FAO Soulman: Sampling Essay ('97-'98?)
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Backspinning Signifying:by Joe Allen[/b]The legitimacy of sampling in music production has been questioned and debated since the early days of hip hop. Sampling's originality and legality has defined this cultural war.1 For some time now, the practice of sampling has become "common in the recording of all forms of music,"2 and in recent years, sampling has gained widespread acceptance. Yet the artistic merits of sampling are at best taken for granted and at worst left misunderstood and under-appreciated. A recent album review in Rock & Rap Confidential displays the limits of most considerations of sampling. The reviewer of Tribe Vibes, Volume 2, the second unauthorized collection of songs Tribe Called Quest has sampled, states, "Listening to this vinyl-only double album will leave you shaking your head in wonder at the vision and creativity it takes to sample skillfully, to hear a bass line, drum part, or keyboard fill in an obscure record and know just where to place it among other elements to create a new work of art."3 However, the discussion of sampling often ends precisely here???we should be amazed that some invisible producer spliced together a few sublime samples to create a classic hip hop track, but we are left shaking our collective heads because of the enigmatic connection between the musical creativity and the end result. The uninitiated who feel sampling is a technique quickly and effortlessly employed by the lazy, unskilled musician will not be convinced by such vague sentiments because many questions, both technical and aesthetic, are left mysteriously unanswered. How do the producers know which parts of which records to sample? How do they find these records? Who has and who must have the knowledge of previously sampled records? How is this information disseminated?Since I believe the whole economy of samples begins with the record collector; a re-examination of sampling from the perspective of the record collector as well as the record itself is therefore necessary. The hip hop DJ who morphed into the hip hop producer transformed the record collector into an artist. This tradition has spawned a plethora of independent labels, producers, and more and more record collectors. Any day of the week, one can find young beat-heads (people who collect breakbeats and samples) and established hip hop producers sorting through rare funk, soul, and jazz albums, the European sound libraries and obscure soundtracks, and all the other miscellaneous records that contain beats and loops, at the Sound Library or A-1 Records in Manhattan's East Village. At these shops, one can not only unearth the grooves of today that will become the tracks of tomorrow but also trace the sources of the tracks already in circulation???as both producers and collectors search for unsampled sounds and original source material.The Breakbeat Brotherhood[/b]I. This search and retrieval impulse essentially created hip hop music. In the mid-1970s, the archetypal hip hop DJ, Kool Herc, started isolating the percussion breaks in the records he was playing at block parties in the Bronx. With two copies of the same record, Herc could extend a single percussion break indefinitely (what would be soon known as breakbeats), all the while whipping the dancers into a near frenzy. The key component in the evolution of breakbeat music was the breaks themselves and, of course, the records that contained them. Excavating the funkiest break became the DJ's raison d'etre. DJs located many of the breaks by inspecting thousands of records looking for a wide band that was blacker than the rest of the vinyl. Such wide black bands contain less dense instrumentation which the DJs hoped would include a bare extended funky drum break.Initially, the DJs were the anthologists of the rare breakbeat records, and intent on keeping their archival work secret. To avoid competition from other crews, some DJs would soak the labels off their records to guard their knowledge. Lenny Roberts of Beat Street Records, though, decided to make the information public and the breakbeats easily available with the release of the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series, a series which now numbers twenty-five volumes. Each volume collects seven or eight often obscure tracks containing breakbeats. Robert's decision, based on the economy of supplying DJ demand, signaled, for some, the end of the original breakbeat culture and the beginning of the economic considerations that surround hip hop to this day.Several old school DJs recently discussed their lingering disagreements over the ramifications of collecting and freely distributing the rare gems of their collections. Their commentary identifies the opposing viewpoints in this debate. Grandmixer D.ST. laments the loss of the DJ's secret codes and records:The whole art form of the DJ is seeking for beats, and the love and respect for the records that you find and the respect for the other DJ who has the same ability???. But we made one terrible mistake, and all due respect to Lenny, that was our undoing. Because we did not understand what he was doing at the time???. He knew all of us, and he would come to all of us and say, "What record was that?" But what he did was networked between all of us, so he ultimately ended up with everything. We wasn't thinking about making money like that, our love was just for the art form itself and being recognized in the community and on the street???. It wasn't selfishness, it was the fact that if you wanted to go to a Bambaataa party and hear certain records, he had his crowd who wanted to hear those certain records???. Each DJ had his own [repertoire]. We had the generic records that became generic once everybody in our circle had 'em. The whole thing was the obscure records. Everybody always came up at their next party with the next new obscure record. And that cycle would go for at least two or three parties before the next DJ got that record.4During this formative era, the DJs had control over the dissemination of their knowledge. To be a skilled DJ meant much more than mastery of the ever-evolving techniques of turntable and mixer manipulation; the position necessitated someone with the anthropological skills to research the breaks and then locate at least two clean copies of the break. Musicologist David Toop contests the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series: "The serious record collectors regarded this unmasking of the underworld as a gift to the lazy, a betrayal of the DJs detective abilities."5 Only someone with the capacity to uncover and collect original breaks, someone savvy enough to amass a significant record collection, would be deemed authentic.Interestingly, Afrika Bambaataa viewed Roberts's circumvention of DJ culture as a way to share the raw material of hip hop culture with the rest of the world. (Besides, like any true DJ, he had far more beats than he was willing to share):Well, me and Lenny worked close together, so it didn't bother me???'cause whatever I'd give him, he'd wait to release. I always had many more where they came from anyways. It didn't bother me, it was those DJs that didn't really have no big selections that it bothered. When I first gave the list out in England at the time when nobody would say the names, the whole England went crazy trying to find those grooves. It was good, 'cause I felt it was time for all these other DJs to have things to help them. You see, I had vision. A lot of other people were selfish and wanted to hold stuff to theyselves. I had vision to try to make this a whole-world phenomenon and movement. My vision was to try to get Hip-Hop across the world as much as possible. And everything fell into place the way we did it.6Indeed it did, hip hop has long been a global phenomena. Ultimate Breaks and Beats inspired many to search out hip hop's source material while others used the beats as they were reissued. Peanut Butter Wolf, West Coast producer and owner of the indie label Stones Throw, accurately sums up the significance of the series: "When Ultimate Breaks
and Beats first came out, it gave me a starting point. A lot of great hip hop records were made from that collection."7Still, today's hip hop tracks are made using the beats compiled on the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series. Furthermore, Bambaataa was correct in his assertion that there were, in the words of Leroy Hutson, "more where that came from." In the 1990s, hip hop DJs and producers have mined more beats, loops and grooves than even the originators would have thought possible. Other breakbeat and sample collections, some legitimate but many bootlegs, continue to be released at a rapid rate???collecting the latest rare grooves and often documenting who sampled what and when. Of course, like D.ST., the release of these collections still rankles those who first used the grooves."Jackin' sounds from records"[/b]II. Betraying a hip hop producer's sources has developed into a profitable industry. Before a track on Gangstarr's 1998 album Moment of Truth, DJ Premier, widely acknowledged as one of the best hip hop producers, declares:What's the deal with all you break record cats putting out all the original records that we sample from and snitching by putting us on the back of it saying we used stuff. You know how that goes. Stop doing that. You are violating. You don't know what hip hop is all about.8Premier's choice of the word "snitching" is appropriate. Most samples and even more beats, today, are not officially cleared. Skilled producers such as Premier know who they can sample from and who they shouldn't. Usually, samples are then reworked???sped up, slowed down, chopped, faded, flanged, chopped and/or rewired???so that they barely resemble the original. A useful example of this process can be found on Gangstarr's Moment of Truth with the track "You Know My Steeze." To provide the melody, Premier masterfully chops up a guitar lick from a common soul record that, according to Rob Carrigan of the Sound Library, "We all had been looking at for years":9 Joe Simon's "Drowning in the Sea of Love." Even though the sample is uncredited, the re-conceived melody is so instantly memorable that the hunt for the source begins as soon as the song hits the airwaves. Within weeks, Premier's work is unmasked, the knowledge quickly circulated, and all the cheap Joe Simon records have disappeared. Since there are not enough copies of "Drowning in the Sea of Love" to satisfy the demand of collectors, the song quickly finds its way onto on a number of bootleg compilations that clearly advertise Premier's jacking of the track. By this time, Premier should indeed be concerned about being sued. Ironically, according to the legendary beatminer Soulman, "Hip hop is [and has always been] about jackin' sounds from records."10In the late 1980s, the advent of digital samplers significantly impacted the manner in which hip hop tracks were constructed and, in the process, altered the role of the DJ, the original sampler. Digital samplers isolated cropped fragments of sound with ease, and then the fragments could be looped, layered, or both in as dense or sparse a fashion as desired. As the classic break records became rarer, pricier, and overused, several artists including Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and the Beastie Boys took sampling in fresh directions by raiding extensive archives of records with a variety of startling, innovative techniques.DJ Shadow, the latest sampling savant, explains: "Cutting and pasting is the essence of what hip-hop culture is all about for me. It's about drawing from what's around you, and subverting it and decontextualizing it."11 His first full length album Endtroducing???. was composed entirely with countless vinyl-based samples which, as his liner notes suggest, "reflect a lifetime of vinyl culture." Influenced by the beat chopping methodology of Premier, Pete Rock, and Large Professor, Shadow found creative ways to loop a chopped beat with his sampler of choice, the Akai MPC60, and make it sound as natural as a pre-existing loop. He explains his reason for sampling the soundless air space off a record:So let's say you've sampled little pieces of a loop, and you don't want to make it sound choppy. You don't want to hear the decay cut off on the snare or whatever, or no ambiance on the kick. So I like to give it ambiance if it's not already there. Sometimes I'll just sample air off the record and lay that in. That's where the fade comes in???. It creates a softness that blends in, and essentially there isn't ever any empty space.12Sometimes, though, an unexpected sound can bleed into the chops. For "The Number Song," Shadow sampled a breakbeat that had a vocalist singing "huh, yeah, come on." He chopped the beat into 16 parts and only sampled the drum sounds where the vocalist wasn't singing. The resulting track, though, didn't entirely omit his voice, as Shadow explains: "If you listen carefully, you can hear the reverb of the guy talking, but you can't hear what he's saying. So it gives the break a kind of eerie heaviness, a tone."13 Shadow also identifies other found techniques such as time-extending (accomplished by repeating a certain note of a sample) and time-stretching (chopping a sample and then fading in/fading out each chop to morph the sample at a different tempo). Astonishingly, a more recent DJ Shadow track, "High Noon," was composed with almost 100 drum chops!The Record Collector's Labyrinth[/b]III. Jorge Luis Borges's representation of the infinite library in his story "The Library of Babel" provides an apt metaphor for the endless recombinant potential inherent in digitally sampling records. His mysterious labyrinth contains all combinations of all words and letters; "For every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences."14 Borges's choice of musical description evokes a library of sounds, much like the worldwide supply of records. The texts, and the records, silently wait for someone to unlock their mystery. Borges's official searchers, known as library "inquisitors," struggle mightily to make any sense of the library or its catalogs. Few inquisitors uncover something useful while endlessly perusing room after room of books. Yet only then, possible patterns or theories emerge. The hours spent searching for records and then searching each and every record groove by groove, regardless of genre, artist, or cover, would rival the work of Borges's inquisitors. Likewise, only a handful of expert producers out of the multitudes can continuously locate samples, loops, and beats, and then artistically stitch them together to form a dope track.Of course, Borges's library was generously sampled by Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose. Eco's labyrinthine library also has a sinister element:It was then the place of a long centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.15Discarded albums also have a life of their own in the hands of a producer. Tracks composed entirely of samples retransmit and reinvigorate out-of-circulation sound data that can evoke distant cultural memory in the listener or imprint new memories. The multitude of previously recorded sounds survives well past those who had originally recorded the sounds, and the original recordings often have a second life, especially in this golden age of reissues. The vinyl archive is indeed a living entity ever mutating with much external exposed knowledge and even more shrouded archaic secrets.Eco theorizes on the nature of his sampling at end of his novel. He admits that his heavy reading of medieval texts has slipped perceptively and often unconsciously into his composition. When interrogating his material, he clearly sees "the recollection of the culture with which it is loaded (the echo of intertextuality)??? books always speak of other bo
oks, and every story tells a story that has already been told."16 The echo of intertextuality accurately describes the aesthetic of sampling. In The Signifying Monkey, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. terms this process "signifying," which "always entails formal revision and an intertextual relation."17 Hip hop records always speak of other records; samples re-inscribe already inscribed sounds.Collector's Culture[/b]IV. Producers such as Shadow and Premier, record store owners such as Rob Carrigan, and true hip hop devotees are collectors at heart. Such collectors often look for a way to legitimize the act of collecting and elevate their passion for collecting to an art. The editors of The Cultures of Collecting, John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, define the collecting impulse as "desire and nostalgia, saving and loss, the urge to erect a permanent and complete system against the destructiveness of time."18 The collections themselves provide a material history of music intertwined with memory.Soulman is one such collector. He remembers hearing old school DJs such as Bambaataa and Flash spinning "ill breakbeats" and wondering, "Oh my god!!! What is THAT??" Their work inspired him to begin collecting breakbeats, a task which he has been doing for around twenty years. He has such a detailed knowledge of the wide world of beats that many of the best hip hop producers seek his knowledge and records. Not only did he absorb the pure love of breakbeats from the pioneers, but he has strong feelings about the manner in which one attains this archeology of knowledge. When asked about the art of record collecting, he said:I can't give up all the secrets, but it's important for people to study records, get familiar with labels, memorize covers, pay attention to what players are on the hot records because the same names usually can be found on other dope joints. Talk to other collectors and dealers and just soak up all the info you can like a sponge.19Soulman's uniformly sublime World of Beats mix tape series of grooves and beats gives the hip hop audience an opportunity to hear the sources of their favorite tracks and "hopefully get a new, deeper appreciation for hip hop music." Adding arcane source material that has yet to be sampled to the mix imagines possible futures for hip hop tracks. World of Beats doesn't list either kind of source even though some listeners have tried to tap deeply into Soulman's considerable knowledge. To this, he replies, "Part of the game is about secrecy. People who really want to know stuff should find out the old fashioned way???buy records, LISTEN to records."20Soulman initially received attention for his groundbreaking "World of Beats" column which first appeared in the April 1994 issue of Rap Pages.21 The series of articles unmasked the underground network of hip hop producers and beat collectors and remains an influential resource in my research. Since each column included a list of ten rare beats-to-find, Soulman received some criticism for freely dispersing "trade secrets." One of his columns, "To Give Away the Beats or Not to Give Away the Beats, That is the Question," addresses the debate that has remained central in hip hop culture. After espousing his love of beats, music, and collecting, he takes on each charge point by point. He concludes, "The fact of the matter is that there are literally thousands and thousands of records with beats on them. I could give away twenty a month for the next ten years and still not even scratch the surface."22 Soulman's position is decidedly closer to Bambaataa's vision of sharing beats with Lenny Roberts for his Ultimate Breaks and Beats Series than to D.ST.'s preference for closely guarding the DJ's secret tools. While Soulman's Top Ten Beats of the Month might fuel the novice collector's quest to achieve authenticity in the ever-expanding circle of beat collectors, the lists pays respect to the always authentic collectors who already have an encyclopedic knowledge of beats.Similarly, at a recent Kool Keith show at Tramps in New York City, DJ Spinna, an underground producer of note, provided the between set entertainment by first playing many classic underground tracks. Later, he spliced together a lengthy series of sampled breaks. His MC explained that Spinna was providing a piece of hip hop history for all the beatheads in attendance. Clearly, Spinna's purpose leaned towards educating the audience, albeit without easily accessible codes to decipher the information. I doubt Spinna feels the need to soak the labels off his rare break records, yet his mix of samples presents his position of legitimacy, a position he is unlikely to openly share. Rather, Spinna and Soulman cast interest on the architecture of the hip hop songs that unite the underground beathead culture. Hearing the initial and instantly recognizable drum pattern from Jeru the Damaja's check classic "Come Clean" single from 1993 provides a unique thrill; learning the beat is from a Shelly Manne record, and then tracking down an original pressing of this now hard-to-find oddity (and NOT buying a bootleg compilation of the producer DJ Premier's sources) expands the culture of collectors, one record and one collector at a time.Backspinning Signifying[/b]V. In a way, recognizing a sample in its original context and then being reminded of a hip hop artist's extrapolation of the sample replicates but also reverses a phenomenon found in the pioneer DJ's playlists. Amidst the rare and obscure breaks and needle drops, they might have dissected a popular disco tune that the audience would normally recognize. A hip hop sample is first signified on the original recording; the audience would often experience pleasure in recognizing beats such as a dismembered and looped James Brown break. Yet, by isolating and repeating the drum break, the original song was transformed into something new and fresh, something that part of the audience might partially recognize. As David Toop indicates, "The beauty of dismembering hits lies in displacing familiarity."23 In a similar fashion, many jazz artists (John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," for example) superimposed daring explorations of the popular tunes of the day onto their improvisations. Toop also equates the audience's response to breakbeat compositions with jazz reinterpretations, "[Breakbeat] gives the same thrill that visitors to Minton's Playhouse must have felt in the 1940s hearing Charlie Parker carve up standards like 'I Got Rhythm.'"24Such reinterpretations often call into question the tropes of the original, defy authoritative versions, problematize ownership, and offer a liberating means of accessing past cultural material. In "Fairly Used," an essay about Negativland's unlawful appropriation of a U2 song and Casey Kasem dialogue, David Sanjek asks, "How often does a sampled musical quotation bring about a reinvestigation or reconsideration of the material's source?"25 I wonder if a sampled music quotation must provide such cultural commentary on the original recording. In hip hop today, because of the utter obscurity or strangeness in many hip hop samples, hearing the original material for the first time after it has been sampled oddly signifies back upon the hip hop track; here, the audience experiences the pleasure of understanding from what or even sometimes how a hip hop track was constructed by recognizing a certain sample and then reflecting on how a hip hop artist sampled and manipulated that information into something very new and unique. As Soulman asserts, "Believe me, hearing the original just makes you love the sampled version even more."26 Here, the original comments on the hip hop sample and adds a fresh perspective to both groove creators. John Oswald's term Plunderphonics possibly covers sampling and sampling samples: "the counter-covert world of converted sound and retrofitted music, where collective melodic memories of the familiar are minced and rehabilitated to a new life."27 For Oswald, such "healthy trading of ideas and sounds,"28 as on Soulman's compilations, promotes creative l
istening which often "stimulates interest in the electronically 'quoted' artists"29 or in the artist who first included the 'quotation.'Considering the history of shady deals and unpaid royalties countless black artists have endured in America, hip hop DJs and producers who sample are perhaps unknowingly working on a massive re-clamation project, a substantial recuperation of cultural capital. If gospel, blues, jazz, r & b, soul, funk all signify within their own traditions and between the other traditions, a singular continuum of music transference and memory is un-doubtedly culturally visible. The free cir-culation of musical tropes is reminiscent of Jacques Derrida's notion of the endless play of signification where "one signifier points to another signifier, which in turn points to another signifier, which in turn points away to another signifier, and so on ad infinitum."30 By subverting copyright legalities, collectors and plunderers are returning what has come to be virtually unrewarded or unrecognized personal property back to the public domain with its sustainable economy of unrestricted movement and sharing. The raw materiality of dense record collections, especially the heaviest sampled era???the jazz, soul, funk of the late 1960s to the late 1970s???impart agency to their collective owners and suggest a broader understanding of the musical heritage of African Americans. Celebrating such a collection, exemplified by Soulman's compilations, represents a liberating practice of plunderphonics and might provide the strongest argument for the free circulation and dissemination of the collector's knowledge of beats and samples.Ultimately, we need an interactive library or series of documentaries to authenticate and chronicle the architecture of hip hop tracks and the culture of beat collectors. VH-1 wisely brought the producers of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours back into the studio with the original master tapes during a recent one-hour special on the making of the album. Replaying the original tracks on a massive studio board allowed the producers to discuss how various individual tracks were recorded as well as how the tracks were mixed together. Deconstructing and then reassembling the songs on this masterfully produced album delivered rare insight into the creative process in a rock studio. Other than John Carluccio's Battle Sounds: A Hip-Hop DJ Documentary, the possibilities for an intelligent presentation of hip hop music remains untapped. Imagine an hour show devoted to the making of Mecca and the Soul Brother with Pete Rock sitting in his studio rechopping the beats for one of the tracks and then leafing through the records and sounds that didn't quite mesh on a certain track; or envision a comprehensive library or museum: records cataloged and accessible by hip hop producers and original artists; interactive samplers, sequencers, and studio boards; and collectors such as Soulman giving tours and presentations??? Perhaps the lingering D.ST./Bambaataa argument would be settled although, most likely, the argument would gain in complexity. The position of the authentic collector and producer would no longer be as threatened, rather their archeology of knowledge and technological acumen would be celebrated and contextualized as a significant artistic contribution in the history and culture of American music.Come Into Knowledge[/b]VI. For now, the networked, underground dissemination of knowledge of beats and samples must suffice, and Soulman's mix tapes, articles, and web site offer the widest perspective because he takes more worthwhile chances than others. For instance, by chopping up sampled sounds live on his mix tapes, Soulman attempts to recreate the grooves that a producer, such as DJ Premier, has crafted. He says, "I could just play the original, but you have GOT to hear how he disassembled the record and reconstructed it to get the full effect??? THEN I play the original." Still, the actual technique of assembly and reassembly may be hard to grasp entirely, but for aficionados, certain tracks from Gangstarr's last album Moment of Truth are "just incredible when you hear the originals." Like any genius composer, we ask how did Premier ever think of selecting, chopping, and recontextualizing that particular sound with the rest of the track?Initially, I was critical of the vague wonder often directed at a producer's ability to compose with samples. Even DJ Shadow's description of his sampling tactics probably mystifies anyone not familiar with the pads and knobs of a digital sampler. Maybe all that we can do as the audience is be moved by the most original and affecting recordings. Significantly, the audience can, in a sense, interact with hip hop producers by unraveling their work and re-collecting the sampled fragments. In this space, the narrative of hip hop culture intertwines (again) with the culture of record collectors and dissipates the difference between producer and consumer. According to Robert Opie, curator and collector of the Museum of Packaging and Advertising in Gloucester, England, "The point of collecting things is not just to concentrate on objects but to understand how things have evolved in the historical context in which you are collecting."31 So rather than freely disperse hip hop's history of sampled sounds, Spinna, Soulman and others with rare groove radio shows or club nights hope to perpetuate the culture of record collectors by spinning narratives within narratives about records and samples, thereby inspiring others to decipher who sampled what and when, and even possibly why. Now, the audience refuels this economy by unraveling and collecting the source material. After a nice hip hop track or a deft mix of the original grooves is transmitted, the knowledgeable listeners spread the crucial information: artists, songs, labels, years, record covers, and maybe a record store to check out. Then, a few dedicated souls seek further information or an original vinyl pressing as the whole culture of collecting reinvents and reinvigorates itself.For instance, let's say I want to track down one of the samples from Tribe Called Quest's classic first album People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm because so many of the tracks have now legendary sources. The loop from "Bonita Applebum" is lifted from R.A.M..P.'s (Roy Ayers Music Project) "Daylight" from the 1977 album Come Into Knowledge on Blue Thumb. I could quickly find a compilation or bootleg with the track at any of a number of hip hop shops, but only the original vinyl pressing holds legitimacy. Soulman's mix tapes include a statement of his collecting abilities, "All originals. No compilations, bootlegs, reissues, DATs, etc."32 After Tribe Called Quest sampled the original vinyl, that is the only artifact that holds any cultural significance. This record has long been one of the holy grails of collectors. Copies priced around $100 occasionally appear on the wall at The Sound Library or A-1 in the East Village or at Dusty Groove33 before quickly vanishing. Many diehard collectors won't pay such extravagant prices. Rather, they relentlessly search every possible locale knowing or hoping that Come Into Knowledge will magically appear in the dollar bins of some unknowing dealer. Since this record, for the most part, is only collectable because of Tribe's uncredited theft, many long time used and rare record dealers have remained in the dark, primarily due to an utter lack of understanding of hip hop's recycling of their very commodity. Once an original pressing is uncovered (my search for an affordable copy of R.A.M.P.'s Come Into Knowledge is ongoing), one more rare groove record and a narrative of its discovery will be added to the collection.All collectors can take a visitor on a virtual tour of their collection indulging in the stories behind remarkable and noteworthy retrievals. In Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library," he muses on the significance of reflecting upon one's collection, "For a true collector the whole background of an item adds up to a magic encyclopedia."34 I often wonder abo
ut previous ownership and use. Trades with a known owner add another layer to the background of an artifact. On the recent compilation, Funk Spectrum, renowned rare 45 collector DJ Keb Darge traces the journey of a few of the selections by providing a narrative genealogy:Now here's the story. Initially I got Mickey and the Soul Generation "Get Down Brother" from Snowboy for a Dee Felice Trio swap. I then swapped it with Malcolm Cato for The Roadrunners (track 3 here) and a Leon Gardner track which appears on Deep Funk Volume 2 (BBE). I then got another copy of "Get Down" by giving Josh [co-compiler Josh Davis a.k.a. DJ Shadow] my Timothy McNealy (Deep Funk Volume 1). If only there were a few more copies of each record it wouldn't be so complicated.35Keb Darg's collection on the BBE (Barely Breaking Even) label does share these rare funk 45s precisely because they are so impossibly scarce. Most of the originals were releases on tiny local, independent labels with extremely limited distribution and pressings. The funkiest tracks were played to death in neighborhood jukeboxes alongside James Brown and Meters 45s. Any surviving copies in playable condition would certainly have an even longer narrative surrounding their entire existence. Hearing such artifacts today speaks of their original cultural context and use-value. With this in mind, Keb Darge had to convince Josh Davis to contribute ten selections to this compilation, a format much denigrated by Davis himself. Like Bambaataa before him, Keb Darge desired to share his archeological work "with other music lovers," and rather than profit himself from the reissue, he has attempted to licence each track legitimately. When Benjamin says, "To a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth,"36 he could be referring to the invaluable 45s collected and reissued on the Funk Spectrum series. The rest of Keb Darge and Josh Davis' collection remain a mystery to us, "Only in extinction is the collector comprehended,"37 and then only partially, for even though these artifacts speak for themselves, the little narratives that encapsulate their entire existence are rarely apprehended.Hip hop records speak of other records, and now sampled records speak of hip hop records. Collectors trace the signification back to its original source and then allow the original to spin multiple narratives. Native American novelist Leslie Marmon Silko explains such narratives within narratives, "Whatever the event or subject, the ancient people perceived the world and themselves within that world as part of an ancient, continuous story composed of bundles of other stories."38 Such narratives build alternative communities and cultural memory. Elsner and Cardinal identify their impulse in the larger context of all those who collect, "The history of collecting is thus a narrative of how human beings have striven to accommodate and to extend the taxonomies and systems they have inherited."39 The narrative of record collecting continues to be written and revised. Just as collage feeds off the remnants of culture, the reader or the collector is summoned to participate in a kind of grazing which refuses to deplete its source since energy is endlessly restored and refurbished. Collectors practice sustainable development that creates a sustainable community complete with musical heritage. Because of the self-propelled energy of collectors, Soulman says, "New discoveries seem to pop up every day." Mike van Olden, notorious for releasing a number of well known breakbeat collections, adds, "When you start looking for beats, all of a sudden you become a collector."40 "Beat shopping is a culture," adds DJ Shadow,41 and reaching the status of a "collector" permits access to the culture of beats and samples.The record collector network continues to proliferate. Soon-to-be legendary shops such as A-1 and the Sound Library attest to this phenomenon. Now record collecting, especially for hip hop and its sources, has widely-available printed maps besides the collector network. The Sample FAQ web site provides an ever-expanding range of structured sample data for the beginner and the most devoted collector. The proprietor of the site hopes to add energy to the pool of collectors with the help of the internet. Some beat-miners and producers, as we have seen, probably object to such a philosophy, and hip hop's central debate persists in another context primarily because the community of hip hop collectors would prefer to authentically disseminate its own cultural codes.DiscographyJohn Coltrane. My Favorite Things. Atlantic, 1961.Fleetwood Mac. Rumours. Warner Brothers, 1977.Funk Spectrum: Real Music for Real People. Compiled by Keb Darge and Josh Davis. BBE, 1999.Gangstarr. Moment of Truth. Noo Trybe, 1998.Leroy Hutson. "More Where That Came From." Unforgettable. Curtom, 1979.Jeru the Damaja. "Come Clean." Payday, 1993.Shelly Manne. "Infinity." Mannekind. Mainstream, 1972Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth. Mecca and the Soul Brother. Electra, 1992.R.A.M..P. "Daylight." Come Into Knowledge. Blue Thumb, 1977.DJ Shadow. Endtroducing .... Mo Wax, 1996.???. "High Noon." Preemptive Strike. Mo Wax, 1997.Joe Simon. "Drowning in the Sea of Love." Drowning in the Sea of Love. Spring, 1970Soulman. World of Beats. Vol I-III. Philasoul Recordings, 1998-9.Tribe Called Quest. People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm Jive, 1989.Various Artists. Ultimate Breaks and Beats. Vol. 1-Vol. 25. Street Beat Records.Notes1. See David Sanjek, "'Don't Have to DJ No More': Sampling and the 'Autonomous' Creator," Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 10.2 (1992): 607-624.2. Ibid., 610.3. "Tribe Vibes, Volume 2 Review." Rock & Rap Confidential , May 1988, 7.4. Chairman Mao. "The Knights of the Turntables," Rap Pages , April 1996, 48-54. p. 53.5. David Toop, Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop (New York: Serpent's Tail, 1991): 193.6. Chairman Mao, 53.7. Peanut Butter Wolf, interview by author, 24 August 1999.8. Gangstarr. Moment of Truth, Noo Trybe, 1998.9. Rob Carrigan, (Co-owner of The Sound Library Record Shop), interview b author, 24 July 1998.10. "Soulman Interview." Online. 9 December 1998. : 2.11. Greg Rule, "DJ Shadow + Akai MPC 'History,'" Keyboard , Oct 1997, 51+. p.55.12. Ibid., 56.13. Ibid., 59.14. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel," Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (New York: New Directions, 1962): 51-58. p.53.15. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose. (New York: Harvest, 1983): 286.16. Ibid., 508, 511-12.17. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. (New York: Oxford UP, 1988): 51.18. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal. "Introduction." The Cultures of Collecting eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994) 1-6. p.1.19. Soulman, interview by author, 22 January 1999 and 25 March 1999.20. Ibid.21His web page collects all his articles and more.22. Soulman, "A World of Beats," Vol.1-17, Online,23. April 1999, .23David Toop, Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop (New York: Serpent's Tail 1991): 18.24. Ibid.25. John Oswald, "Fairly Used: Negativland's U2 and the Precarious Practice of Acoustic Appropriation," Unpublished essay. p.22.26. Soulman, interview by author.27. John Oswald, "Creatigality," Sounding Off: Music as Subversion/Resistance/ Revolution, eds. Ron Sakolsky and Fred Wei-Han Ho (New York: Autonomedia, 1995). p.89.28. Ibid., p.88.29. Ibid., p.89.30. Quoted in Harland, Richard. Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuraliism (New York: Methuen, 1987): 135.31. Quoted in John Windsor, "Identity Parades," The Cultures of Collecting, eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994): 49-67. p.55.32. Soulman. World of Beats. Vol I-II, Philasoul Recordings, 1998-9.33.br
/>34. Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968): 59-67. p.60.35. Funk Spectrum: Real Music for Real People, Compiled by Keb Darge and Josh Davis, BBE, 1999.36. Benjamin, 61.37. Ibid., 67.38. Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996): 81.39. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, "Introduction," The Cultures of Collecting, eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994): 1-6. p.2.40. Quoted in Soulman, "A World of Beats," Vol. 12.41. Quoted in Greg Rule, "DJ Shadow + Akai MPC ' History."
and Beats first came out, it gave me a starting point. A lot of great hip hop records were made from that collection."7Still, today's hip hop tracks are made using the beats compiled on the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series. Furthermore, Bambaataa was correct in his assertion that there were, in the words of Leroy Hutson, "more where that came from." In the 1990s, hip hop DJs and producers have mined more beats, loops and grooves than even the originators would have thought possible. Other breakbeat and sample collections, some legitimate but many bootlegs, continue to be released at a rapid rate???collecting the latest rare grooves and often documenting who sampled what and when. Of course, like D.ST., the release of these collections still rankles those who first used the grooves."Jackin' sounds from records"[/b]II. Betraying a hip hop producer's sources has developed into a profitable industry. Before a track on Gangstarr's 1998 album Moment of Truth, DJ Premier, widely acknowledged as one of the best hip hop producers, declares:What's the deal with all you break record cats putting out all the original records that we sample from and snitching by putting us on the back of it saying we used stuff. You know how that goes. Stop doing that. You are violating. You don't know what hip hop is all about.8Premier's choice of the word "snitching" is appropriate. Most samples and even more beats, today, are not officially cleared. Skilled producers such as Premier know who they can sample from and who they shouldn't. Usually, samples are then reworked???sped up, slowed down, chopped, faded, flanged, chopped and/or rewired???so that they barely resemble the original. A useful example of this process can be found on Gangstarr's Moment of Truth with the track "You Know My Steeze." To provide the melody, Premier masterfully chops up a guitar lick from a common soul record that, according to Rob Carrigan of the Sound Library, "We all had been looking at for years":9 Joe Simon's "Drowning in the Sea of Love." Even though the sample is uncredited, the re-conceived melody is so instantly memorable that the hunt for the source begins as soon as the song hits the airwaves. Within weeks, Premier's work is unmasked, the knowledge quickly circulated, and all the cheap Joe Simon records have disappeared. Since there are not enough copies of "Drowning in the Sea of Love" to satisfy the demand of collectors, the song quickly finds its way onto on a number of bootleg compilations that clearly advertise Premier's jacking of the track. By this time, Premier should indeed be concerned about being sued. Ironically, according to the legendary beatminer Soulman, "Hip hop is [and has always been] about jackin' sounds from records."10In the late 1980s, the advent of digital samplers significantly impacted the manner in which hip hop tracks were constructed and, in the process, altered the role of the DJ, the original sampler. Digital samplers isolated cropped fragments of sound with ease, and then the fragments could be looped, layered, or both in as dense or sparse a fashion as desired. As the classic break records became rarer, pricier, and overused, several artists including Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and the Beastie Boys took sampling in fresh directions by raiding extensive archives of records with a variety of startling, innovative techniques.DJ Shadow, the latest sampling savant, explains: "Cutting and pasting is the essence of what hip-hop culture is all about for me. It's about drawing from what's around you, and subverting it and decontextualizing it."11 His first full length album Endtroducing???. was composed entirely with countless vinyl-based samples which, as his liner notes suggest, "reflect a lifetime of vinyl culture." Influenced by the beat chopping methodology of Premier, Pete Rock, and Large Professor, Shadow found creative ways to loop a chopped beat with his sampler of choice, the Akai MPC60, and make it sound as natural as a pre-existing loop. He explains his reason for sampling the soundless air space off a record:So let's say you've sampled little pieces of a loop, and you don't want to make it sound choppy. You don't want to hear the decay cut off on the snare or whatever, or no ambiance on the kick. So I like to give it ambiance if it's not already there. Sometimes I'll just sample air off the record and lay that in. That's where the fade comes in???. It creates a softness that blends in, and essentially there isn't ever any empty space.12Sometimes, though, an unexpected sound can bleed into the chops. For "The Number Song," Shadow sampled a breakbeat that had a vocalist singing "huh, yeah, come on." He chopped the beat into 16 parts and only sampled the drum sounds where the vocalist wasn't singing. The resulting track, though, didn't entirely omit his voice, as Shadow explains: "If you listen carefully, you can hear the reverb of the guy talking, but you can't hear what he's saying. So it gives the break a kind of eerie heaviness, a tone."13 Shadow also identifies other found techniques such as time-extending (accomplished by repeating a certain note of a sample) and time-stretching (chopping a sample and then fading in/fading out each chop to morph the sample at a different tempo). Astonishingly, a more recent DJ Shadow track, "High Noon," was composed with almost 100 drum chops!The Record Collector's Labyrinth[/b]III. Jorge Luis Borges's representation of the infinite library in his story "The Library of Babel" provides an apt metaphor for the endless recombinant potential inherent in digitally sampling records. His mysterious labyrinth contains all combinations of all words and letters; "For every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences."14 Borges's choice of musical description evokes a library of sounds, much like the worldwide supply of records. The texts, and the records, silently wait for someone to unlock their mystery. Borges's official searchers, known as library "inquisitors," struggle mightily to make any sense of the library or its catalogs. Few inquisitors uncover something useful while endlessly perusing room after room of books. Yet only then, possible patterns or theories emerge. The hours spent searching for records and then searching each and every record groove by groove, regardless of genre, artist, or cover, would rival the work of Borges's inquisitors. Likewise, only a handful of expert producers out of the multitudes can continuously locate samples, loops, and beats, and then artistically stitch them together to form a dope track.Of course, Borges's library was generously sampled by Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose. Eco's labyrinthine library also has a sinister element:It was then the place of a long centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.15Discarded albums also have a life of their own in the hands of a producer. Tracks composed entirely of samples retransmit and reinvigorate out-of-circulation sound data that can evoke distant cultural memory in the listener or imprint new memories. The multitude of previously recorded sounds survives well past those who had originally recorded the sounds, and the original recordings often have a second life, especially in this golden age of reissues. The vinyl archive is indeed a living entity ever mutating with much external exposed knowledge and even more shrouded archaic secrets.Eco theorizes on the nature of his sampling at end of his novel. He admits that his heavy reading of medieval texts has slipped perceptively and often unconsciously into his composition. When interrogating his material, he clearly sees "the recollection of the culture with which it is loaded (the echo of intertextuality)??? books always speak of other bo
oks, and every story tells a story that has already been told."16 The echo of intertextuality accurately describes the aesthetic of sampling. In The Signifying Monkey, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. terms this process "signifying," which "always entails formal revision and an intertextual relation."17 Hip hop records always speak of other records; samples re-inscribe already inscribed sounds.Collector's Culture[/b]IV. Producers such as Shadow and Premier, record store owners such as Rob Carrigan, and true hip hop devotees are collectors at heart. Such collectors often look for a way to legitimize the act of collecting and elevate their passion for collecting to an art. The editors of The Cultures of Collecting, John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, define the collecting impulse as "desire and nostalgia, saving and loss, the urge to erect a permanent and complete system against the destructiveness of time."18 The collections themselves provide a material history of music intertwined with memory.Soulman is one such collector. He remembers hearing old school DJs such as Bambaataa and Flash spinning "ill breakbeats" and wondering, "Oh my god!!! What is THAT??" Their work inspired him to begin collecting breakbeats, a task which he has been doing for around twenty years. He has such a detailed knowledge of the wide world of beats that many of the best hip hop producers seek his knowledge and records. Not only did he absorb the pure love of breakbeats from the pioneers, but he has strong feelings about the manner in which one attains this archeology of knowledge. When asked about the art of record collecting, he said:I can't give up all the secrets, but it's important for people to study records, get familiar with labels, memorize covers, pay attention to what players are on the hot records because the same names usually can be found on other dope joints. Talk to other collectors and dealers and just soak up all the info you can like a sponge.19Soulman's uniformly sublime World of Beats mix tape series of grooves and beats gives the hip hop audience an opportunity to hear the sources of their favorite tracks and "hopefully get a new, deeper appreciation for hip hop music." Adding arcane source material that has yet to be sampled to the mix imagines possible futures for hip hop tracks. World of Beats doesn't list either kind of source even though some listeners have tried to tap deeply into Soulman's considerable knowledge. To this, he replies, "Part of the game is about secrecy. People who really want to know stuff should find out the old fashioned way???buy records, LISTEN to records."20Soulman initially received attention for his groundbreaking "World of Beats" column which first appeared in the April 1994 issue of Rap Pages.21 The series of articles unmasked the underground network of hip hop producers and beat collectors and remains an influential resource in my research. Since each column included a list of ten rare beats-to-find, Soulman received some criticism for freely dispersing "trade secrets." One of his columns, "To Give Away the Beats or Not to Give Away the Beats, That is the Question," addresses the debate that has remained central in hip hop culture. After espousing his love of beats, music, and collecting, he takes on each charge point by point. He concludes, "The fact of the matter is that there are literally thousands and thousands of records with beats on them. I could give away twenty a month for the next ten years and still not even scratch the surface."22 Soulman's position is decidedly closer to Bambaataa's vision of sharing beats with Lenny Roberts for his Ultimate Breaks and Beats Series than to D.ST.'s preference for closely guarding the DJ's secret tools. While Soulman's Top Ten Beats of the Month might fuel the novice collector's quest to achieve authenticity in the ever-expanding circle of beat collectors, the lists pays respect to the always authentic collectors who already have an encyclopedic knowledge of beats.Similarly, at a recent Kool Keith show at Tramps in New York City, DJ Spinna, an underground producer of note, provided the between set entertainment by first playing many classic underground tracks. Later, he spliced together a lengthy series of sampled breaks. His MC explained that Spinna was providing a piece of hip hop history for all the beatheads in attendance. Clearly, Spinna's purpose leaned towards educating the audience, albeit without easily accessible codes to decipher the information. I doubt Spinna feels the need to soak the labels off his rare break records, yet his mix of samples presents his position of legitimacy, a position he is unlikely to openly share. Rather, Spinna and Soulman cast interest on the architecture of the hip hop songs that unite the underground beathead culture. Hearing the initial and instantly recognizable drum pattern from Jeru the Damaja's check classic "Come Clean" single from 1993 provides a unique thrill; learning the beat is from a Shelly Manne record, and then tracking down an original pressing of this now hard-to-find oddity (and NOT buying a bootleg compilation of the producer DJ Premier's sources) expands the culture of collectors, one record and one collector at a time.Backspinning Signifying[/b]V. In a way, recognizing a sample in its original context and then being reminded of a hip hop artist's extrapolation of the sample replicates but also reverses a phenomenon found in the pioneer DJ's playlists. Amidst the rare and obscure breaks and needle drops, they might have dissected a popular disco tune that the audience would normally recognize. A hip hop sample is first signified on the original recording; the audience would often experience pleasure in recognizing beats such as a dismembered and looped James Brown break. Yet, by isolating and repeating the drum break, the original song was transformed into something new and fresh, something that part of the audience might partially recognize. As David Toop indicates, "The beauty of dismembering hits lies in displacing familiarity."23 In a similar fashion, many jazz artists (John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," for example) superimposed daring explorations of the popular tunes of the day onto their improvisations. Toop also equates the audience's response to breakbeat compositions with jazz reinterpretations, "[Breakbeat] gives the same thrill that visitors to Minton's Playhouse must have felt in the 1940s hearing Charlie Parker carve up standards like 'I Got Rhythm.'"24Such reinterpretations often call into question the tropes of the original, defy authoritative versions, problematize ownership, and offer a liberating means of accessing past cultural material. In "Fairly Used," an essay about Negativland's unlawful appropriation of a U2 song and Casey Kasem dialogue, David Sanjek asks, "How often does a sampled musical quotation bring about a reinvestigation or reconsideration of the material's source?"25 I wonder if a sampled music quotation must provide such cultural commentary on the original recording. In hip hop today, because of the utter obscurity or strangeness in many hip hop samples, hearing the original material for the first time after it has been sampled oddly signifies back upon the hip hop track; here, the audience experiences the pleasure of understanding from what or even sometimes how a hip hop track was constructed by recognizing a certain sample and then reflecting on how a hip hop artist sampled and manipulated that information into something very new and unique. As Soulman asserts, "Believe me, hearing the original just makes you love the sampled version even more."26 Here, the original comments on the hip hop sample and adds a fresh perspective to both groove creators. John Oswald's term Plunderphonics possibly covers sampling and sampling samples: "the counter-covert world of converted sound and retrofitted music, where collective melodic memories of the familiar are minced and rehabilitated to a new life."27 For Oswald, such "healthy trading of ideas and sounds,"28 as on Soulman's compilations, promotes creative l
istening which often "stimulates interest in the electronically 'quoted' artists"29 or in the artist who first included the 'quotation.'Considering the history of shady deals and unpaid royalties countless black artists have endured in America, hip hop DJs and producers who sample are perhaps unknowingly working on a massive re-clamation project, a substantial recuperation of cultural capital. If gospel, blues, jazz, r & b, soul, funk all signify within their own traditions and between the other traditions, a singular continuum of music transference and memory is un-doubtedly culturally visible. The free cir-culation of musical tropes is reminiscent of Jacques Derrida's notion of the endless play of signification where "one signifier points to another signifier, which in turn points to another signifier, which in turn points away to another signifier, and so on ad infinitum."30 By subverting copyright legalities, collectors and plunderers are returning what has come to be virtually unrewarded or unrecognized personal property back to the public domain with its sustainable economy of unrestricted movement and sharing. The raw materiality of dense record collections, especially the heaviest sampled era???the jazz, soul, funk of the late 1960s to the late 1970s???impart agency to their collective owners and suggest a broader understanding of the musical heritage of African Americans. Celebrating such a collection, exemplified by Soulman's compilations, represents a liberating practice of plunderphonics and might provide the strongest argument for the free circulation and dissemination of the collector's knowledge of beats and samples.Ultimately, we need an interactive library or series of documentaries to authenticate and chronicle the architecture of hip hop tracks and the culture of beat collectors. VH-1 wisely brought the producers of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours back into the studio with the original master tapes during a recent one-hour special on the making of the album. Replaying the original tracks on a massive studio board allowed the producers to discuss how various individual tracks were recorded as well as how the tracks were mixed together. Deconstructing and then reassembling the songs on this masterfully produced album delivered rare insight into the creative process in a rock studio. Other than John Carluccio's Battle Sounds: A Hip-Hop DJ Documentary, the possibilities for an intelligent presentation of hip hop music remains untapped. Imagine an hour show devoted to the making of Mecca and the Soul Brother with Pete Rock sitting in his studio rechopping the beats for one of the tracks and then leafing through the records and sounds that didn't quite mesh on a certain track; or envision a comprehensive library or museum: records cataloged and accessible by hip hop producers and original artists; interactive samplers, sequencers, and studio boards; and collectors such as Soulman giving tours and presentations??? Perhaps the lingering D.ST./Bambaataa argument would be settled although, most likely, the argument would gain in complexity. The position of the authentic collector and producer would no longer be as threatened, rather their archeology of knowledge and technological acumen would be celebrated and contextualized as a significant artistic contribution in the history and culture of American music.Come Into Knowledge[/b]VI. For now, the networked, underground dissemination of knowledge of beats and samples must suffice, and Soulman's mix tapes, articles, and web site offer the widest perspective because he takes more worthwhile chances than others. For instance, by chopping up sampled sounds live on his mix tapes, Soulman attempts to recreate the grooves that a producer, such as DJ Premier, has crafted. He says, "I could just play the original, but you have GOT to hear how he disassembled the record and reconstructed it to get the full effect??? THEN I play the original." Still, the actual technique of assembly and reassembly may be hard to grasp entirely, but for aficionados, certain tracks from Gangstarr's last album Moment of Truth are "just incredible when you hear the originals." Like any genius composer, we ask how did Premier ever think of selecting, chopping, and recontextualizing that particular sound with the rest of the track?Initially, I was critical of the vague wonder often directed at a producer's ability to compose with samples. Even DJ Shadow's description of his sampling tactics probably mystifies anyone not familiar with the pads and knobs of a digital sampler. Maybe all that we can do as the audience is be moved by the most original and affecting recordings. Significantly, the audience can, in a sense, interact with hip hop producers by unraveling their work and re-collecting the sampled fragments. In this space, the narrative of hip hop culture intertwines (again) with the culture of record collectors and dissipates the difference between producer and consumer. According to Robert Opie, curator and collector of the Museum of Packaging and Advertising in Gloucester, England, "The point of collecting things is not just to concentrate on objects but to understand how things have evolved in the historical context in which you are collecting."31 So rather than freely disperse hip hop's history of sampled sounds, Spinna, Soulman and others with rare groove radio shows or club nights hope to perpetuate the culture of record collectors by spinning narratives within narratives about records and samples, thereby inspiring others to decipher who sampled what and when, and even possibly why. Now, the audience refuels this economy by unraveling and collecting the source material. After a nice hip hop track or a deft mix of the original grooves is transmitted, the knowledgeable listeners spread the crucial information: artists, songs, labels, years, record covers, and maybe a record store to check out. Then, a few dedicated souls seek further information or an original vinyl pressing as the whole culture of collecting reinvents and reinvigorates itself.For instance, let's say I want to track down one of the samples from Tribe Called Quest's classic first album People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm because so many of the tracks have now legendary sources. The loop from "Bonita Applebum" is lifted from R.A.M..P.'s (Roy Ayers Music Project) "Daylight" from the 1977 album Come Into Knowledge on Blue Thumb. I could quickly find a compilation or bootleg with the track at any of a number of hip hop shops, but only the original vinyl pressing holds legitimacy. Soulman's mix tapes include a statement of his collecting abilities, "All originals. No compilations, bootlegs, reissues, DATs, etc."32 After Tribe Called Quest sampled the original vinyl, that is the only artifact that holds any cultural significance. This record has long been one of the holy grails of collectors. Copies priced around $100 occasionally appear on the wall at The Sound Library or A-1 in the East Village or at Dusty Groove33 before quickly vanishing. Many diehard collectors won't pay such extravagant prices. Rather, they relentlessly search every possible locale knowing or hoping that Come Into Knowledge will magically appear in the dollar bins of some unknowing dealer. Since this record, for the most part, is only collectable because of Tribe's uncredited theft, many long time used and rare record dealers have remained in the dark, primarily due to an utter lack of understanding of hip hop's recycling of their very commodity. Once an original pressing is uncovered (my search for an affordable copy of R.A.M.P.'s Come Into Knowledge is ongoing), one more rare groove record and a narrative of its discovery will be added to the collection.All collectors can take a visitor on a virtual tour of their collection indulging in the stories behind remarkable and noteworthy retrievals. In Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library," he muses on the significance of reflecting upon one's collection, "For a true collector the whole background of an item adds up to a magic encyclopedia."34 I often wonder abo
ut previous ownership and use. Trades with a known owner add another layer to the background of an artifact. On the recent compilation, Funk Spectrum, renowned rare 45 collector DJ Keb Darge traces the journey of a few of the selections by providing a narrative genealogy:Now here's the story. Initially I got Mickey and the Soul Generation "Get Down Brother" from Snowboy for a Dee Felice Trio swap. I then swapped it with Malcolm Cato for The Roadrunners (track 3 here) and a Leon Gardner track which appears on Deep Funk Volume 2 (BBE). I then got another copy of "Get Down" by giving Josh [co-compiler Josh Davis a.k.a. DJ Shadow] my Timothy McNealy (Deep Funk Volume 1). If only there were a few more copies of each record it wouldn't be so complicated.35Keb Darg's collection on the BBE (Barely Breaking Even) label does share these rare funk 45s precisely because they are so impossibly scarce. Most of the originals were releases on tiny local, independent labels with extremely limited distribution and pressings. The funkiest tracks were played to death in neighborhood jukeboxes alongside James Brown and Meters 45s. Any surviving copies in playable condition would certainly have an even longer narrative surrounding their entire existence. Hearing such artifacts today speaks of their original cultural context and use-value. With this in mind, Keb Darge had to convince Josh Davis to contribute ten selections to this compilation, a format much denigrated by Davis himself. Like Bambaataa before him, Keb Darge desired to share his archeological work "with other music lovers," and rather than profit himself from the reissue, he has attempted to licence each track legitimately. When Benjamin says, "To a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth,"36 he could be referring to the invaluable 45s collected and reissued on the Funk Spectrum series. The rest of Keb Darge and Josh Davis' collection remain a mystery to us, "Only in extinction is the collector comprehended,"37 and then only partially, for even though these artifacts speak for themselves, the little narratives that encapsulate their entire existence are rarely apprehended.Hip hop records speak of other records, and now sampled records speak of hip hop records. Collectors trace the signification back to its original source and then allow the original to spin multiple narratives. Native American novelist Leslie Marmon Silko explains such narratives within narratives, "Whatever the event or subject, the ancient people perceived the world and themselves within that world as part of an ancient, continuous story composed of bundles of other stories."38 Such narratives build alternative communities and cultural memory. Elsner and Cardinal identify their impulse in the larger context of all those who collect, "The history of collecting is thus a narrative of how human beings have striven to accommodate and to extend the taxonomies and systems they have inherited."39 The narrative of record collecting continues to be written and revised. Just as collage feeds off the remnants of culture, the reader or the collector is summoned to participate in a kind of grazing which refuses to deplete its source since energy is endlessly restored and refurbished. Collectors practice sustainable development that creates a sustainable community complete with musical heritage. Because of the self-propelled energy of collectors, Soulman says, "New discoveries seem to pop up every day." Mike van Olden, notorious for releasing a number of well known breakbeat collections, adds, "When you start looking for beats, all of a sudden you become a collector."40 "Beat shopping is a culture," adds DJ Shadow,41 and reaching the status of a "collector" permits access to the culture of beats and samples.The record collector network continues to proliferate. Soon-to-be legendary shops such as A-1 and the Sound Library attest to this phenomenon. Now record collecting, especially for hip hop and its sources, has widely-available printed maps besides the collector network. The Sample FAQ web site provides an ever-expanding range of structured sample data for the beginner and the most devoted collector. The proprietor of the site hopes to add energy to the pool of collectors with the help of the internet. Some beat-miners and producers, as we have seen, probably object to such a philosophy, and hip hop's central debate persists in another context primarily because the community of hip hop collectors would prefer to authentically disseminate its own cultural codes.DiscographyJohn Coltrane. My Favorite Things. Atlantic, 1961.Fleetwood Mac. Rumours. Warner Brothers, 1977.Funk Spectrum: Real Music for Real People. Compiled by Keb Darge and Josh Davis. BBE, 1999.Gangstarr. Moment of Truth. Noo Trybe, 1998.Leroy Hutson. "More Where That Came From." Unforgettable. Curtom, 1979.Jeru the Damaja. "Come Clean." Payday, 1993.Shelly Manne. "Infinity." Mannekind. Mainstream, 1972Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth. Mecca and the Soul Brother. Electra, 1992.R.A.M..P. "Daylight." Come Into Knowledge. Blue Thumb, 1977.DJ Shadow. Endtroducing .... Mo Wax, 1996.???. "High Noon." Preemptive Strike. Mo Wax, 1997.Joe Simon. "Drowning in the Sea of Love." Drowning in the Sea of Love. Spring, 1970Soulman. World of Beats. Vol I-III. Philasoul Recordings, 1998-9.Tribe Called Quest. People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm Jive, 1989.Various Artists. Ultimate Breaks and Beats. Vol. 1-Vol. 25. Street Beat Records.Notes1. See David Sanjek, "'Don't Have to DJ No More': Sampling and the 'Autonomous' Creator," Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 10.2 (1992): 607-624.2. Ibid., 610.3. "Tribe Vibes, Volume 2 Review." Rock & Rap Confidential , May 1988, 7.4. Chairman Mao. "The Knights of the Turntables," Rap Pages , April 1996, 48-54. p. 53.5. David Toop, Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop (New York: Serpent's Tail, 1991): 193.6. Chairman Mao, 53.7. Peanut Butter Wolf, interview by author, 24 August 1999.8. Gangstarr. Moment of Truth, Noo Trybe, 1998.9. Rob Carrigan, (Co-owner of The Sound Library Record Shop), interview b author, 24 July 1998.10. "Soulman Interview." Online. 9 December 1998. : 2.11. Greg Rule, "DJ Shadow + Akai MPC 'History,'" Keyboard , Oct 1997, 51+. p.55.12. Ibid., 56.13. Ibid., 59.14. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel," Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (New York: New Directions, 1962): 51-58. p.53.15. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose. (New York: Harvest, 1983): 286.16. Ibid., 508, 511-12.17. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. (New York: Oxford UP, 1988): 51.18. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal. "Introduction." The Cultures of Collecting eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994) 1-6. p.1.19. Soulman, interview by author, 22 January 1999 and 25 March 1999.20. Ibid.21His web page collects all his articles and more.22. Soulman, "A World of Beats," Vol.1-17, Online,23. April 1999, .23David Toop, Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop (New York: Serpent's Tail 1991): 18.24. Ibid.25. John Oswald, "Fairly Used: Negativland's U2 and the Precarious Practice of Acoustic Appropriation," Unpublished essay. p.22.26. Soulman, interview by author.27. John Oswald, "Creatigality," Sounding Off: Music as Subversion/Resistance/ Revolution, eds. Ron Sakolsky and Fred Wei-Han Ho (New York: Autonomedia, 1995). p.89.28. Ibid., p.88.29. Ibid., p.89.30. Quoted in Harland, Richard. Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuraliism (New York: Methuen, 1987): 135.31. Quoted in John Windsor, "Identity Parades," The Cultures of Collecting, eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994): 49-67. p.55.32. Soulman. World of Beats. Vol I-II, Philasoul Recordings, 1998-9.33.br
/>34. Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968): 59-67. p.60.35. Funk Spectrum: Real Music for Real People, Compiled by Keb Darge and Josh Davis, BBE, 1999.36. Benjamin, 61.37. Ibid., 67.38. Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996): 81.39. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, "Introduction," The Cultures of Collecting, eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994): 1-6. p.2.40. Quoted in Soulman, "A World of Beats," Vol. 12.41. Quoted in Greg Rule, "DJ Shadow + Akai MPC ' History."
Comments
YES
Thanks for posting that Duder, it must have taken you ages to type.
I'm a little closer to understanding what hip hop is now; next up, please post an essay on the difference between rap and hip hop.
OKTHXNBAI
By whom?
Wynton Marselis for one.....
He never mentioned sampling.
At this point in the game Marsalis presents a zero percent threat The Rapp.
Probably by the musicians who started asking "Hey! That was me playing drums? Where's my cut?", or by the rockist types that I meet to this day who believe that to be a musician is to play an instrument, that any band worthy of the name write and perform their own material, that we judge music on how and whom it is performed by. For said dudes, a live performance devoid of any studio trickery is the true measure of a band and their music, as the musicians and the listeners are both active participants in an experience that can never be repeated. Recorded music is then already a pale imitation. Sampling is theft.
I don't agree with this view, but if you haven't come across this prejudice, in some degree or other, then you're lucky. Or unlucky, if you're the argumentative type.
The folks I come across w/ these views have been stupid and irrelevant to the artform.
Which is exactly why you'd have to address them in an essay, because they're not gonna see the light based on how dope someone flips a break.
There are people in places of high regard (depends on how you value them though), who have a lot of influence on developing young musicians that discredit sampling with a religulous zeal. Lots of college music professors discredit sampling, but they're also the types that discredit Cage, Reich, Riley, et cetera. Getting through to these people isn't an entirely lost cause.
b/w
No one has to prove anything to anyone, but it never hurts to prove your relevance to those that would otherwise write you off as irrelevant--even if they never admit it.
Yo Batmon- That was just the first person who popped into my head, cus I read an article by Wynton once where he did attack hip hop on its lack of musical structure etc bascially he was apply the jazz/classical rules of music onto hip hop and then saying 'see it aint music'. they forget that music doesnt follow the rules...
Moving on.... I saw Herbie Hancok on the Elvis Costello show (funny enough after reading this essay) and he said two things which jumped out at me.
1. that Dst/Dxt (they were talking about 'rockit') didnt just scratch on that record, he mixed in sounds from other records into the composition. esentially sampling.
2. that herbie and dst still kick it, cus Herbie was saying 'I was actually talking with dst today, we still close'... which I thought was cool...
BTW- Herbie Hancock is the f*cking man!!!