I believe a perefct example of a good use of sampling is in Q TRips latest album. I loved how he cut of Dancing Machine.

I like when a producer can put a sample in the mix and I can't tell what it is unless I read the liner notes.

Another song that was very lazy of Jam & Lewis was Luther's "Shine". That song is nothing but "My Forbidden Lover".

But I like what Luther brought to the mix, and I see it as a wink and nod to the original song- since Luther sang on "My Forbidden Lover".

JJ Fad sounded OK but they were a little too girly and silly sounding to me. As for Arabian Prince, I've never heard any of his music but I've been told that he sounds a lot like Egyptian Lover. When it comes to rap artists, Egyptian Lover is my alltime favorite and yes I would call a lot of his stuff "music". Most of it has been made original from the ground up with an original groove and not someone else's. And even on the occassions that he did sample, it was done in creative ways. In his song "Baddest Beats Around", he samples several Prince songs. However, if you weren't a big Prince fan, you wouldn't really notice them in there because they are only small snips of them. They don't serve as the foundation for the groove of the song either. When Egyptian Lover used samples, I just considered him "mixing" rather than sampling.

I consider Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks" as music too. If you listen to that song, it has a band behind it. The Sequence "Funk You Up" is music also. Even Run DMC's earlier stuff, that's all music too, so was Whodini's. They made those songs from scratch with their own made up grooves. And don't even get me started on Pretty Tony, Freestyle, Divine Sounds, Newcleus, Soul Sonic Force, etc. Those were some great rap acts. And best of all, their grooves was funky and danceable, none of this slow dull mess. In the early days, most rap artists didn't have albums, they were strictly on 12 Inch singles only and rarely did you see anything slow on a 12 Inch single because 12 Inches were originally made for the club DJs.

I like it when hip-hop producers uses samples of old songs creatively, like take pieces of it and chop it up just so people can think it was an original song. And if the rapper has some creative lines like Q-Tip or Talib or somebody like that, then I can dig it.

vainandy said:

ok.


i just noticed your sig

bboy87 said:

Thats why i said Rap in General, its most of it, there has been a slight shift, but i still hear the same noise getting the play at the end of the day. Everyone can preach Lupe Fiasco is great and yet theyre banging FLO-RIDA in their car 24/7 like a zombie.

Note: this goes for every genre, though maybe as extreme as the Rap industry, mainly because that has been the cash cow, and the cash cow is the one that gets polluted the quickest and longest. Have you seen Country music lately, its, now you have to be a male model to get a deal, surprised no one bitches about that STANDARD when they preach how women get places on their looks, males do it just as well.

SirPsycho said:

I'm giving him the side eye now due to:

The whole Super Sonic religion shit
and the whole issue of him stealing Black Spade's "Shinin'" beat

but other than that and some other stuff, he's dope. I think Brandun Deshay is better in a sense though
[Edited 5/18/09 17:54pm]

Moonbeam said:

i dunno. i don't consider the last few johnny cash albums to be "twangy". there might be some twang on the last loretta lynn album (the one jack white produced), but i think it rocks just as much as it twangs.

i think contemporary country has hurt the reputation of the genre as much as current hip hop has hurt the reputation of its genre. the really great stuff, the groundbreaking stuff, is being overshadowed by the bloodless, soulless unit-moving pap, and people who really love music unfortunately end up judging an entire musical heritage based solely on the losers who are making hugely commercial but artistically empty pop music product in the here and now. which is kind of sad.

bboy87 said:

ok...the sonic shit? ...makes sense to me, but im a nutty ass alternative-rap/producer/semi-instrumentalist myself...so i guess i WOULD get him


and as for the black spade shit? i seriously think he (charles) was just high and cocky when the original confrontation went down (like "yeah n*gga i did he beat! who wants to know?!?!" )...and now he's just tryna ride the "fuckup" out...

but yeah...spade did shut his shit down like daaaaayum... "mpc and everything huh?"

lastdecember said:

No surprise. Country has been in the same downfall that other music is in it because they want nothing BUT pretty faces ever since Shania Twain became a country star. SOME country is good and it don't always have that twang. That's the misconception of country music, people automatically think country music always gonna have twang, like the misconception that hip-hop music is all about thuggery, bling-bling and guns.

hey! every other thread where hip hop is mentioned people are lining up to take tag-team dumps on the shit! whats with all this whole semi-understanding crap?!?!

SirPsycho said:

Because that's how the ORG runs.

As for hip-hop in itself, there's still things to admire about it, lol.

Anxiety said:

I don't like Johnny Cash either. Then again, I don't like The Beatles, so...

Moonbeam said:

Growing up in Mississippi and catching hell on a daily basis from rednecks (most of which listened to country music...well the older ones that is...the younger ones were more into heavy metal) I used to claim to hate country music. Well, secretly I liked some of it, especially stuff like "Elvira" or "Swangin" which I like to listen to when I get drunk sometimes to trip folks out and basically get a good laugh in.

Growing up, I saw country music as the most racist and homophobic genre there was because of the type of people that were listening to it. After shit hop took over, I noticed the same thing with their genre. However, when I sat back and actually paid attention to and listened to the actual country artists, the artists themselves were never using terms like "nigger" and "faggot" all over their lyrics and promoting that bullshit. They just seemed to have a lot of stupid rednecks listening to them that were that way whether they listened to country music or not. I can't say the say for shit hop though. Many of the so-called "artists" not only preach this bullshit in their lyrics but promote that damn hate to their fans also like a cancer.

Moonbeam said:

you know, it's really hard to talk about general concepts with someone whose personal tastes are one big wild card.

There's no semi-understanding here. Back when it was funky and good, and yes rap was funky back in the day, I referred to it as either rap or hip hop. Actually, back then, I just considered it funk like Cameo or Zapp except the lyrics were spoken instead of sung. When it stopped being funky, became stripped down and midtempo, became thuggish, and became dull, that's when I started referring to it as shit hop. Probably right around the time as that damn Dr. Dre "Chronic" album came out and people started copying it.

vainandy said:

well i obviously didnt mean you andy

ok...since no one answered my question/examples of sample occurrences...and this is a prince site...


how do you guys feel about 2pac's re-interpratation of Jamie Starr/The Time's "777-9311"

here we have a song that is dancable, unapologetically thuggish, but basically a thematic continuation of the original subject matter




for those that dont know...Pac was an admitted prince fan, and often played a big compositional part in the "beatmaking" process <==that being said, a thorough listen to his discography reveals a heavy prince influence (even if this particular song borrows the groove completely)

Timmy84 said:

Yeah thats the way it goes, we can all talk how music needs to change and yet the most visited posts on this forum are about Rihanna and Cassies leaked photos. I think i saw a Lupe Fiasco thread one time get 2 responses while Eminem gets 100 or florida or Soulja Boy, so things wont change till the climate changes. An example of how it goes now mainstream wise.....the other day a up to date music person asked me "hey whats Prince up to" i said he has 3 cd set out now and its in the top 30 for the last 2 months, they said "really" i have heard anything on him since "call my name" played a few times. So theyre you go, thats the climate, album sales as opposed to Ring tones.

I'm 37 so I'm old enough to remember when it was new and original and nobody knew where it was heading or where it was going.

Sampling was new, people were doing new and original things with records computers, new fangled synths...everything about it was new and refreshing.

Art Of Noise's Beat Box was like from outer space to me when i was a kid, nothing sounded like it, nothing!

Hashim's Al-Na-fyish or whatever its called, blew me away, the clicking chattering percussion the eerie synth lines the heavy drum loops.....nothing sounded like it!

Herbie Hancock took it and created Rock-It with scratching and what not.

Kraftwerk was breathing heavy with syncopated rhythms that had my mind spinning.

All kinds of things were happening and it was all lumped together as hip-hop then.
Just as Genius Of Love by the Tom Tom Club was hip hop and so was Zapps crazy ass More Bounce, which even though it is original as hell, its wore out from over use by the Teeny-Hoppers.


The problem with hip hop for me is that it is now extremely predictable, it is commercial, it is unoriginal. It is now the equivalent of the music that turned me away from what was playing on the radio when I was a kid, it is The Village People, It is Peaches and Herb.

As a musical art form it is now exactly the opposite of why I liked it in the first place.

.
[Edited 5/18/09 18:26pm]

SirPsycho said:

Kenny Fresh aired his ass out like a dirty pair of boxers

He was saying "Nah man, that's MY beat. I did it myself...."



then Kenny Fresh put up the Pro Tools screenshots and it was a wrap!
Then Black Spade made that video blog and showed how he made the beat, Charles lost yet ANOTHER 10 cool points

see, I'm a nerd and I know what he's trying to say.....but Sonic? I was listening to his explanation and was like



Like the guy's work, but he's like a fail magnet at times

Anxiety said:

I understand what you're saying and agree that contemporary country is as damaging to the overall reputation of the genre as modern rap is to its genre. I'd much rather be forced to listen to Johnny Cash than Kenny Chesney. However, as open as I'd like to be to all types of music, I just know that I have certain barriers that I can't seem to overcome. I suppose Tom Waits is about as close to country as these ears will tolerate.

Acoustic folk is another one I just don't like. For as many great singer/songwriters as there were in the 60s and 70s, I just can't make myself like strummy acoustic guitars.

bboy87 said:

did you hear (be forewarned..im damn near a diehard by now) his "at most im just" mixtape - with nothing but incubus samples?

Moonbeam said:

I've never heard it but I doubt that it's danceable. He probably slowed the tempo of the sample down like so many other rappers were doing back in his day. Regardless though, I wouldn't care if it was funky as hell, if it's thuggish, I wouldn't like it because I absolutely despise the hell out of thugs or anything thug related.

SirPsycho said:

I know. That means no Cat Stevens, Joan Baez et al. As much as I feel like I've expanded my horizons musically, I still have a lot of internal blockades.

Ugot2shakesumthin said:

Just listening to this for the first time. Love it!

vainandy said:

wait do you mean your refusing to listen to it now? to even see if its danceable? damn andy

vainandy said:

except for the thug rappers you'd like to make your bitch right?


(i think i remember you saying something to that affect)

Moonbeam said:

eh..im the same way with country, techno, and death metal


bluegrass? can do

electronica/trance/drum and bass? sure

melodic metal? you bet...


but i still gots some explorin to do