Borrowed Sounds:
Re-Use, Reinvention, and The Legacy Of Sampling
Essay by:
We were losing our minds. Walking home down Central Avenue, around 8pm on a random Tuesday in October, we were two fools losing our minds.
I imagine, to the people who had built themselves a home in Brooklyn, this was nothing new; another Tuesday, another sound in a series of never ending noises. As I dance-walked, moved my feet to a rhythm that surrounded us like a force field for our spirits (impenetrable, intimate and yet aggressively LOUD in the way only love can be), I froze for a second, wondered how many other people walked on this same path, floating on the grand-ness of their feelings instead of drowning in them? It took me an hour to learn the difference.
Me and my friend Caprice–who, it is important to note, is also my roommate; having the ability to witness me at my most bare–couldn’t find our tickets to a workshop we had looked forward to for weeks. As if by plans of a force larger than us, we accepted defeat easily and walked by the venue just to see what we were missing. Standing outside the window we laughed as we realized it was meant to be. We would’ve stuck out violently amongst the circle of white people who were going to “teach us something about ourselves” through zine making. Please. We weren’t meant to be there and I think a part of us was really relieved, not because of the vibe, but the weight of our feelings wouldn’t allow for anything else. For weeks both of us had been detailing the love we felt for someone in our lives and how crazy we felt with the depth of it after they left. Neither platonic nor romantic, just the chaos that remains after the leaving. Where do we put all of that love now? It’s sick really, truly evil work to be tortured by remembering. What do we do to get back to ourselves ?
We decided to walk the long way home and at some point, getting tired of talking about feelings, we chose to play some music. Out of nowhere Caprice’s eyes went wide and she sighed the way you do when you finally remember something you thought you’d forgotten, and she asked to play Throwback by Usher (feat. Jadakiss). From Usher’s first shout, first long exclamation of Oh!, our spirits had somewhere to go. Our feet followed and bounced and–fuck it!-we were losing our minds, hands reaching out to the skies with each step, faces scrunched up, shouting along. It's driving me crazy because I'm missing my baby. I wonder if the sidewalk laughed and shook its head because surely it's seen this before, seen it with Dionne the way it's seen it with Usher the way it's seen it with J Dilla; seen it over and over and over and shouted “here we go again!”
Time, real true de-colonial time–is not linear. Almost cyclical in the way it ripples and rolls, and the pattern - the pattern morphs into beats, beats into rhythm, rhythm into movement and suddenly you can begin to understand why spirits could be called by drums. Suddenly, ancestors become one with the living, their feelings melt into yours and you wonder how they could have ever begun to understand you before you could understand yourself. I’m a singer, a performer, an artist–I learn from the living who have learnt from those who have dug deeply for the lived. What larger pathway of knowledge is there than the beauty and the skill of the sample? An art that begs you to list, sit and listen, pluck out the pieces from the songs that held the answers and souls of those before you and transform them into something entirely new, your own and yet communal. Dig deep enough and your sound resonates not only with new generations but ignites the memories of: your mom, your postman, the man who’s lived in the same building his whole life, the old woman who thinks back on a life as vibrant as your own. The art, in its prime, is dying or maybe just changing into something different.
History of sampling and its origins can be traced all the way back to the rise of jazz music. Jazz musicians used to sample certain sections and pieces of melodies, hooks, licks, or progressions from other fellow musicians of the era, most times within their live performances. Integrating each piece into live performances operated as a form of respect and admiration, the act of sampling becoming common practice and quoted as “an inside joke” between musicians. As time progressed, so did the form–DJ’s from the Bronx, NYC would create their samples through vinyl manipulation as opposed to using pre-chosen isolated samples. Both forms, regardless of the imagined boundaries instilled within time, genre, and style, focus on central elements. Live performances require a deep understanding of another artist's work; to know timing, composition, feeling, lyricism all in real time–to know how to play live or when to breakbeat. To sit and digest and pick apart each note, stem, rhythm. To sit and digest until you are full and satiated. To sit and digest and take your time.
If I could I would ask Just Blaze what came first, you know, was it like the chicken and the egg type situation? Did he hear Dionne Warwick’s 1973 “You’re Gonna Need Me” track and develop his sample based on the original sound or did he base it off what he could see the final production being? I mean, originally it was intended for Dr.Dre’s final album Detox but due to creative differences they gave the track to Usher instead. I’m curious about another universe where a track with Dre exists and what that would’ve sounded like–would there be the same level of desperation that pulls my arms to the sky and my knees to the ground? If you asked me, the spirit that lives in her song had a hand in shifting its focus. Maybe things find us as much as we search for them; I like to think ideas and inspiration for my music find me and never miss, knowing I’d know exactly how to hold them in my hands. From the moment the track begins, Warwick declares with such gentle certainty, amongst the jazz/soul instrumentation, that her lover is going to want her back when time has passed and they are no longer who they once were. Here’s somebody who gets it, our elders always have a way of reminding us we are not alone. Travel 30+ years into the future and Just Blaze takes the iconic start of “You’re Gonna Need Me”, highlights the guitar, the bass, the drums, speeds it up, adds some distortive synth-adjacent qualities, changes the pitch of Warwick’s most poignant line, and keeps the light airy wind instruments playing faintly in the background. The essence of Warwick’s track remains like a compass pointing you to your own center and Just Blaze allowed himself to play right into something entirely new. Dig a little deeper, and you hit into J Dilla without whom it is virtually impossible to have a conversation about the history of sampling. A transformative musical genius, J Dilla takes the same song performed by Warwick and transforms it on track 6 entitled Stop on his album Donuts, composed primarily of samples and mixes. The feeling then changes and the repetition carries on, you’re gonna want me back / you better stop and think about what you’re doing / you better stop and think about what you’re doing / you better stop and think about what you’re doing. Gone is the begging and the yearning, replaced with a warning; firm and direct but still altogether, desperate. And god, we need DJ’s the way we need librarians–I am grateful a lot of my friends are DJ’s, in awe, really. Learning from archivists who know how to dig and listen and understand. Sampling has transformed to depths even further than what our predecessors imagined; snippets derived from films, video games, and even tik tok videos.
“Time, real true, de-colonial time, is not linear”
you better stop and think about what you’re doing
(ง'̀-'́)ง
you better stop and think about what you’re doing (ง'̀-'́)ง
Traveling from the greats such as Just Blaze, JDilla, Kanye West, and RZA (just scratching the surface of transformative musicians), I don’t think sampling is lost so much as it has been both transformed and taken for granted, the way things so often can be. Transcending language in our collective desire to learn and be inspired by the things that we love - our access to digitalization rapidly speeds up this process. Take Bad Bunny’s song with Residente (formerly known as Calle 13) Bellacoso; here you have the sample taken from both El General’s Te Ves Buena and Hatsune Miku’s Levan Polkka. Paying homage to one of the most integral figures in the history of reggaeton, Panamanian artist El General gained popularity during a time when Puerto Rico’s 1990 anti-crime initiative was targeting areas where the genre was most popular. The rise of blanqueamiento within the culture where politically, reggaeton was deemed immoral and hypersexual, was transforming reggaeton into what we know it to be today. Less reggae and more salsa. Knowing political reggaetonero Residente, sampling El General was an intentional choice, derived from an ancestral culture or an understanding of history or a love for music - who’s to say really. Hatsune Miku gets added to the mix and suddenly cultures cross further and genres mix deeper and it’s enough to make you lose your mind. A virtual 16-year old Japanese character singing from a future where “music is lost” and suddenly we are learning from an ancestral past as much as an ancestral future. Argue with me as much as you want, the ancestry lies in those behind Miku’s make-up and less with the figure herself. The further you dig the more you get lost in the possibilities, take Bollywood song Karle Gunaah by Anushka Manchanda and Ishq Bector which samples instrumentals of Gasolina by Daddy Yankee, or even CUUUUuuuuuute by Rosalia which derives its sample from Vietnamese TikToker So Y Tiet.
Rooted in a western ideology, I’m not a fan of the idea that “things don’t need to mean anything.” Do you mean to tell me that choosing something just because it calls your spirit isn’t something? Do you mean to tell me that choosing things that make you move (god, shaking ass in a crowd of everybody moving and dancing is holy) isn’t something? Do you mean to tell me that joy isn’t something? Doesn’t mean something?
I arrived home that night on fire, hoping that one day I’d create something that could make someone lose their minds in the depths of their feelings; however far they’d have to dig to find it.