If you are familiar with Hip Hop the term “sampling” will likely be proverbial. For those who don’t know what sampling is: Sampling is the “building block of hip hop” where the people who create beats to rap on use bits and pieces from other songs to recreate something new from those spliced segments. Back when Hip Hop first came to be, DJs would grab multiple different records, find parts that they thought could be implemented into their beat, and spin and manipulate them on their turntables so that many short segments of each record could create one unique new beat. Drum beats from Jazz and Funk music are some of the most commonly sampled pieces of music in Hip Hop. The samples that stand out very clearly and catch your eye are melodic or spoken segments. Those samples if correctly implemented can transform a Hip Hop song into something special. Here are four of the best examples of sampling in classic and contemporary Hip Hop.

Tearz – Wu-Tang Clan  (Sample: After Laughter – Wendy Rene)

Enter the Wu-Tang 36 Chambers is one of the best HipHop albums ever made, and multiple of its tracks could end up on this list. That would be because the Wu-Tang Clan has one of the best producers to ever do it, RZA. On Tearz specifically, RZA uses the organ riff from Wendy Rene’s 1964 song After Laughter, as 

well as her vocals. The primary basis of the beat in Tearz revolves around that organ riff along with a separate drum beat, and the riff adds a melodic element that lets the track not solely stand with a boom-bap beat. The other section of the song that RZA adds to Tearz is her vocals when she says, “After laughter comes tears”. While it is another great melodic element added, there is also a connection it has with the lyrics in the song, as RZA and Ghostface Killah rap about moments where laughter was followed by tragedy. Overall Tearz uses a densely emotional and melodious sample that displays RZA’s brilliance. Here is a link where you can hear the sample in After Laughter and then in Tearz.    

https://www.whosampled.com/sample/1164/Wu-Tang-Clan-Tearz-Wendy-Rene-After-Laughter-(Comes-Tears)/

POWER – Kanye West (Sample: Afroamerica – Continent Number 6)

A highly controversial figure indeed, but it is hard to deny how talented a producer Kanye West used to be. His 2010 album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is still the best-produced Hip Hop album I have ever heard, and good production often comes with good sampling. The third song on the tracklist, POWER, is an example of Kanye’s talent regarding sampling. The main sample Kanye uses on POWER is vocals from the Continent Number 6 song Afroamerica. He splices bits of the group vocals from a part of the song, constructs them into one vocal segment, and uses that as the main melodic background for the beat. The product is a very grand, tightly produced, and well-mixed track that represents one of the highlights of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Below is a video from Tracklib on how he sampled Afroamerica. 

Fancy Clown – MADVILLAIN (Sample: That Ain’t the Way You Make Love – Z.Z. Hill)

Madvillainy is the album collaboration between one of Hip Hop’s greatest lyricists, MF DOOM, and arguably Hip Hop’s best sampling producer Madlib. Widely regarded as one of the supreme Hip Hop LPs to be recorded, Madvillainy displays some of Madlib’s most creative and impressive sampling work ever. Often Madlib likes to sample older music from the ’60s and ’70s, commonly soul and blues. Accordingly, the 17th track on Madvillainy, Fancy Clown, samples parts of Z.Z. Hill’s 1975 soul tune, That Ain’t the Way You Make Love. What Madlib does so impressively is how he splices up a few different parts of the original track and mends them together to create a whole new melody. This is specifically known as chopping. Here is another video from Tracklib displaying how he sampled That Ain’t the Way You Make Love.

OG! – JPEGMAFIA (Sample: Gangster of Hip Hop – Just Ice and Human DMX)

JPEGMAFIA is one of the most impressive producers of modern Hip Hop. In all of his projects, he pushes the boundaries in his experimental production style. While his music may not be for everyone there is no denying his talent and knack for innovation. The track OG! exhibits his ability to sample. While not as technically impressive as Madlib in Fancy Clown, OG!’s sampling is unordinary yet effective. The beat for the song derives from Gangster of Hip Hop by Just Ice and Human DMX, and JPEG uses the rapping from the track as his beat. He speeds it up slightly and still messes with it by adding bits and pieces from different points in Gangster of Hip Hop. The sample essentially ends up being used as another verse on its own, which is quite unusual. The product though, is an upbeat track oozing with energy, that is great to drive to. Here is a link to how the sample was implemented into OG!.

https://www.whosampled.com/sample/921101/JPEGMAFIA-OG!-Just-Ice-Human-DMX-Gangster-of-Hip-Hop/