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4. Curtis Mayfield: “Superfly”
This slick soul classic has been sampled many times throughout the years — Whosampled.com counts 24 — but one of its most prominent uses comes in the Beastie Boys’ “Egg Man,” from their sample-heavy 1989 opus, “Paul’s Boutique.”
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5. Tom Scott featuring the California Dreamers: “Today”
A wistful saxophone riff snakes through “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s classic 1992 ode to their late friend Troy Dixon. The sample comes from Tom Scott and the California Dreamers’ relatively obscure 1967 cover of the Jefferson Airplane’s “Today.” “When I found the record by Tom Scott,” Rock said in a 2007 interview, “basically I just heard something incredible that touched me and made me cry. It had such a beautiful bass line, and I started with that first. I found some other sounds and then heard some sax in there and used that. Next thing you know, I have a beautiful beat made.”
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6. Stevie Wonder: “Pastime Paradise”
There’s a slightly uncanny quality to the string sounds in Stevie Wonder’s 1976 track “Pastime Paradise” that make them ripe for sampling. (In fact, they were created on a Yamaha GX-1, making this song one of the earliest to mimic orchestral sounds on a synthesizer.) Coolio sampled and interpolated “Pastime Paradise” for his 1995 smash “Gangsta’s Paradise” — and brought out Wonder out to sing the hook during a memorable performance at the Billboard Music Awards.
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7. Labi Siffre: “I Got the …”
Regular Amplifier readers may recall that earlier this year, I started listening to the British musician Labi Siffre — and that I learned that his 1975 single “I Got the …” is sampled in Eminem’s debut hit, “My Name Is” (as well as dozens of other tracks). Siffre initially objected to the song’s homophobic and misogynistic content (“Diss the bigots, not their victims,” he said), but later signed off on a clean version — not realizing that this meant he was clearing the sample for the dirty version, too.
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8. Kraftwerk: “Trans-Europe Express”
Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock” is in part a homage to Kraftwerk, interpolating (rather than sampling) the beat from the German electronic group’s “Numbers” and the chorus melody from “Trans-Europe Express.” Though Bambaataa and his collaborators did not initially get permission from Kraftwerk, once the song took off they agreed to give the group a dollar for each single sold. Cannily, the label owner Tom Silverman then raised the list price of the “Planet Rock” 12-inch from $4.98 to $5.98. “So basically it didn’t cost him anything,” the co-producer Arthur Baker later recalled. “All you guys who bought it paid Kraftwerk.”
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9. Enya: “Boadicea”
Finally, the next time you hear someone dare to suggest that Enya is uncool, let them know that this eerily misty Celtic instrumental from her 1987 self-titled album forms the basis of the Fugees’ menacing 1996 hit “Ready or Not.” Because the Fugees initially (and naïvely) didn’t credit Enya for the sample, she considered suing them, but she decided to grant approval and settle out of court because she liked the song. As she said of the Fugees in a 2016 interview about sampling, “I think they’re wonderful musicians.”
Read More: 9 Surprising Songs Sampled in Classic Hip-Hop Tracks
