Sampling- the best thing to happen in music since strings?
Probably. Ignore for a second that they make it possible for someone to create a song without being able to play keys, drums, etc. That's a democratizing effect; but I'd rather talk about what it does musically. When you recognize a sample, it's like you are simultaneously hearing two songs at once-- and if one song is good, then two must be better, right? (This doubling can also induce a sense of deja vu when you know you know the sample, but can't place where it's from. I always find that disconcerting but pleasant too.)
Many times, a sample is just a straightforward looping of a drum- nothing wrong with that;
jungle/drum and bass is built around looping a few really well-known breaks, and we all love jungle.
But today I'm showing you a few well-known samples that get used sort of against the original.
So here is a sampling (hahahahah) of sampling songs and samples.
Lova and happiness, by The Most Reverend Al Green, you love that song. Upbeat, yeah, good things going on there, organ all zippy. But remember how he sort of mourn-moans in the beginning?
"something that can make you do wrong, make you do right..."
Well, Twista and Lil' Kim just keep that. That track uses the guitar too, which is not zippy, but all Sunday-having-coffee and reading the paper. It's all about 'doing wrong' at the club, zero of the 'do right', and getting with someone that you DID NOT come with ('now you know it ain't right, got a girl at home, but tonight, but [this other girl is] the type that'll "make you do wrong..."' ).
Look, see how I have to quote Twista, and then, in the quote, I quote The Rev? Like, postmodern, see right?!?!?! And when you quote my blog- all the time, obv - you have to quote me quoting Twista quoting the Rev.
Yes, it's Twista, not the tippy-top of the hip-hop game, but this song is slick, and you aren't trying to diss Miss Kim, are you?
What else do we have here?....
Princess, of Crime Mob, released a 'mixtape' a while ago- not really a mixtape, but just an album, but for whatever reason (street cred, no doubt, or maybe just to make it seem like Princess wasn't going solo, but just messing around in the studio) they insisted on marketing it as a mixtape, even though you could probably buy it at FYE.
So she here is using another great famous song- Love child by the Most Supreme Diana Ross and the Supremes. Similarly, she keeps just the pained part of the vocal. The Supremes "Love Child" sort of stomps, doesn't it? God, I love that song. "Tenement slum" sure, but with these rad little chimes in the start, then it goes all horns in the chorus. Stuttery funk guitar.
But the Princess track ,like a fair but of the other tracks on that 'mixtape', is almost R&B, a slow sad thing. Listen to the way she isolates the saddest vocalization of the whole track (around 2 minutes in): listen to Diana's voice shake. "I'll always love you: you you YOU". Another thing about samples, they allow you to sense things hidden in the original. All of that great instrumentation in the original hides what Ms. Ross is doing.
Oh, what's she doing?: SHE IS KILLING IT is what she is doing. Her voice, never so big as Aretha's for instance , is really good at this shaking-shaken-broken thing. Like she's broken. I mean, Aretha can get sad, sure, but you can't break a woman like that. But D Ross is broken, always; she is the high school girl,
just a pretty little doll in a pretty little dress, whose world just ended because the boy she loves, will ALWAYS love, just dumped her. And the Princess song recasts that sadness, that stupid stupid devotion to the stupid and lost boy.
Princess' track is about abuse, though, so when DR says, I'll always love you, she is the girl who never grew up, who never figured out how to be without that
boy, even when he beats her, or at the least, emotionally abuses her. Princess has doubled and hence deepened the powerless hurt of a girl in the wrong relationship, and one that gets more wrong and more intractable as the song/the relation goes on.
Try doing that with a really great bassline, or a funky vocal: can't be done, and that is why
SAMPLES ARE THE BEST THINGS SINCE STRINGS
6 comments:
First things first: I totally agree with you about sampling. I also agree with you that it kinda sucks that it means less "musicians" are real musicians, but I think the stuff that really good samplers do is a whole other kind of musical talent, on the order of talent that really good record producers have... you know, just an ear for what sounds right, even if they can't actually produce those sounds themselves on real instruments... but I digress...
What I'm wondering is WHERE IN THE WORLD DID YOU GET YOUR INTERPRETATION OF "LOVE CHILD"? "Love Child" isn't a high-schoolers-break-up-song! It's the story of a woman who was a love-child (read: bastard), who was "hurt, scorned, rejected...never meant to be, born in poverty." The song tells the story of her life and how she is resolved NOT to inflict that on another child. (Because, with her child, she will be able to say "I'll always love you, you, YOU").
In short, this is a STRONG woman singing a STRONG song... not "shaking-shaken-broken" at all! And, yes, she is KILLING IT.
What I think is interesting about Princess' sample is that it significantly changes DR's phrase "love child." I see it like this:
DR is saying "love child" is "never meant to be." (That is, the unintended child was an accident and lives her life being treated like someone who was never meant to be.)
Princess is saying "love, child" is "never meant to be." (That is, LOVE-- especially the abusive kind she is suffering--was never meant to be, child.)
Ya get it?
Well, let's clarify this: since I have never taken the blood, sweat, and time to learn an instrument, I do not think it sucks that 'anyone' can make music nowadays. But I do agree that using a sampler is a form of musical skill, for sure.
Another clarification- most of what I meant to say was about Diana Ross' voice, not about "love child". I always try to address the musical side of things (not controversial), which largely EXCLUDES LYRICS (controv.).
So -and this is doubly true for the Princess version, where you do not get the whole lyrical narrative- what we have, first and foremost is the thin, plaintive sound of Ms. Ross. Lyrically, yes, Ross is very strong here (especially relative to mostSupremes stuff, which I will insist is mostly high-school-girly, which is a big part of their emotional ooomph), but Princess gives us the chopped out version, lacking that strength. (I also would not saying that "I will always love you" is an expression of strength, but I know many cling to that as a form of their 'power'.)
I absolutely affirm your claim that Princess has inserted a comma, more or less, into "Love *,* Child", DrJ. Nicely done. You're spot-on: all it takes is one little puase, one little grammatical shift, to make Princess' point that this love (not this bastard) is not meant to be.
So to finish up, the displaced lyrics of the Supremes' LC must in a sense be forgotten, or at least held up as what is no longer happening in the Princess' song. The sample doesn't just transport the original meaning; it necessarily creates a new one. This new one focuses more on the sound of here voice, not the narrative.
Music, after all, is not words.
I didn't mean to say that "it sucks that anyone can make music." Actually, I (mostly) think that anyone can make music... but then again, I'm also someone who really loves to watch people do karaoke, espcially people who can't "sing." I've invested some time (though maybe not blood, sweat and tears) into playing a "real" instrument, but I don't think of mys musical talent (such that it is, or isn't) in terms of being a guitar-player (an estimation that would be confirmed, I'm sure, by most real guitarists). However, I grew up in the church and I cannot remember a time in my life where music (mostly singing) was not a part.
On that note (haha, double entendre), I wonder whether or not you really mean that music *excludes* lyrics. Really? Excludes? I suppose that you may really mean that, but if you do, then we couldn't be further apart in our musical sensibilities. And, somehow, I think that we're not that far apart...
Leigh- we share a significant amount of overlap in our musical taste- especially in terms of soul and such. (I Love your Podcast- I haven't got an update of it in a while, unfortunately...).
That said though, my tastes have always had an anti-humanist tendency, even well before I would have formalized any such ideas.
"Another Brick in the Wall", Downward Spiral, Aphex Twin: these were (are the cornerstones of my musical development.
We can discuss this more at length- I'd love to, in fact- but it can be summed up by that first Youtube clip: no lyrics, just a loop of the phrase- 'ghostface killah...' clattering drums, from a mix of over an hour of the same exact beats, by a DJ whose name I do not know and whose face I will never see.
OH DELICIOUS
Yeah, we should really discuss this at more length at some point. (I like your recounting of this little montage about the nameless Dj though... intriguing.)
Btw, my radio show podcast hasn't been updated in a long while, so you haven't missed it. We've been moving from an all-webcast format to an on-the-air format, which means that we've been dealing with the hassle of installing a broadcast antenna at the college and all of other stuff related to that. (WHY, oh WHY, did I ever agree to be "faculty advisor" to a radio station???!!) Anyhoo, I should begin regular podcasting again in the next couple of weeks. I'll let you know when I do.
When are you coming to Memphis?
Coming to Memphis- that sounds like an excellent idea. I would say whenever there is a most especial reason, and once I have ironed out a few wrinkles in my finances, then I can join you in that wonderland.
This may be a ways off...
Glad to hear that you didn't quit on the music podcast (I was so going to send you music, but most of what I have that would be appropriate for your show is ripped from vinyl- old, abused vinyl- which takes a while to get together and is not the best sound quality).
Will we still be able to access the old-style radio on our new-styled computers?
And I am glad that you signed up as faculty advisor- the radio station at my college was an absolute necessity for lots of us, so that you are helping to make that happen makes me happy.
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