The Truth About the Revival of Sampling: It Was Never In Danger of Dying, and the Internet Didn’t Save It
In The BeatTips Manual (2015) and previous editions of The Art of Sampling (2013, 2017), I noted that the sampling tradition of hip hop/rap music was never in jeopardy of dying. In view of recent commentary that continues to suggest that sampling had become an “endangered practice,” or something considered to be in “danger of being completely lost,”[1] in this section I will more forcefully show why sampling was never in danger of being lost, and why the stage for its revival was actually set back in 1995. Despite sample clearance issues, despite a wave of hyper commercialism that settled as a mainstay of hip hop, despite the infamous Grand-Upright and Bridgeport court decisions, and despite a number of sample-based beatmakers (producers) moving away from sampling as their chief mode of composition, the sampling tradition of hip hop/rap music was never really in danger of dying, and the internet didn’t save it.
I don’t mean to say that the internet didn’t play any role in the revival of sampling. Rather, my argument is that the internet did not play nearly as consequential a role as author Nate Patrin and some other commentators claim that it has. The primary reason for the revival of sampling was the sample-based hip hop/ rap music itself and the beatmakers (producers) who made it. The sample-based hip hop/rap music — collectively in the mainstream and underground — that continued to be released between the late ‘90s and mid-2000s is what prompted the revival of sampling, not the internet, not online communities of sample-source-material searchers or preservationists.
What the internet did do, however, was provide increased access and exposure to certain sample-based hip hop/rap music projects. There were a number of towering hip hop/rap albums that were released between 1986 and 2006, both on major and independent labels and via mixtapes. Much of this music was out of print soon after its release. Had it not been for the internet — message boards, blog posts, file sharing, sample-source sites — most of this music would have gone unheard by new ears. Whether some of these music projects had actually been overlooked at all is a separate discussion. In recent years, there’s been a trend of considering certain projects as “slept on” (not known) when first discovered by new fans of these projects. What is clear, however, is that these projects serve as evidence that the art form continued, was thriving, and still considered to be an important composition process. Sampling remained fundamental to hip hop/rap music’s DNA despite a migration of some beatmakers (producers) away from the style of beatmaking. In other words, the work — the commitment to and appreciation for the art of sampling — persisted despite the internet. This does not mean that the internet played no role in reinvigorating the popularity of sampling. But we should be weary of any commentary that maintains that the internet saved sampling. This narrative does not center the people who carried on with sampling; rather, it centers the exposure to — and the “new” audience or others who discovered — sampling.
Almost as soon the jiggy era (aka the shiny suit era) began (ca. 1997), which was short-lived and mostly associated with the East Coast, there were already signs that the sampling tradition of hip hop/rap music was already re-enforcing itself. Hip hop/rap music has always been a music culture that valued its connection to its past. Even when the “youth driven” conception of hip hop/rap music plays out, we see the youth referencing, quoting, copying, and imitating the past icons of hip hop/rap music. One reason for this is because hip hop/rap music has always been — and continues to be — driven by the streets. In this way, hip hop/rap has always been bottom up, never top down. Hip hop/rap music is a culture that takes its cue from the rawness of the street. Once you recognize this you understand that the wanton commercialism of the jiggy era was really just an outward extension of hustler glorification in a more digestible form, less gritty but the message still the same: Get money!
But the jiggy era’s fate was sealed as sure enough as a drug dealer who flashes his lifestyle in the hood without bothering to maintain the rawness and edge that built that lifestyle. This causes resentment in the hood. Sooner or later the hungry young ones rise up, following the same path that the fat kingpin did when he was skinny and without food, and they attack and reclaim the same essence.
In terms of the fight for the essence of hip hop, this meant throwing scrutiny at jiggy music and asking what’s really “real”? Party music and club culture was never the problem. Party music and club culture is a fundamental part of the roots and lasting force of hip hop culture. The problem was the inauthenticity of it all, the happy-go-lucky and often fraudulent nature of the jiggy era. Get your money, playboy. But don’t front for me! This has always been an unwritten code in street culture. The idea being that you can do you, but keep it real. This essence is embedded in hip hop/rap music regardless of what type of hip hop/rap music you make. The jiggy era didn’t keep it real, and the music styles and sound that emerged directly after it represented a clear rejection of the era.
In musical terms, this means using any equipment you can get your hands on; it means turning constraints and limitations into strengths; it means looking to the past for authentic examples of the essence that speaks to you. As the simplicity of trap music (the everyman style and sound that’s ubiquitous and popular today for good reason) and drill music would later show, sampling during the jiggy era got hungry.
In this light, the “return” of sampling in hip hop/rap music was more about a broad reclaiming of the essence of hip hop/rap music, not only a specific style and sound but also the processes associated with it. The return of sampling wasn’t about what the internet provided. The internet served as an open space for posting and sharing music that may have gone otherwise unnoticed, this included hip hop/rap music and much of the source-material music that was used to make it. Certainly, the internet enabled like minds to discover their tribe and the community grew. This undoubtedly added to the notion of preserving sampling in hip hop/rap music, but hip hop/rap music has always been preservationist by nature. The internet helped transform hip hop/rap’s natural preservationist bent into a celebration of the aesthetic of sampling itself.
As for the revival of the art of sampling in the hip hop/rap music tradition, the idea of making music “that put artistic integrity first”[2] was neither something that had died by the early 2000s, nor was it particularly new in hip hop/rap music. Any suggestion otherwise is an inaccurate reading of the history of hip hop/rap music and an unmerited amplification of events and persons directly after the jiggy era. Each of the albums on the Critical 26 list (see Chapter 2), put artistic integrity first! Moreover, there were important, ground-changing albums with major sampling that were released between 1995 and 2001 — before, during, and directly after the jiggy era. Furthermore, for better or worse, artistic integrity in hip hop/rap music has often been synonymous with street creditably. This is one reason why so much of classic hip hop/rap music is essentially street reporting.
So when we look at the revival of the art sampling in the hip hop/rap music tradition, we must first acknowledge the fact that sampling never came close to dying. Next, we must recognize that at least for some beatmakers (producers), the move away from sampling was less about sample clearance concerns and more about an aesthetic choice. Starting from this context, we can more accurately see the role that the internet, advanced samplers, and post-pioneers beatmakers (producers) like J Dilla, Bink, Just Blaze, Kanye West, Madlib, Alchemist, and others played in the revival of the art of sampling.
Another point about preservation. Black creative/communal culture, as I discuss in Chapter 17, has always been concerned with preservation and protecting against forgetting its past. In his book Bring That Beat Back, Nate Patrin points to the emergence of the internet in the late ‘90s — with its “mass cultural form of communicative and commercial media” and its online markets like eBay and Discogs — as the start of the “bulwark against forgetting and an exercise in discovery (or rediscovery, as it where).”[3] But Patrin’s assessment situates the internet as both the cause and the catalyst, the reason and the trigger, of the “renewal” of the sampling “ethos.” What makes this assessment problematic is not only does it rest on a broken premise, it uses the internet as a catch-all maneuver to do something familiar, something that often occurs whenever Black art is at the center of the matter: It removes credit from where it belongs, then transfers it elsewhere — the transfer typically being an inclusion of white participation, if not outright centering of white participation. I don’t suggest that Patrin’s hypothesis is racially motivated, but racial bias (even if unintentional) does exists in this area of study, and thus the same patterns are present.[4]
Patrin buys into the narrative that sampling was left for dead, then he formulates the hypothesis that sampling/sample culture was saved — “renewed” — by the internet. At first glance, this might seem plausible, until you recognize the trope that’s at play here. Patrin’s “the internet saved sampling” narrative ignores the embedded preservation and the resilience of the sampling tradition of hip hop/rap music, it removes credit and transfers that credit to the internet where the credit does not belong. This brings to mind the writers’ corners that graffiti writers would frequent between the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. These “corners” (really not corners at all but subway stations) served as meeting spots. My response to Patrin’s narrative is not about doubting the power of the internet; the internet facilitated a number of different things, chief among them where accessibility to music is concerned was the unchecked ability to share music freely, which put a spotlight on music that would have otherwise been overshadowed. Geekdom, fandom, obscurity— No matter the descriptor Patrin uses to over credit the internet and under credit the artists who kept the art of sampling going strong, what we must recognize is that it was the music and the beatmakers (producers) who revived the art form. The internet just made it more easy for the community to spread. But even this doesn’t recognize the fact that preservation and resilience were a part of the hip hop/rap music tradition long before the advent of the internet as we’d come to know it.
From the start, before its recorded/music industry history, hip hop/rap music relied on apprenticeship and was powered by the honoring and preserving of its history. From graffiti writing to b-boying (like DJing and rapping), hip hop/rap music has always moved forward via a reverence for the past icons who contributed to the canon of the culture (the greats study the greats before them, then they create something new). The argument that it was the internet that triggered the revival of the sampling tradition of hip hop/rap music is weak and misleading. The internet may have served as a conduit for more “outsiders” to discover the “secrets” of “sample culture,”[5] but the truth is, from its early days to its heyday, the sampling tradition of hip hop/rap music made insiders of outsiders who simply listened to the music. So we must be careful to measure appropriately the role of the internet. We can’t do a hatchet job of the actual history. We can’t deny hip hop/rap’s innate ability to preserve itself. We can’t position hip hop/rap music, or more precisely hip hop’s sampling tradition, as something that needed saving by outsiders (read into that narrative as you will). And we certainly can’t connect dots that don’t connect when we’re missing key context of the history and its most common attributes.
Regarding the internet and sampling culture, I agree with Patrin — inasmuch as I view the internet as a gateway that helped more people discover the art of sampling and beatmaking in general. But the “outsiders,” as Patrin has described them, were not saviors of sampling, no matter how “monomaniacal” their fascination with the art of sampling may have been. From Patrin:
[i]f the Internet did its share to foreground the cultural status of the geek — the fan so enthusiastic about their choice of hobby that it became an almost monomaniacal fascination — it did so with the side effect of enabling the kind of obsessive enthusiast that would set the stage for an entire renewal of an ethos that had been considered in danger of being completely lost.” [emphasis mine][6]
Patrin also states that:
[t]his is about where sample culture really started to become self-aware: not just as an integral part of hip-hop production, but as a bulwark against forgetting and an exercise in discovery (or rediscovery, as it were). While some hip-hip icons were on their way to becoming media moguls in the late ‘90s, another segment of artists had their sights on becoming a different kind of tastemaker: the curator, the archivist, the antiquarian. [emphasis mine][7]
First, all sample-based beatmakers (producers) were doing this before the internet; all sample-based beatmakers (producers) were curators and archivists. Second, this statement is both misdirection and revisionist history. Here, Patrin is giving undue credit to so-called “sample-spotting culture” where it does not belong, and in the process, he’s centering parties in stories where their contributions are minimal in comparison to those most responsible for the preservation and revitalization of sampling in hip hop/rap music. First, I’m not sure what Patrin is trying to convey by referencing Diddy’s and Dre’s mogul pursuits; their career arcs to do not speak for where hip hop/rap music was at the time or where it was going, nor does it have anything to do with the revival of sampling. Second, sample-based beatmakers (producers) have always been “curators” and “archivists”. This tradition, which is hard baked into hip hop’s sampling culture, did not start in the late ‘90s. Early hip hop DJing, which was predicated upon the use of older Black music, was, in and of itself, a form of preservation and a “bulwark against and forgetting and exercise in discovery (or rediscovery, as it were).” Preserving memory and the exercise of discovery/rediscovery, in all Black music not just hip hop/rap music, has always been important; and passing on record collections is a well-established tradition in Black America. Hip hop DJs/beatmakers (producers) were reared on this understanding, and they were conscience of the fact that they were helping to preserve otherwise forgotten music through sampling. In my interviews with DJ Premier, Buckwild, and DJ Toomp, for instance, each recalled their paths from DJ to beatmaker (producer), and each noted that “preservation” and discovery/rediscovery has long informed their work. Similarly, Marley Marl, the father of modern hip hop sampling and one of the seminal beatmakers (producers) who pioneered a number of sampling techniques by the late ‘80s, reveals a lot about this phenomenon:
My whole premise of getting into production was because I didn’t like the representation of rap that was on wax [ca. 1979-1981]. Once rap was on cassettes, and everybody was running around with the latest Flash tape, that was dope! Because there was cutting, there was scratching, there was echoes, and it was original beats they was rhyming off of. That’s what…as a kid, that’s what I was brought up on, you know, the scratching element, the echoes, the break-beats, the RAWNESS, the rub-a-dub scratching.
I was trying to make rap sound accurate to what I was brought up on. That’s basically it. I wasn’t looking for a new sound… Maybe you could call it looking for a new sound. But I know the representation of what I was hearing [on the radio at that time] was NOT what I grew up on hearing on these cassettes. And I just wanted to make it MORE like the rap that I heard before it hit records.That was my whole premise of everything!”….
It was the fusion of where I was trying to take the music. I guess it was the fusion of hearing break-beats, and scratching, and echoes, and all of that on earlier tapes that came to my attention. So I think the fusion of all of that. And the reason I even used, went back to the break-beats was because I remembered. When I went back and started making records, after what I realized with sampling what I could do! They made me go back to my brother and them records. I started digging in my brother and them crates. …I was remembering, and I was like, “Yo, hold on. This African music today!” The beat was dope! So I would go back to my brother’s crate. That was in my brother’s crate…” “Fly Like An Eagle” [the song sampled for “Nobody Beats the Biz”], all those elements was in my brother’s crates. Even the James Brown stuff, I would remember that they used that… “Funky Drummer” [James Brown] was dope. Then I started going back to every song that I remembered people used to dance to. And that’s why my selection was always something hot. And by me putting elements together, once I learned about tracking [cuts a serious look], it was over![8]
The internet opened up a lot of spaces for various art forms, and it is here that we must recognize the difference between the internet being a destination or a pathway to community, not the cause of the “entire renewal” or revival of the art of sampling in the hip hop/rap music tradition. The revival had been brewing mainly because the art form never died and key beatmakers (producers) from the Post-Pioneers Period made sampling their chief compositional process. Even Patrin doesn’t deny this: “[T]here was already a groundswell of underground hip-hop running up and down the West Coast by the mid-‘90s”[9] Thus, it was the music and its makers who continued the tradition of “bulwarking” hip hop/rap music against forgetting its artistic past, while leading the way in showing how discovery (and rediscovery) would be a part of its future.
The mainstream/underground dichotomy has always been a contested point. And an incomplete understanding of this fact skews how you look at the decrease of sampling (on the surface that is). In the case of why sample-based hip hop/rap music appeared less in the mainstream, the big claim was that “sampling died,” that it was “a relic.” (Patrin considered the same claim: “If sampling itself was increasingly considered a dated relic of hip-hop’s old days…”[10]). However, a more accurate reading considers three things. First, as some beatmakers (producers) and rap artists enjoyed more mainstream success, they gravitated more towards compositional aesthetics that were more in line with traditional Western popular music practices, notably live instrumentation, i.e. non-sample-based music making. In other words, it was not so much as a rejection of sampling by beatmakers (producers) and artists as it was the perception of leveling up musically.
Second, sample clearance fees were certainly a headache for some rap artists some of the time, but not all rap artists all of the time. And even top rap artists who veered away from sample-based beats as a whole continued to use sample-based beats, not only as a means of maintaining their roots, but also as competitive advantage (they could afford the clearances on hit songs that contained samples). Third, the majority of household rap names, from the jiggy era on into the mid-‘00s, never stopped sampling. Look at this list of mainstream artists that released sample-based music between 1999 and 2004 — a critical period in the stabilization of sampling:
Jay-Z – Vol. 3…Life and Times of S. Carter (1999). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Mobb Deep – Murda Muzik (1999).
Nas – I Am… (1999).
Inspectah Deck – Uncontrolled Substance (1999).
Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele (2000). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Common – Like Water for Chocolate (2000). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Jay –Z – The Dynasty: Roc La Familia (2000).
Prodigy – H.N.I.C. (2000).
Beanie Sigel – The Truth (2000).
Jay-Z – The Blueprint (2001). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Nas – Stillmatic (2001). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Wu-Tang Clan – Iron Flag (2001).
Ghostface Killah – Bulletproof Wallets (2001).
Jadakiss – Kiss the Game Goodbye (2001).
Nas – The Lost Tapes (2002).
Nas – God’s Son (2002).
Cam’Ron – Come Home With Me (2002). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
50 Cent – Guess Who’s Back (2002).
Jay-Z – The Black Album (2003).
50 Cent – Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
T.I. – Trap Muzik (2003).
Freeway – Philadelphia Freeway (2003).
Kanye West – The College Dropout (2004). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Nas – Street’s Disciple (2004).
Lloyd Banks – The Hunger for More (2004).
And look at this list of underground artists during the same period whose albums featured sample-based beats:
Capone-N-Noreaga – The War Report (1997).
Mos Def – Black On Both Sides (1999).
MF DOOM – Operation Doomsday (1999).
Prince Paul – A Prince Among Thieves (1999).
Lootpack (produced by Madlib) – Sound Pieces: Da Antidote; Rawkus Presents Soundbombing II (1999).
The Beatnuts – Musical Massacre (1999).
Reflection Eternal – Train of Thought (2000).
Slum Village – Fantastic, Vol. 2 (2000). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Madlib – The Unseen (2000).
M.O.P. – Warriorz (2000).
Bumpy Knuckles – Industry Shakedown (2000).
Screwball – Y2K (2000).
Cormega – The Realness (2001). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
J Dilla – Welcome 2 Detroit (2001). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Pete Rock – PeteStrumentals (2001). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Royce Da 5’9 – Rock City (2001).
Cormega – The True Meaning (2002).
Large Professor – 1st Class (2002).
AZ – Aziatic (2002).
7L & Esoteric – Dangerous Connection (2002).
Gang Starr – The Ownerz (2003).
JAYLIB (J Dilla and Madlib) – Champion Sound (2003). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Brother Ali – Shadows on the Sun (2003).
Little Brother – The Listening (2003). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
Madvillain – Madvillainy (2004). Major influence on new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers).
In considering these releases, ask yourself this question. When was sampling “in danger of being completely lost?” The sampling that took place on these releases was not inspired by or had anything to do with so-called “sample-spotting culture.” And one critical observation that we can note from these releases is that plenty of hip hop/rap artists continued to create hit songs that were driven by sampling. (Jay-Z, arguably the greatest rapper of all time, and Nas, one the greatest lyricists of all time, have continued to rap over sample-based beats their entire careers!) All of these releases served as inspiration for a new generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers) much the same way earlier sample-based songs served as inspiration for earlier generations. Each generation of sample-based beatmakers (producers) inspire the next generation (See the beatmaking periods in Chapter 2). To position the internet as the prevailing factor in sampling’s revival is to downgrade the role of those who continued to steadily grow the art of sampling from within hip hop/rap’s sample-based beatmaking tradition.
Finally, it’s further worth clarifying that in the mid-2000s, sampling wasn’t killed off as much as the popularity of synthesized-based music, most notably trap, then later drill, took hold. But what’s less known is that various sampling techniques and methods continued to be at play even within the rise of trap and drill. DJ Toomp, one of the pioneers of trap as we know it today, never swore off sampling. Toomp continued to incorporate sampling in his trap beats. Today, trap and drill often include sampling. And the core sample-based style of hip hop/rap music is, of course, alive and well, just as it has always been. Thanks in large part to the sample-based music makers who continued (and continue) to practice the art of sampling.
Notes:
1. Nate Patrin, Nate Patrin, Bring That Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop (Minneapolis 2020 Paperback and Amazon Kindle versions), 208, 209.
2. Patrin, 209.
3. Ibid.
4. For instance, Patrin’s persistence on using the term “beatmatching” to retroactively describe “mixing” — “beatmatching” being a relatively recent term and DJ technique that Patrin (and some other commentators) credit to Frank Grasso, a white DJ. In fact, Patrin opens his book with a discussion of Grasso, the implied message being: Grasso did it first, hip hop DJing and hop/rap music owes a debt to Frank Grasso. In Chapter 1, I make it clear that Grasso had no direct influence on hip hop/rap music.
5 Patrin, 209: “…as the Internet started to emerge from its college-bound utilitarianism in the early ‘90s into a mass-cultural form of communicative and commercial media, some things just couldn’t stay hidden. Whereas clearance fees and mandatory liner-note attributions had already started to take a lot of the mystery out of sampling and cratedigging culture, the existence of online markets—from the generalist auction site eBay to the specialist record dealer hub Discogs—and the growing prominence of sample-spotter sites like the 2003-established TheBreaks.com made some of sampling’s more arcane origins that much more accessible to neophytes and outsiders.”
6 Ibid.
7 [24] Ibid.
8 [25] Author interview with Marley Marl, The BeatTips Manual (2015).
9 [26] Patrin, 212.
10 [27] Ibid, 247.
