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When i was 18 i spent a countless amount of time chopping beats in my room in the basement. Sometimes my father would enter unannounced, and even though i had headphones on i could feel his presence towering behind me. He would tap me on the shoulder and ask me "Boy what are you really doing with my records?' to which i would reply 'you know...Just making beats Dad... sampling.' Of course he would laugh, start shaking his head and say..  'Sampling--->is Stealing? if you change a couple letters around in those 2 words it means the same thing to me!' Needless to say my father was and still remains to be a very funny man. No matter how scathing his comment was back then over the years i started to wonder if the guy had a point?  Artists like Diamond D, Premier and Tribe called Quest just to name few had such a unique way of converting a bassline, vocal, or even just a horn loop into a HIP HOP form. However, with the music world making it more difficult and expensive to sample and the record company musicologist standing in the wings ready and eager to blow the whistle on artists it seemed tht sampling was becoming a bit of lost art.  I was in Mexico when i saw the video for Through the Wire by Kanye West and i got excited not only because the song had a personal message, but because there was that HUGE Chaka Kahn sample in the chorus.  Until then i felt like most of the music i was hearing sounded barrnen and anorexic to me. There was no low end theory 'frequencies'  no off beat maddness or busted loops. Just stock sounds MPC's and plastic club hits. I just dealt with the whole mess by having live players around to inspire me .. this no doubt was a result of taking a que from the Roots Crew.

and so..

When i started to record this record i wantied to sample a song by Frida from the Swedish group Abba - a songcalled 'I Know that Something's Going On' from a solo record she had recorded in 1982.  The version we came up with  'Eye Know Something'  is prolly the most illustrated 'dance' track on this record and it really threw me for a loop when we were denied sample clearance about 2 weeks ago.  Still I continued to push hard and kept digging- only to find out that people have been trying to sample Frida for the last 5 years and that every single one of those attempts were denied. Even crazier was the story that Madonna had all four members of ABBA 'sign off' and allow her to sample one of their tunes for her song "Hung Up.  Clearly we were at a dead end and so we went back to the lab  to see what we could manage.

At this point,i am excited to say that current end result i think is even stronger than our original attempt!
Trying to capture the same energy and electricity with a background vocal-->  of a  sample of a song was tricKy frustrating and challenging no doubt. However, that is actually besides the point and not the reason i subjected you all to this story.  I once asked producer Daniel Lanois if he ever sampled music. He told me that once for a Bob Dylan session he looped up an old blues record and had the band play along to it. When he removed  the loop/sample the vibe that remained with the band was what he described as  solid and inspiring. After our whole sampling  fiasco I really  started to have a feeling that sampling can bring an artist closer to their heroes and in a weird hologram-like way put them in the room with that greatness! The lesson for us last week was that we could make our song just as amazing as Frida's original recording but in the end we just needed her 'help' ha  ha ..

I think for my next  record i am going to sample Everyone from the Beatles.. to Hendrix  to  like ... N' Sync

and then i am going get a live band to play along to their music...  remove the loop- and see what magical results occur!
and i  then
i think i will call that album------>  'Steel sharpens Steal.'

k.