Tag: Jay-z

  • Snap! – The Power

    Last week I discussed Love’s Gonna Get You by Jocelyn Brown from 1985. One of the most famous tracks that sampled it is The Power from 1991 by Snap!. The song however is surrounded by controversy.

    First of all there’s the obvious use of Jocelyn Brown’s vocals. Jocelyn Brown’s sample was used without permission or credit by the German producers behind Snap!: Michael Muenzing and Luca Anzilotti. Jocelyn Brown wasn’t pleased with that and still isn’t.

    Secondly the first version The Power sampled the vocals and music from Let The Words Flow by Chill Rob G from 1989. Originally The Power was released under the name Power Jam (feat. Chill Rob G). When all of the samples didn’t clear and they threatened to get in trouble, the producers said fuck it, and re-recorded the vocals with Turbo B, an American soldier/rapper who was stationed in Germany and re-released it as Snap!. It’s ironic considering Turbo B’s lyric “copywritten lyrics so they can’t be stolen” in The Power.

    Lastly, the music used in The Power is mainly one sample from the Mantronix track King of the Beats from 1988.  Which is silly considering they could’ve just sampled the original that Mantronix used. But more about that original next week.

    Eventually, as The Power got embedded in pop-culture, it too got sampled. The Farm’s Stepping Stone remix from 1990. Everybody by Members of Shockwave in 1995. The Ting Tings covered the song Standing in the Way of Control by The Gossip in 2008 with a sample from The Power. Hit the Floor by Big Ali ft. Dollarman from 2008. Ghettosocks used it in Take Chains Off from 2009. There’s a remix of Kanye West’s song Power from 2010 which, apart from featuring vocals by Jay-Z also features a sample of The Power.

  • David Bowie – Fame

    I just submitted something to whosampled.com I found obviously missing. I was actually shocked it wasn’t on there. Today we’re doing a cover AND a sample! And a whole string of other artist who borrowed the same sample.

    In 1998 the band Limp Bizkit broke through to a major audience with their single Faith taken from their 1997 album Three Dollar Bill, Yall$. The song Faith is a cover from George Michael’s original version from 1987. Limp Bizkit went on the next few years to score a string of hits, including the song Take a Look Around which I mentioned two weeks ago.

    As sort of an in-between-albums thing, Limp Bizkit released a remix album titled New Old Songs in 2001 which featured new remixes of their old songs (go figure). One was released as a single and was a remix of their very first big hit: Faith. The new version was entitled Faith/Fame Remix.  Why? because instead of just doing the cover again, they also mashed up the riff from David Bowie’s 1975 track Fame (co-written by John Lennon) into it and had Fred Durst sing the word ‘Faith’ in the same manner Bowie sang ‘Fame’. Is it a cover? Is it a sample? Or is it both?

    They’re not the first and certainly not the last to cover that track though.  James Brown borrowed the tune in the same year Bowie released it in his track Hot. Public Enemy used it as a small hidden snippet of it in their 1988 track Night of the Living Baseheads. EPMD used a very slowed down sample of Fame in their It Wasn’t Me, It Was The Fame in 1989. When Vanilla Ice had dropped off the radar and released another album, he used Fame in his own track also titled Fame in 1994. Dr. Dre used it quite prominently (is it a cover? is it a sample?)  in 1996 track Fame. Even Jay-Z borrows the lyrics in the 2001 track Takeover. To top it off, Lady Gaga sampled one her heroes and lifted the riff from Fame in her 2009 track Fancy Pants.

    Here’s the original: David Bowie – Fame.

  • Chi-Lites – Are You My Woman

    In 1970 a soul group from Chicago called the Chi-Lites (formerly the Hi-Lites with an added C from Chicago) released the single Are You My woman (Tell Me So). Though it did chart in the US, the Chi-Lites wouldn’t score any big hits till a year later.

    In the early days 90’s, DJ Polo dug up the the track in 1992 for #1 With a Bullet by Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo featuring Big Daddy Kane. The sample serves no greater purpose in the track and again went mostly unnoticed.

    It didn’t crash into the main-stream until the Beyonce & Jay-Z collaboration Crazy in Love was released in 2003. It became a huge hit and as always that’s followed by a string of very differing covers like those from The Puppini Sisters, Anthony & The Johnsons, Tracy Bonham and there’s even a version of the Beyonce song with Mandarin vocals instead of Jay-Z.

    Oddly though, all of them usually mimic the melody from the original Are you My Woman (Tell Me So) by the The Chi-Lites:

  • Max Romeo – I Chase the Devil

    In 1976 reggae stars Max Romeo & the Upsetters released the album War ina Babylon. On it is a song entitled I Chase the Devil, which was penned by Max Romeo and legendary dub/reggae artist & producer Lee “Scratch” Perry. The fact that The Upsetters are on the album with Max Romeo isn’t surprising, since they are Lee “Scratch” Perry’s backing band (and Perry himself is also know under the pseudonym The Upsetter).

    Some decades later around 1992 a young Liam Howlett picked up the album and added a sample of the Max Romeo track to the first album Experience by his own band The Prodigy. While a string of singles was released from this album in the middle of the rave explosion, there was one that became the defining single for the Prodigy that blew them into international fame. That track, which hinges on the Max Romeo sample, is Out of Space. And it’s safe to say that it became famous despite of it’s low budget video, which was only slightly less seizure inducing as Stakker Humanoid (but I’m getting off-topic now).

    For completeness sake, Jay-Z has also sampled the Max Romeo track in the crappy track Lucifer and Madness has made a cover of I Chase the Devil. But let’s listen to where it all began: the original Max Romeo and the Upsetters – I Chase the Devil: