Don't Forget the Soul Beat (Part 1)

As I mindlessly browsed Facebook and listened to my iPod a few days ago, a friend of mine posted a status such as: "Real rap music is dead...blah, blah, and more blah." I thought that it most certainly not, but that is definitely a story for another day. We then got into a discussion about "old-school hip-hop" and how the music definitely isn't the same. I would definitely be a voucher for that (regardless I don't believe it's dead) but one thing about hip-hop is that even though the lyricism may be watered down and a lot of things in the "game" have changed that one thing has always stayed the same, the quality of production that comes from sampled beats. I don't know what it is, but whenever I hear a sample of an older hip-hop song, a soul song in an older hip-hop song, or just something that has been reused, over and over again, I'm always so ecstatic, especially when I recognize the song. Sampling can also arguably as a bad art of music (especially if done badly, or done to a classic) and those are the times you have to look part sampling


For those unfamiliar with sampling: In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. (Thank you Sampling Wikipedia)

Sampling is espcially prominent in the illegal art of mash-up music, something that I've been working a lot with lately and hopefully soon I will have a blog post about mashing, but for today lets focus on some of my favorite hip-hop/soul samples.

The Isley Brothers's Footsteps in the Dark vs Ice Cube's It Was a Good Day:



These two songs are two of my favorite songs that came out before I was even born but regardless are great songs. The hip-hop stylings of DJ Pooh produced which was one of the best hip-hop samples of all-time. The Isley Brothers nowadays in the hip-hop world are known for much of their music being sampled such as Notorious B.I.G's Big Papa (Sampled In Between the Sheets), Public Enemy's Fight the Power (Sampled Fight the Power), and well over 250 other songs (Click to see more).

Jay-z vs Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City.

You may have heard this song lately, on the new Chrysler commercials but Jay'z mad styling of Heart of a City, is one of the coolest and classical soul songs by Bobby Bland. Jay-z in this case took a song that was one hot song during its day and resurrected it with some hip-hop flavor. This is definitely one of my favorite samples of all-time.

Outkast's So Fresh, So Clean vs Joe Simon's Before the Night is Over

Ain't Nobody Dope as me...Okay, now this is one of the coolest samples ever. Outkast took one of the very simple elements of Joe Simon's classic song and made it their own flavorful creation, that definitely got everybody addicted to their song. The difference between these two songs are huge, but the sample between them is one of the coolest relationships in sampling ever.

There you have it! Part one of many to come apart of my favorite samples of all-time. Before I let you all go, I'd like to really thank a DJ I found on Youtube by the name of DJ Funktuall, where I found a lot of these samples. Be sure to check out his videos for more samples!