[Sound Familiar?]: Sampling, Break Beats and Blaxploitation

I’ll start by saying that I don’t consider myself a hip hop head. I’m surely no aficionado spouting off knowledge from the hip hop canon. However, I can say that the first rap album that I touched and heard as a little girl was Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight. It belonged to my aunt or mother.  Of course, what I did not know was that the song’s main structure had come from the break of Chic’s Good Times. The intro of Rapper’s Delight was sampled from Here Comes That Sound by Love De-Luxe. What makes the break beat significant? In his book, Making Beats, Joseph G. Schloss quotes Tricia Rose who states that:

The break is a section where the band breaks down, the rhythm section is isolated, basically where the bass guitar and drummer take solo.  Break beats are points of rupture in their former contexts, points of which the thematic elements of a musical piece are suspended and the underlying rhythms are brought center stage. (qtd. in Black Noise 74)

The breakbeat Sugarhill used consisted of a strong groovin’ baseline, drum and a clap. They took it, looped it and rhymed over it. Good Times had been heavily exploited as a break beat. Some groups even used a derivative of its baseline to form the melodies for their songs.

Later, in my years I came to understand that most of the hip hop sound that I grew up listening to came from music that was created before I was born. From jazz to funk to the most obscure rare tracks that could be excavated-hip hop producers were repurposing old art. They found a way to reconstruct the incredible music that they grew up appreciating. In many cases they became “diggers” seeking out undiscovered and unexploited breaks.

The soundtracks of the blaxploitation era were not overlooked. Blaxploitation films extended deeply within black culture. The styles of the characters were emulated by the everyday brotha and sistas on the streets.  They were able to see the power that emanated from the screen. There were black heroes and sheroes. Many of the early hip hop producers grew up in the 70’s during the heightened era of the genre.  Dudes like John Okuribido, I can only assume, is sharing his childhood fondness for the film Three Tough Guys by sampling Isaac Hayes’ Hung Up On My Baby in Geto Boys’ Mind Playing Tricks On Me.  You’d be surprised how many hip hop joints you’ve listened without hearing the origins of the tracks from which they have been recreated.

Music from the blaxploitation OST has certainly been transformed into a new form of expression through hip hop.  Sampling is an art form that pays homage to original works, which had their own cultural significance. Contemporary artists are just restructure archetypes by bringing their current cultural relevance to the music. More to come...