Sampling

Sampling is something that is very prevalent in the genre of hip hop music. Sampling is the act of taking a portion of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a sound recording in a different song or record.

Why is sampling so important you might ask. It is said that, "fragmentation and reassembly describe both black music and black histiory" (Wheeler, 1991 p.199). Hip Hop musicians were now in the studio using knobs and controls, which gave way to a huge revolution of technology, which is still very prevalent in todays music standards.

Sampling starting making a splash in the music world in the 1960s in jazz music, but hip hop music was the first genre of music to bring sampling to the mainstream in the 1970s with the emergence of DJs experimenting wiht vinyl on two turntables. This new wave of sampling was different than what we saw in the mid to late 50s, where artists were simply just recreating other artists songs, making them their own, because they were more pallatable.

Artists from all genres use, and have used sampling. MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" sampled Rick James' "Super Freak." Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" sampled David Bowie's "Under Pressure." Other notable artists that have used sampling in their records include P Diddy, Sting, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg ,2Pac and many more.

With all types of collaboration between artists, sampling heavily links artists, even across genres. Hip Hop artists were working with Rock & Roll artists, and other genres were crosing borders. Thus letting the music industry have blurred lines between race and music genres.

Most notablely, and current, Drake's "Hotline Bling" sampled music from Timmy Thomas' "Why Can't We Live Together" from 1972. The opening music is the virtually the same, but Drake just sped it up. Another artist who uses sampling a lot is Kayne West. Some of his songs that include sampling are, "No Church in the Wild," "Niggas in Paris," "Mercy," "Clique," and many more.

Below, you can check out "Hotline Bling" and "Why Can't We Live Together" to check out how Drake sampled.

Used the following for some of my info:

Bartlett, Andrew. “Airshafts, Loudspeakers, and the Hip Hop Sample: Contexts and African American Musical Aesthetics”. African American Review 28.4 (1994): 639–652. Web...