Sampling is a form of preservation.

A Blackstack Original about the power sampling plays in Black music.

You know when the beginning of a song starts but it’s a sample of the same beginning of another song, and the older generation starts to jam thinking it’s their song. Some of us got a taste of that feeling when SZA and Kendrick Lamar released “30 For 30” having us thinking it was “Throw Some D’s” by Rich Boy at first. And honestly, every time I hear either song I have to go back and listen to the original by Switch “I Call Your Name” which reminds me of my childhood.

It’s a nostalgic feeling that samples in music signals through our DNA as Black people when we hear it. Taking us back to a particular time in our life, the people we were around during that time; music is one of our timestamps. The thought was racing and I knew this was something that I needed to bring to the community chat to get a conversation going.

Immediately, the conversation took off encouragement to publish a piece if I received submissions on the topic.

Laurence Morreale

sent me well written piece the next day! And I knew this year for Blackstack writing opportunities were going to be special. It’s so much passion in the work received so far and I look forward to what more will be discussed on the topic.

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Beats to the Rhyme: The Origins of Sampling In Hip-Hop

Laurence Morreale

When you are Black, you hear music from the time you are inside your mother’s womb. It's like we start kicking inside their bellies because we wanna jam, too. For us, music is life and life is music. I can remember when I was four years old riding with my mother in her silver 2000 Oldsmobile listening to her two mixtapes. We would go back and forth between her New School CD and Old School CD, both of them written in Sharpie marker. I quickly became familiarized with ‘80s RnB  from the likes of Alexander O’neal, Chaka Khan, Cherelle, Prince, MJ, DeBarge, Luther Vandross and more. 

Her new school CD introduced me to Mariah Carey, Joe, SWV, Biggie, Busta Rhymes, Q-Tip, Sade, Total, & 112. One song from the Old School CD, ‘I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On’ by Cherelle, sounded identical to her favorite Mariah Carey song, also named ‘I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On’. Another two songs that sounded the same were her favorite song by DeBarge ‘Stay With Me’ and ‘90s Hip-Hop classic ‘One More Chance’ by Notorious B.I.G. I could see from an early age that music for a lot of artists was finding new ways to tell a story. This is how I was introduced to sampling.

Being a Gemini, I became extremely curious about everything my mother played (which is probably why I am such a music nerd and eventually became a DJ). As I grew older, I started to understand these songs sounded similar because producers would sample the original songs from the ‘70s and ‘80s. I would watch shows like VH1’s ‘Behind the Music’, ’Classic Albums’ and music documentaries, religiously. I even read her book by Nelson George ‘Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul’. I would get on my late cousin Troy’s nerves telling him how the beat from Biggie’s 1994 anthem ‘Juicy’ came from Mtume’s 1983 ‘Juicy Fruit’ while we would watch VH1 Soul or MTV Jams marathons of old music videos. Hip-Hop was like a language I was trying to decode. I can see myself at 12 years old sitting frozen at the computer, while I sonically time traveled to different eras of Black music - trying to find the lineage of Hip-Hop tracks I loved. I would catch a lyric and type it into Google search, hoping to find the original song from where these amazing arrangements came from. These samples meant something to me, they were a piece of history. A bridge that connected Black music from multiple genres, eras and Black folks from different generations. These were the beats to the rhymes.

Being a music nerd, I feel like one thing that often gets overlooked in Hip-Hop is the technical innovation and creativity of New York City deejays during the 1970s. We focus so much on the rapping aspect, we lose sight of the people who developed the sound. For most Hip-Hop lovers we’ve heard of DJs like Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, GrandMaster Flash yet their creative and DIY spirit isn’t highlighted enough, in my opinion. They were young Black men who wanted to give their neighborhoods a break from the violence and decay that was the 1970s South Bronx, a no man's land for outsiders. Street gangs like the Savage Nomads, Black Spades, and Savage Skulls fought each other constantly while buildings were being blown up by landlords who had fled during the White flight to collect insurance money. These Djs wanted to create an escape for the other young people in their neighborhood, a way for them to come together and have fun. 

1971 was the year Japanese audio brand, Tekunikusu aka Technics released the SL-1100 Turntable, this turntable was the second of its kind to feature pitch control and direct drive, which allowed for DJs to control the speed of the record and precision of when a song would start and end. This technology was compatible with 12-inch LPs that allowed for more songs to be played on a record. By the 1970s, the 12-inch LP had become the industry standard in an era where younger listeners wanted to hear full length albums from artists with complete concepts, art, and deeper meaning than one or two singles. This was the dawn of the album era and would lay the early foundations for DJs to experiment with new sounds while performing live in front of audiences, allowing new genres like Funk, Disco, and Hip-Hop to flourish.

In the aftermath of the politically sanctioned assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, and MLK Black people in America were angry, tired and done trying to conform to the racial status quo of the United States. They traded in their perms and conks for afros while artists like James Brown, George Clinton, and Sly Stone traded in the polished aesthetic of classic RnB in favor of Afro-futuristic themes and high powered grooves that emphasized the first beat of every measure. This made it so grooves lasted longer, songs became more danceable and there was heavy emphasis on bass guitar rhythms and heavily syncopated drum beats. 

Two years after Technic released the Technic-1100 turntable, Kool Herc started playing his first park jams with two T-1100 turntables, a mixer, and two cabinet speakers inspired from the handcrafted sound system speakers of his birthplace: Kingston, Jamaica. By playing two copies of the same record side by side, he could elongate the complex drum patterns and bass guitar breakdowns that kept the music playing with no breaks in between. While playing these elongated breakdowns known as ‘loops’ his best friend, Coke La Rock, would rhyme on a microphone, ultimately becoming the first emcee. Soon, these style of parties spread like wildfire across the South Bronx becoming the soundtrack of the graffiti movement and Hip-Hop was born. 

During the 1970s, another subculture came to prominence that was birthed in the underground LGBTQ+ scene of New York City. It was very Black, Latinx, and Italian. It came from humble beginnings starting from rent parties in the Soho loft of a young Italian-American music lover named David Mancuso. Mancuso’s parties became so popular he started throwing them every week and his home became one of the first nightclubs in this new scene with other nightclubs popping up soon after like - The Gallery, The Sanctuary and Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage where young people from all backgrounds came to party and live their best lives. 

The clubs were chic, dark and sexy with red strobe lights showering the lit up dancefloors backed by finely crafted speakers and subwoofers that gave a new depth to the dynamic sounds of Black female vocalists like Lolleata Holloway, Donna Summer, Norma Jean Wright, Thelma Houston and First Choice. These songs had a four on the floor beat pattern with bigger bands than their funk counterparts and louder hi-hats that would hit you! Producers like Giorgio Morouder, Tom Moulton and Shep Pettibone revolutionized the art of the remix with different techniques like multi-tracks. DJ booths at these clubs would be equipped with reel to reel tape machines, mixers and more emphasis on crossfading to blend different songs together taking clubgoers on a journey the entire night. This was in tune with the live production style of DJing that was an essential part of Hip-Hop. Disco would become integral to the evolution of Hip-Hop, allowing a wider audience to become enamored with the experimental sound of the Black and Latino youth culture of New York City.

“Now what you hear is not a test, I'm rappin' to the beat 

And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet “

Wonder Mike, Rapper’s Delight, 1979

Rapper’s Delight became the first Hip-Hop song to chart in 1979, becoming a major hit and selling over 5 million records due to the fact it sampled one of the most well known Disco tracks of all time, Chic’s ‘Good Times’. This made it palatable to Disco audiences who were unfamiliar with this new sound. It broadened the audience of Hip-Hop and more people became infatuated with the danceable, sing-a-long style of this new genre. Hip-Hop finally made the transition from the block parties of the South Bronx to a recording studio. 

Although it seemed like a win for the culture - for many others it was quite the opposite, like Grandmaster Caz whose lyrics were stolen by Sugar Hill Gang member Big Bank Hank who was Caz’s manager and never received credit or got paid.

Other tracks released by different labels followed the same formula like Funky Four + 1’s ‘That’s The Joint’ which sampled A Taste Of Honey’s ‘Rescue Me’. Hip-Hop and Disco became closely related during the late ‘70s, early ‘80s and it makes sense because many of the songs being sampled were from other Black artists that were popular records in the Black community. The Hip-Hop and Disco scenes cross pollinated each other. After Disco reached its height by the early 1980s, post-disco, new wave, and electro-funk records started to be used more; like Liquid Liquid’s ‘Cavern’ for Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel’s ‘White Lines’  and Treacherous Three’s ‘Feel The Heartbeat’ sampled from Taana Gardner’s club hit ‘Heartbeat’ and most famously Afrika Bambaataa’s ‘Planet Rock’ which sampled Kraftwerk’s ‘Trans-Europe Express’. Disco started to be looked at as corny and became out of fashion. With acts like ‘The Disco Three’ changing their name to ‘Fat Boys’ or former Disco Fever DJ ‘Lovebug Starski’ becoming an emcee, himself..

Now that Hip-Hop had moved into studio spaces, many felt that the sound had lost its edge. This conflict between Hip-Hop having a commercialized versus raw sound is something we continue to see today with the Kendrick and Drake beef. By the 1980s, with the development of drum machines like the Roland TR-808 (originally intended for bands as a replacement for a drummer), this type of equipment would ironically elevate Hip-Hop sampling techniques and help it become a more solidified genre.

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