Category: Sampled

Answer? Three feet high and rising. And so, with these words, Johnny Cash named the greatest hip-hop album ever. From that album, De La Soul released arguably their best-known single, ‘The Magic Number’. Like everything else on the album, it was cut, pasted ‘n’ jigsawed together from a variety of eclectic sources. Soul, funk, country, jazz, rock, spoken word comedy. They’re all in the great melting pot of the single known as The Magic Number.  

Syl Johnson ‘Different strokes’ (“Do the shangalang!”)

The Jackson 5 ‘ABC‘

Bob Dorough ‘Three Is The Magic Number’

Led Zeppelin ‘The Crunge’

Eddie Murphy ‘Anybody In The Audience Ever Get Hit By A Car?’

Johnny Cash ‘Five Feet High And Rising’

Double Dee and Steinski ‘Lesson 3 (History of Hip Hop mix)*, which itself samples;

*Schoolhouse Rocks ‘The Magic Number’

*Bill Cosby ‘Got To Have Soul’

*Putney Swope ‘Got To Have Soul’

* ……and many other records that I don’t know. I imagine De La Soul used the Double Dee record as the basis for their track, but I could be wrong.

De La Soul also remixed The Magic Number. ‘The Too Mad Mix’ isn’t essential, but worth a listen. How can you improve the original? You can’t, but here’s Jeff Buckley mucking around somewhere onstage (unknown audience recording bootleg) making a good go of Bob Dorough’s original.

If you haven’t found them already, you can also find the list of records that were used to make ‘Eye Know’ here.

Hope you’ve got your blank CDs ready after all that downloading!

De La Soul’s ‘3 Feet High And Rising’ is my favourite hip hop album of all time. It turned this white, West of Scotland guitar playing, desert boot wearing, walking talking Morrissey haircut into a homeboy (with a quiff). I have been poking about in all the darkest corners of the internet to come up with a definitive list of samples for the record. It was released in the days before sample clearance was the law, so there’s tons of stuff on it that would never be allowed to be sampled nowadays. I’ve found a few websites that list bits and pieces of what was sampled for the album, but nothing definitive. Until next week…..

‘Eye Know’ got to number 14 in October 1989. It’s hard to believe, but the original single/album version was jigsawed together from only 6 records. That’s all. De La Soul played nothing on it. They rapped a bit, but all the music you hear was played by other people. That wouldn’t happen nowadays. Dr Dre finds his sample, sticks it on top of a crazy beat, gets Snoop Dogg to swear a bit over it and voila, another motherfuckin million seller. De La Soul cut’n’ pasted everything, and they sound 10 times funkier than everyone else.

‘Eye Know’ was put together using the following records:

The Mad Lads ‘Make This Young Lady Mine’

Steely Dan ‘Peg‘

Steely Dan ‘FM‘

Patrice Rushen ‘Remind Me’

Otis Redding ‘(Sittin On) The Dock Of The Bay’

Sly And The Family Stone ‘Sing A Simple Song’ 

Get youself Audacity, give yourself a year, and see if you can recreate this fantastic record in the comfort of your own home. I doubt it…

In the meantime, here’s the ‘Know It All’ and the ‘Daisy Bass’ remixes of Eye Know as a bonus. The start of the ‘Daisy Bass’ remix reminds me of the Happy Mondays ‘Wrote For Luck’ for some reason. Or Lil’ Louis’ French Kiss. Either way, listen and weep homeboys and girls.