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Sampling: Making a musical connection

One of my favorite things about music is how artists borrow riffs, breaks, lyrics, etc. from other artists to create new tracks. It is no more prevalent then in Hip Hop music. While many artists get sued for this, many are able to fall through the cracks unnoticed or even just being allowed. Really what sampling is is paying homage to another artist. Well, at least we hope.

For an example, I’ll use the popular song Paper Planes by M.I.A.

“Bona fide hustler making my name.”

The riff for this song was sampled from Straight to Hell by The Clash.

Since the radio and ‘music television’ are completely atrocious when it comes to playing anything interesting at all, I find most of my music from looking at who my favorite artists have sampled and going from there.

M.I.A. used The Clash’s riff but the cycle has not stopped there.
Kanye West sampled M.I.A.‘s line “swagga like us” for the track, “Swagga Like Us,” for Jay-Z and T.I. track that will appear on both of their new albums.

You can hear this music evolving. My favorite evolution of the track I found on an M.F. Doom mixtape. (download it at: http://hypetrak.com/2008/09/mf-doom-doomed-mixtape-download/)

“He eat rappers like part of a complete breakfest, their rhymes ain’t worth the weight of their cheap necklace.”