‘Lectric Diaspora

“Versioning” is at the heart not only of reggae but *all* Afro-American and Caribbean musics… It’s a democratic principle because it implies that no one has the final say. – Dick Hebdige, Cut ‘n’ Mix

Deep Flippin’

December 1st, 2008

There are countless instances in which a hip hop producer will lift the opening phrase of a song, or the main melodic hook, and repurpose it into a new tune. This is all well and good (see the masthead of this blog), but what I’m writing about today is a different level of sampling, one that takes a keen ear and a creative mind, where some seemingly insignificant, fleeting moment of a song is highlighted and transformed into the basis of a whole new sound.

I try this myself sometimes as a creative exercise: take a chestnut that has been famously sampled to death, and find some new fragment of the song to bring forward and build a groove out of.

The Beatnuts are masters of this approach, of finding that brief interesting transitional moment, putting it under the microscope, and bringing it to life anew. My favorite example of this is their remix of Chi-Ali’s “Funky Lemonade”, which is not only one of my favorite hip hop tunes in the world, but is also somewhat rare, or at least used to be in the pre-sharity days when incredibly obscure treasures were not available on a daily basis. (Actually, in an earlier era of the internet offering unprecedented access to niche interests some years ago, I finally tracked down a promo-only 12″ from a record store in the Netherlands).

Chi-Ali – Funky Lemonade (Beatnuts Remix)

Chi-Ali’s story is depressing and I will not belabor it here, except to note for the uninitiated that he was a young member of the Native Tongues posse who showed great promise but ended up with a fate sadly all too common for African American males.

So about that sample. Once, on a road trip through the Southwestern USA, that organ stab jumped off a Grant Green tape (made for me by my buddy Punjab, source of all musics funky in my life at that point) and smacked me in the ears with its brilliant provenance. It is from the Alive album, which is absolutely essential and is hopefully already in a place of honor in every groove-lover’s collection. This album has been sampled heavily, with this specific track also used by the likes of A Tribe Called Quest and Cypress Hill. I eventually noticed that Pete Rock also used this sample around the same year so I don’t know who stole from whom. Anyway, there it is around the 37 second mark. The Beatnuts have pitched it up and bathed it in yummy scratches and a Guru sample and it is perfect.