Samples You've Heard a Million Times Without Knowing It
Three samples with stories wilder than the songs they ended up in.
Samay Kapoor · 4 min read
One: a seven second drum loop sampled over 4,500 times, played by a man who died homeless
In 1969, during a recording session for the B side "Amen Brother," The Winstons' drummer Gregory Coleman got eight bars to himself. His drum break was considered syncopated and brushed off along with the record. Seventeen years later, an unnamed Bronx DJ put it in a compilation for producers, price tag six dollars.
NWA opened "Straight Outta Compton" with it, slowed down. UK rave producers sped it up, chopped it into pieces and layered it, building an entire genre around a broken version of Gregory Coleman's six seconds. Since then you have heard a young Tyler, the Creator ("Pigs"), an experimental David Bowie ("Little Wonder"), and even somehow AP Dhillon ("True Stories") use these eight bars.
Two: a Lata Mangeshkar string section that became a global pop hit
The strings you hear on Lata Mangeshkar's "Tere Mere Beech Mein" were found by a Swedish pop production team and dropped into one of the biggest pop songs of 2003, Britney Spears' "Toxic." Childish Gambino and Danny Brown went back to it on their 2013 single "Toxic." So yes, technically the man behind the cult classic "Atrocity Exhibition" is tapped into 1981 Bollywood.
Three: Sister Nancy freestyled Bam Bam in one take, then worked at a bank for 32 years
Sister Nancy freestyled "Bam Bam" in one take in 1982. Her producer kept all the money and never told her how big it got. The radio never played her music, so she found herself working at a bank for 32 years. The whole time, her voice ran through Lauryn Hill's "Miseducation," Kanye's "Famous" and H.E.R.'s "Do To Me." In 2014, her daughter spotted a Reebok commercial on TV with Sister Nancy's voice, unmistakable.
Every genre you love was built on a sound somebody else made first. Sampling is not theft. It is literally the backbone of music.