I usually write this column based on whatever music I’m listening to during the week. Along with this column, my radio show on Wednesday nights follows the same idea, an hour of what I’ve been listening to as of late. This week and next, I’ll finally be linking the two! This week’s article, about the history of sampling in hip-hop, will be accompanied by an episode of Tunes from the Turntable on Wednesday at 10PM on WHUS 91.7 FM full of songs by artists I’ve mentioned below, as well as a deeper dive into their sound and history.
With that being said, this week has been a lot of classic jazz rap and underground hip-hop, including artists like A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, MF DOOM and Digable Planets, among others One thing that makes their music so hypnotic are the creative instrumentals, which are usually sampled from old jazz standards or obscure recordings. As I was up to some ungodly hour falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole around samples used by these artists, I decided it would be a great idea for an article.
Sampling in music is the act of taking some previously recorded or written music and using it in a transformative way to create a new piece of art. The technique has its roots far before the genesis of hip-hop, however, as it was mainly used for experimentation. Most uses of sampling were in highly experimental pieces that had little conventional musical structure — commonly associated with a genre called “musique concrete,” a technique developed in Europe during the 1950s that emphasized ambient, often cacophonous soundscapes made with samples of other jazz and classical records.
With the turn of the decade in 1980, The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” became a mainstream success, the first real hip-hop track to do so. The song incorporates riffs from Chic’s “Good Times,” which wasn’t the very first rap song to do so, but many point to Sugarhill Gang with pioneering the sample in a hip-hop context.
Synthesizers began to incorporate samplers built into them — which wasn’t exactly new, as instruments like the mellotron had been able to sample orchestral sounds for decades by this point — but many samplers out of the 1980s had the ability to overlay two different tracks, as well as drum machines that allowed for new rhythmic layers to be added.
Later that decade, underground hip-hop exploded among cities across the United States, specifically along the two coasts, where differing sounds would lead in different directions. Notably, New York City became an epicenter of rap, forwarding the genre and pushing the limits of what samples could be. Within just a few years, producers perfected their technique to turn any sample into something completely different, almost alien to its original form.
Notable artists include The Beastie Boys, who started out as a hardcore punk band before transitioning into a unique fusion of punk rock and rap. Their 1989 effort “Paul’s Boutique” became a landmark record due to its creative sampling. Around this time, artists focusing on old jazz samples were gaining steam across the east coast, including groups like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest who utilized jazz standards to create all new chill and hypnotic grooves to rap over.
A Tribe Called Quest’s sophomore effort, “The Low End Theory,” became one of the highest selling hip-hop albums of all time and continues to be heralded as one of the most influential albums of all time. The record utilizes minimal instrumentation, taking samples from a range of jazz, soul and funk music like Aretha Franklin, Art Blakey and Weather Report just to name a few.
On the other side of the nation, groups like N.W.A. found monumental success with a harder sound and somewhat more ambitious instrumentals. Though East Coast hip-hop often had political messaging, N.W.A. made a concerted effort to be overtly political. The group established class and race struggles as a central theme to their music, allowing millions across the nation to identify with their struggle. Jazz, blues and especially hip-hop are historically African-American-led, allowing a creative outlet for their grievances that others could hear and identify with.
Though many were quick to label rap as a “lesser” form of music (largely due to the race of the artists and audience, as well as espoused progressive politics), the genre rose to an incredibly dominant form of music in the 1990s, with sampling becoming almost mandatory across the board. In the 2000s, musicians like MF DOOM emphasized the use of sampling, while the overall use of the technique had been slowly declining in favor of entirely synthesized melodies and beats.
Nowadays, sampling is still an incredibly prevalent form of music creation, even being incorporated into other genres like rock and jazz; however, most still associate it with hip-hop or electronic music. While many might think there can only be so many ways to interpolate a track, up-and-coming producers prove them wrong with every coming release.