but God I used to hate "collectors" of hip hop breaks. I could never understand the mentality; I was actually producing beats, and these guys had all these great records sitting on a shelf collecting dust just so they could say they owned it. "This record is worth like $500!" Whatever. It's already been sampled and whoever buys it for $500 just because Large Pro used it in the 90s is dumb. It made digging so much harder. You literally had to go through the new records at the shop before the clerks knew what they're looking at. I eventually just started sampling digital media, even mp3s. No one can really tell the difference, but when you tell these collectors you used an mp3 or CD their heads explode.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:06:40 -0800

That whosampled site is sweet. I always wanted to know the beat behind 1st of tha Month Then, of course, there's Bill Withers and the Player's Holiday. I guess we could do this all day ... Firecracker. Lowell Fulsom - Tramp

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:07:28 -0800

I've always loved the premisses of Dr. Carter saving critically underperforming rappers by putting some vocab in their iv.

By: tuck_nroll

tuck_nroll — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:08:57 -0800

Also, no Funky Drummer just kind of invalidates the whole thing. I guess the title doesn't say "50 Most Used Samples in Hip Hop History", but I'm with you on this.

By: threeturtles

threeturtles — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:08:59 -0800

Against my own better judgment, I forwarded this to my husband. Now he's going to want to own ALL these records. I'm doomed. Seriously, though, awesome.

By: word_virus

word_virus — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:09:22 -0800

Torrent, plz :)

By: joedan

joedan — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:28:31 -0800

Great post. Thanks.

By: Uncle Ira

Uncle Ira — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:28:58 -0800

These are the breaks.

By: cyclopticgaze

cyclopticgaze — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:35:11 -0800

I expected to see Planet Rock on there, but I guess it samples heavily itself and the list was going back to source material.

By: pjaust

pjaust — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:45:09 -0800

My kingdom for a torrent!

By: minifigs

minifigs — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:51:21 -0800

So good.

By: adipocere

adipocere — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:51:35 -0800

The Heavy's "Sixteen" pulls a great sample off of "I Put a Spell On You." My sample-tracing goes in a different direction: movies. Tracking down My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult samples and others of that mid-eighties to late-nineties industrial/techno/whatever genre leads to some fascinating trainwrecks of films. Shame the industrial sample website died.

By: LDL_Plackenfatz

LDL_Plackenfatz — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:54:15 -0800

Whoot, glad you all like it (I'm an editor there)! Yeah, there were plenty that didn't make it onto the list, but it wasn't our list—we left it up to Kon and Amir. Personally, I would've wanted to see the "Ode to Bille Joe" breakbeat and Lou Donaldson's "Everything I Play Gonna Be Funky" in there. We've got other ones in the works as well; any producers whose own 50 favorites you'd want to read?

By: empath

empath — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:04:03 -0800

Gaz - Sing Sing

By: empath

empath — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:05:43 -0800

Ultimate Beats and Breaks Easily found on bittorrent sites.

By: LouieLoco

LouieLoco — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:06:32 -0800

The list is really good. A little predictable for the top ten but definitely a quality list. It was awesome for me just to see some of the original artwork for some of those records. Like who the hell has seen that pass the peas/cold sweat original 12 inch. And I had NO idea that Stezo was the first person to use Skull Snaps. I always just assumed that Afrika Bambata handed it to Jazzy Jay at some point in the park. The reason that bands like chic and funkadelic aren't on the list is that this is more of a record collector's list of best samples. And besides a lot of the JB's stuff, NOBODY ever heard of Melvin Bliss before it was sampled for Ego Trippin. Also, Liquid Liquid by cavern wasn't sampled as far as I know, It was just recreated in the studio by the sugar hill studios band for "the message"

By: empath

empath — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:09:02 -0800

Take me to the Mardi Gras Apache Previously

By: flatluigi

flatluigi — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:14:02 -0800

If you want an objective take, the previously-linked WhoSampled has a blog and their most recent post went over the top 10 most sampled breakbeats using numbers from their site. Really interesting.

By: Twang

Twang — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:42:27 -0800

I can take it. Hurt me some more. Thatallyougot?

By: l33tpolicywonk

l33tpolicywonk — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:32:45 -0800

Surely, this will force me to stop, collaborate and listen.

By: MeatLightning

MeatLightning — Sat, 15 May 2010 05:57:35 -0800

Overlooking "Apache" is unforgivable... ...and where's Syl!?!?! BUNK!

By: P.o.B.

P.o.B. — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:26:52 -0800

This is nice. I don't think I would've lasted more than two minutes on this if it was the same old bullshit. So there's that. They even included a Library record (#42)!