Sampling has always done something to me.
Not necessarily for my own music… more watching an artist take a piece of someone else’s creation, twist it just enough, and come out the other side with something completely their own. That, for me, is a huge pillar of what music is about.
Kanye changed everything on that front. Took hip-hop’s relationship with sampling and blew the doors off it. Suddenly it wasn’t just a rap thing, it crossed over, it got everywhere, and pioneers like him made the whole idea feel like a legitimate art form to a generation of producers and pop acts who might never have gone near it otherwise.
That thread leads me to KID LAROI’s BABY IM BACK. He took the hook from Player’s Baby Come Back, a proper 70s classic, brought his own lyrics to the melody, and landed something in a completely different world to the original. Tasteful. Clever. You couldn’t hear the song without that sample and that, for me, is always the line. That’s when I know it works.
So I started messing around.
It Did Not Go Well. At First.
Jackson 5’s I Want You Back. Failed miserably. Binned it.
Africa by TOTO. Tried everything. Felt like I was murdering it every single time.
A big thing for me is that it always needs to feel tasteful, like the sample lifts the song rather than just sitting in it. You can’t imagine the finished track without it. That’s the real test. And I kept failing at it.
Then I landed on one of the most famous vocal hooks of the 80s.
True by Spandau Ballet.
Yeah. That bit. You already know it.
The second I heard it back I could almost hear the whole track already. So I spent the day building the production, filmed most of the process, told myself it was just a fun video and I wouldn’t put too much into it… and then found myself completely unable to let it go. What came out felt too good to just forget about.
All this to say, I was experimenting, testing, trying new things, and it led me somewhere I didn’t expect.
So Welcome to the SAMPLE SESSIONS.
I’m digging through records my dad’s collected over the years, dropping the needle myself, and making something new out of something old. There’s something about doing it that way that keeps me connected to the music in a way that downloading a file never could. It feels like the music has a life before it reaches me, and I’m just the next chapter.
I hope you hear something you like. And if you do, good news: there’s a lot more music coming later this year. More on that soon.
For now though. Grab the popcorn.
