Sampling Is Its Own Art Form and Music Process; Sampling Is Not A Bastard Stepchild Unwanted By Music Theory and Traditionally Trained Musicians
Some people think that sampling is only for people who can’t play “real” instruments and people who don’t know music theory. But this is a terrible lie! Sampling, which represents its own art form and music process, has been chosen as a primary compositional process by many traditionally trained musicians. For example, acclaimed beatmaker (producer) and professor 9th Wonder, a traditionally trained musician before he gravitated towards hip hop beatmakinng, related to me that he was in a band and studied music theory throughout grammar school and high school — before he took up sampling and became a sample-based beatmaker (producer). While 9th Wonder grew up playing traditional instruments in a band and studying music theory, when he discovered sampling as a music process and technique, he was hooked:
I played clarinet, I played the saxophone. My band teacher was just throwing instruments at me, “Try this. Try this,” because I was playing stuff by ear. And by the time I got into marching band, I was playing drums. So you know, doing that in the daytime…From 1986 to 1993 was my middle and high school years. You know the albums that came out during that time. So I’m playing — and my mom bought me a keyboard for every Christmas — I’m playing stuff, overtures at school, but I’m coming home [at night] listening to rap records, not really understanding that the music the cats was using in the background were samples, you know what I’m saying. I’m thinking everybody’s playing it [Laughs]. But they’re sampling people that played instruments…So I was trying to replay it on my keyboard….
So I decided that I wanted to learn how to DJ…that made me really understand the importance of BPMs and how stuff speeds up and how some beats are faster and some beats are slower. You know stuff like that, and drum tracks. All that type of stuff. Knowing what songs go with what…. understand [how to do it]. You either had to grow up around it or you had to be there, one of the two. To be authentic, you just can’t wake up in the morning, man, and be like, “I wanna sample,” without understanding the art of sampling. You just can’t do it. You gotta— If you wanna sample, you gotta study…. You gotta understand all of that aesthetic first. Either you decide that this is something that you really want to do…. And I had to learn what all of the samplers [sample-based beatmakers] before me were doing before me, before I decided what sound that I wanted to go for.[1]
Sample-based hip hop/rap music is its own main event; it’s not a sideshow. So why all the hate from some people?
Even while sampling is currently enjoying what some would describe as a reemergence or renaissance, there are still many people within the beatmaking and hip hop/rap music communities who hold a hostile view to the music process that helped fuel an entire music tradition. There are a number of reasons for this disdain and I previously highlighted some of them in detail. In this section, I’d like to discuss one particular criticism that’s commonly lobbied against sampling: The opinion that sampling is an outdated, non-music process that was (is) doomed by “evolution.”
When beatmakers (producers), of all people, criticize sampling like it’s some 2-bit, non-music gimmick, they are really (knowingly or not) demonstrating a deep disrespect for what half of the essence of hip hop/rap music is about. Ask some slightly less hostile, passive-aggressive critics about sampling, and you’re likely to hear that beatmaking has simply “evolved,” or something along those lines. The wanton dismissal for the music process that built hip hop/rap is disheartening by itself. But it’s the “evolution” narrative that many have come to endorse that troubles me the most.
As a vocal-performance medium, the durable nature and sheer flexibility of hip hop’s rap vocal style lends itself to a number of different audio palettes and structures. From fists banging on lunch room tables to human beat boxes to live bands to sample-based beats, rap’s flexibility makes it possible for rappers to sound good with virtually any rhythm backing them. And when it comes to audio backing, lest we forget, rapping in hip hop culture — in its earliest incarnation and core manifestation — is about the marriage of the rap vocal style with older music. But I have no problem with rhymes over non-sampled-based beats, trap beats (which often include samples), or any other kind of beats. But over the past decade, there’s been a great deal of chirping, overwhelmingly by non-sample-based beatmakers (producing), against sampling. As the theme goes, some maintain that sampling is an old, unoriginal crutch that was tossed on the side of the road as hip hop/rap music “evolved.” But to situate the art of sampling as some sort of relic, pre-“evolution” music process grossly misses the point.
Sample-based hip hop/rap music is its own main event; it’s not a sideshow. Moreover, non-sampled-based hip hop/rap music is not some natural, inevitable “evolution” to sampling. Nor is non-sample- based hip hop/rap music the rightful heir to sample-based hip hop/rap music. Non-sample-based hip hop/rap music is merely another music process, one with its own methods and metrics of quality. Furthermore, non-sample-based hip hop/rap music has not displaced sample-based music as the superior compositional style in the hip hop/rap music tradition. Both compositional styles have
their own tract and distinct pedigrees within beatmaking. And while today there may be more people who opt for the non-sample-based style (synthetic-sounds-based style) than there were 20 years ago, we must be careful not to view this as one compositional style being superior to the other.
There are a number of reasons and circumstances that led (and continue to lead) some people away from sampling. Conversely, there are number of reasons that have led (and continue to lead) some people towards sampling. Either way, the notion that sampling lacks feeling, or that sampling is not synonymous, both literally and symbolically, with hip hop/rap music are not among these reasons. Further, no reasonable beatmaker (producer), proficient in any style of beatmaking, disputes the fact that sampling delivers an entirely different feel and sonic aesthetic that’s hard to match without sampling.
Finally, within the “inevitable evolution” narrative, there lies a “pushing the envelope” sub-theme. “Pushing the envelope,” a common phrase used in all art forms, generally means expanding thelimits of a given form, style, or tradition. With regards to sampling, “pushing the envelope” is used passive aggressively in hip hop/rap music to mean moving on from sampling — i.e. the graduating from sampling — and stepping up to live instrumentation; as if live instrumentation is superior to sampling. This is terribly misguided. The sampling tradition of hip hop/rap music is its own art form, representing its own space. It is an autonomous tradition. As such, it has its own standards, customs, and aesthetic qualities that need not defer or adhere to any other music process. So if someone from the sampling tradition of hip hop learns to play guitar or the piano, etc., they are not graduating from sampling, they are simply adding to and improving upon an existing music skill set and sensibility. So the only evolution any musician ever really experiences is the acquisition of new skill and understanding. But the accumulation of new music skills doesn’t render obsolete the music processes from which they came.
Notes:
1. Amir Said interview with 9th Wonder (2008), published in part in The Art of Sampling: The Sampling Tradition of Hip Hop/Rap Music and Copyright Law, 3rd Edition (2025) (Superchamp Books, New York).
