Sampling has the power to bridge gaps between seemingly widely different musical styles. You can take something lame, sample it, place it in a new context and make it hot. Busta Rhymes’ classic “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See” is a prime example.
The devastating beat, produced by Shamello and first-timer Buddha, is based on sped-up samples of “Sweet Green Fields” by Seals and Crofts. Listen at 0:17.
Nothing against Seals and Crofts, but Busta’s song is about fifty times cooler. According to the Complex blog, licensing the sample ate up the entire producers’ share of the publishing rights. That’s a shame. Maybe Shamello and Buddha didn’t write or record “Sweet Green Fields,” but they did have the wit to identify the best part of it, speed it up to a more exciting tempo and set it to a sizzling drum machine pattern. That creative act seems like it should be worth some money in addition to the admiration of sample geeks like me.
Hip-hop has rehabilitated the music of the disco era for listeners of my generation and younger. This is no small accomplishment. When I was growing up, I was taught by everyone remotely cool that slick, lavish seventies pop was the epitome of cultural evil. My hippest white friends had an aesthetic centered around punk, which was fuelled in large part specifically in reaction against artists like Seals and Crofts. Rock fans of a certain age love to tell me about spending the seventies holed up with the Velvet Underground, waiting for disco to go away.
Hip-hop was a reaction to disco too. Like the song says, “create rap music ’cause I never dug disco.” Maybe hip-hop musicians don’t dig everything about disco, but they do dig some aspects: the beats, the production, the party atmosphere. Punk stripped away a lot of disco-era excess, but it also stripped away danceability, groove, arrangement and texture. The indie rockers have restored some variety to the vocal and instrumental palette, but their grooves remain impoverished.
Rock was dance music first and foremost in its lively youth, but I can’t think of too many rock songs from my lifetime that make me want to dance. Hip-hop, on the other hand, has taken the best disco grooves and given them laser-beam focus through looping, layered drum machines and harder-edged lyrics.
I’m mostly concerned here with production, not rapping. But I want to recognize Busta’s flow for a second. On paper, the lyrics of “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See” might not seem so special. It’s mostly just exhortations to party over a rhythmic pattern that, in the verses, is minimal and repetitive even by hip-hop standards: six beats worth of eighth notes, ending on beat three of every other bar. Delivered straight, this metrical scheme would get annoying fast. Busta makes it work by stretching the time creatively. He delays the last syllable of each line almost into the next beat, and he rushes or drags the other syllables freely. The tension between the predictable meter and Busta’s unpredictable delivery grabs your ear and doesn’t let go.
Speaking of bringing together disparate sensibilities, here’s Busta presenting with Martha Stewart at the 1997 Video Music Awards. There’s no deeper message here, I just find this photo amusing.
Busta’s first big hit “Woo-Hah!!” is based on a quote of the Sugarhill Gang. It’s kind of an analog sample.
Busta’s chorus is a quote from the Sugarhill Gang’s “8th Wonder” — listen at 1:52.
The Revenge Of The Nerds band quotes “8th Wonder” too. The law considers quotation to be a different practice than sampling a recording. Why? Quoting and sampling achieve the same effect, the insertion of a recognizable meme into a new context. In casual language, music fans tend to use the terms “sampling” and “quoting” interchangeably, and I think they’re right to.
In addition to the Sugarhill Gang quote, there’s an actual sample in “Woo-Hah!!” The chromatically off-kilter keyboard part comes from “Space” by Galt MacDermot, who also wrote the music for Hair. “Space” has an unintentional hip-hop flavor to its beat, I can see why Busta and his producers like it. The “Woo-Hah!!” sample comes at 0:46.
Galt McDermot’s catalog is surprisingly popular with hip-hop producers in general. For instance, Run-DMC’s “Down With The King” uses a loop of “Where Do I Go” from Hair.
As befits a song built from samples, “Woo-Hah!!” has been sampled itself quite a few times. Some highlights:
- Loefah – “Disco Rekeh” — a cool dubstep track.
- Girl Talk – “What’s It All About” — featuring Busta’s vocal laid over “Everything She Does Is Magic” by the Police, among other random things.
- Ayman – “Mein Stern” — a German rapper.
- Cut Killer – “La Haine” — a French turntablist. What is it with international hip-hop artists and Busta?
- Def Rhymes – “Weekend” — Dutch rappers, on top of a Gloria Estefan sample! The world is a big and complicated place.
- Hardcore and industrial musicians sample “Woo-Hah!!” a lot but I find their stuff too annoying to listen to.
Here’s the whole story of “Woo-Hah!!” in convenient map form, click to see it bigger:
Not every sample Busta uses comes from something groovy. “Gimme Some More” uses a string part that will be immediately familiar to Hitchcock fans.
The strings come from Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho. That’s pretty creative sourcing. Hear the sample thirty seconds in:
Busta has also had the exquisitely good taste to sample Miles Davis. “Everything Remains Raw” gets its moody chord progression from the ending of “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” from Miles’ and Gil Evans’ arrangement of Porgy and Bess.
Again, I love sample-based music for the power that it has to form unexpected musical connections. Think of all the hip-hop heads who might be motivated to check out some Miles Davis and Gil Evans because Busta sampled them. For that matter, think of the jazz nerds (like me) who might be motivated to check out Busta.
Good Post