Empire State Of Mind

Hip-hop isn’t usually big on chord progressions, but “Empire State Of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys has an awesome set of changes.

Because Alicia Keys was involved, I thought she might have written the chord progression. But no, it’s built from samples of the intro to “Love On A Two-Way Street” by The Moments.

“Empire State Of Mind” was originally written by Angela Hunte and Janet “Jnay” Sewell-Ulepic (though Jay-Z substantially rewrote the verses when he recorded it.) Their sequencing of the Moments samples seems like a different process from the way that someone like Alicia Keys would write a song at the piano. Using the sampler is a lot more limiting. But sometimes that’s good for creativity, as in this case. I like Alicia Keys’ own material okay, but she’s never written anything as powerful as “Empire.”

Let’s analyze. The Moments’ intro is in the key of F, but “Empire” speeds up the sample a little, moving it up to F#. I’m going to spare us all some annoyance and confusion by analyzing both songs as if they’re in C.

The Moments’ intro starts with a simple but beautifully voiced I-V-IV progression: C, G, F. The bass walks down from C to the B in the G chord. From there, your ear expects it to land on A minor. Instead it lands on F. There’s an A in the F chord, so it doesn’t completely fake you out. Still, your ear expects the A minor, and the F that takes it place has an implicit wistfulness.

Next there’s an F to G cadence that you expect to land on C. Instead, it lands on a dramatic and suspenseful E7, once again setting up a strong expectation of going to A minor. But the Moments fake you out yet again, by changing keys altogether when the verse starts.

There’s more than enough information in the Moments’ twenty-second intro to unpack into a full length song, and “Empire State Of Mind” does exactly that. The verses loop the C-G-F, F-G-C parts. The prechorus is the suspenseful E7 chord. The chorus is just the verse chords in a different order: F-C-G. And the bridge combines parts of the verse and the prechorus.

The song gets a lot of its power from the way the A minor chord is constantly implied but not actually stated. (It appears very briefly in the bridge, but otherwise is absent from the song.) Your mind is constantly engaged trying to fill in that missing minor. The song even feels minor, more tragic than triumphant, even though there are (basically) no minor chords in it anywhere. That’s real musicianship.

Writing a chord progression is like reaching into a box of legos and fitting the pieces together. There’s an infinite universe of possible chord combinations, but very few of those sound good, and even fewer have the kind of drama and power of “Empire State Of Mind.” Everyone writing in a particular style is drawing from the same box of legos. The artistry happens in your selection and ordering of the pieces. Once you have enough music training to be acquainted with all the legos in the box, the challenge lies in leaving stuff out.

The sampler can be a better songwriting tool than traditional instruments because its limitations encourage economy of musical means. Sitting at the piano, the temptation to resolve to A minor might be too hard to resist. But since the Moments don’t use A minor in their song, Hunt and Sewell-Ulepic can’t really use it in theirs, much to their enormous benefit. I can’t think of a better piano-based pop song than “Empire State Of Mind” in the last ten years, even though there was no piano used to write it.

It’s a common idea that sampling a song is a form of stealing, that “Empire State Of Mind” is somehow coextensive with “Love On A Two-Way Street.” But not all sample uses are created equal. The Moments’ intro was also sampled a few years ago by Asamov in their song “Supa Dynamite.”

This is a perfectly decent hip-hop track, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as “Empire State Of Mind.” Of course, these guys can’t flow like Jay-Z and they don’t have a colossal hook sung by Alicia Keys, but the track itself is weaker too. It just loops the C-G-F, F-G-C part. It doesn’t use the E7 and doesn’t shuffle the pieces around. Asamov drew from the same box of legos as Hunt and Sewell-Ulepic. They just didn’t build something as interesting.