Music
These are the 10 most sampled records ever
Listen to the original tracks that gave rise to some of the best-known songs and sounds of the past three decades.
Not too long ago, in a world pre-WhoSampled.com, it would've taken forever to find out which artists had been sampled the most and how many times. But thanks to this essential site and its 17,000-plus obsessive users we now know who's the most sampled artist (we'll get to that), what the most covered song is (Yesterday by The Beatles) and which artists have sampled the most (unsurprisingly it's Madlib, DJ Premier and J Dilla). Over the past eight years the site and its users have logged 400,000 songs and 225,000 samples.
Without sampling, who knows what hip-hop would sound like today. The same goes for electronic music. Just imagine Beyonce's Crazy In Love without the intro from The Chi-Lites' Are You My Woman (Tell Me So); or A Tribe Called Quest's Can I Kick It? without the guitar line from Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side; or De La Soul's The Magic Number without Bob Dorough's original children's educational track; or even the title track of Jay-Z's latest album 4:44 without the sample he took from Bristol band Hannah Williams And The Affirmations' Late Nights And Heartbreak.
To celebrate the art of sampling, here, thanks to WhoSampled.com, are the ten most sampled tracks in music.
1. The Winstons – Amen, Brother
This 1969 track has, at the time of writing, been sampled a mammoth 2,637 times. The six-second drum solo from the cult Washington DC soul band is now better known as the Amen Break, the bedrock of so much British rave music. Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa used the break before it was included in the influential Ultimate Breaks And Beats compilation series in the mid-80s. From there it took off and was sampled by NWA and 2 Live Crew, before it became the foundation of British hardcore, jungle and drum 'n' bass. The Winstons' drummer GC Coleman died penniless in 2006, but a GoFundMe campaign raised £25,000-plus for frontman and copyright owner Richard Spencer.
2. Beside – Change the Beat
You'll need to be patient to hear the part of this track that's responsible for the vast majority of its 1,986 uses as a sample. The B-side to Fab 5 Freddy's 1982 single of the same name, this version is rapped sensuously in French. Towards the end of the track, a vocoder voice sighs "Ahhh, this stuff is really fresh". And there you go. Herbie Hancock was one of the first to sample the track on Rockit, and it's since been used by everyone from the Beastie Boys, Gang Starr and OutKast to Missy Elliot, Run The Jewels and Justin Bieber.
3. Lyn Collins – Think (About It)
One of the most recognisable samples of all time. This James Brown penned and produced song was released in 1972 (on Brown's own label, too). Remarkably – given what a killer tune it is – Lyn Collins' track didn't chart at the time. But it became a cult favourite and popped up on one compilation after another – including on the 16th edition of Ultimate Breaks And Beats in 1986. With that exposure and the advent of the E-mu SP-1200 sampler, producers were soon borrowing liberally from it. Mostly notably DJ E-Z Rock on his track It Takes Two, which uses the "Yeah! Woo!" breakdown. Dizzee Rascal, EPMD, Janet Jackson, REM and Mr Oizo are just some of the artists responsible for its 1,901 uses as a sample.
4. James Brown – Funky Drummer
Where would hip-hop be without James Brown and The JBs? With his music being sampled 6,889 times, Brown is the most sampled artist in music. And this is one of his most sampled tracks. It's been used 1,410 times, which seems like a modest number given the number of high-profile tracks that have borrowed drummer Clyde Stubblefield's propulsive break. Public Enemy's use of the break on their tracks Rebel Without A Pause and Fight The Power are among the most well known, but you'll recognise it on tracks by LL Cool J, Run-DMC, Eric B And Rakim, Ice T and George Michael too.
James Brown
© Julian Wasser/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
5. Dough E Fresh And Slick Rick – La Di Da Di
Another example of a hip-hop track that's been sampled by other hip-hop acts. The 1985 B-side, with Doug E Fresh on beatbox and Slick Rick on rhymes, has been used 860 times. Snoop Dogg rejigged the track as Lodi Dodi on his 1993 debut Doggystyle and its lyrics have been referenced by Robbie Williams (Rock DJ) and Notorious BIG. But its been sampled, too, by DJ Premier, Ini Kamoze (on his massive hit Here Comes The Hotstepper), Ludacris, De La Soul, Kelis and Mary J Blige.
6. James Brown – Funky President (People It’s Bad)
It's the Godfather of Soul again. This 1974 single, about the then-new US president Gerald Ford, has been logged 802 times on WhoSampled. It might not be the most used track on the list but it's been used on so many big-hitting hip-hop tracks that it almost deserves a higher placing in the chart. The parts you're listening out for are the introductory drum fill and its wah-wah guitar. Eric B And Rakim sample it on Eric B Is President, predictably enough. Other notable uses include NWA's F*** Tha Police, Public Enemy's Fight The Power, DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince's Summertime and Naughty By Nature's Hip Hop Hooray. Even Calvin Harris and The Offspring have used it.
7. Public Enemy – Bring The Noise
The sampling information about this 1987 track is enough to give a person an aneurysm. Producers The Bomb Squad sampled Marva Whitney, James Brown, Funkadelic, DJ Grand Wizard Theodore, The Soul Children and Commodores, as well as a sample of a Malcolm X speech. But the track itself, from Public Enemy's 1988 album It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, has been sampled 744 times by artists including De La Soul, Kanye West, Beastie Boys, Prince and Ludacris. Most of these uses focus on Chuck D's voice.
Public Enemy
© Jack Mitchell/Getty Images
8. Melvin Bliss – Synthetic Substitution
The B-side to Melvin Bliss's 1973 single Reward, this track was nearly lost forever after the dissolution of the record label it was originally released on. But it was brought back to life by Kool Keith's Ultramagnetic MCs in 1986 when they sampled Bernard Purdie's drums on their mighty Ego Trippin. It's since been employed as a sample 725 times by NWA, Gravediggaz, Guru, Wu-Tang Clan, Danny Brown, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, The-Dream, and, particularly brilliantly, by Redman on Jam 4 U. Not bad for a track that rails against the onward march of technology.
9. The Honey Drippers – Impeach The President
Southern soul singer Roy Charles Hammond discovered this high-school soul band in Queens in 1973 and cut some tracks with them, including Impeach The President, recorded in the wake of the Watergate Scandal. It remained a hidden gem until Marley Marl sampled the breakbeat on MC Shan's The Bridge, turning the opening drum sequence into a go-to hip-hop sample. LL Cool J, EPMD, Shaggy, Janet Jackson and even George Benson have sampled it, while Wu-Tang Clan's GZA raps: "You can't flow, must be the speech impediment / You got lost off the snare off Impeach The President" on As High As Wu-Tang Get. It's been logged 723 times by WhoSampled users.
10. Run-DMC – Here We Go (Live at the Funhouse)
Everyone knows this one. The 1985 track by Joseph "Run" Simmons, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels and Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell has had various parts of it sampled by artists ranging from LMFAO and J Dilla to The Orb and Autechre. But the penny drops when you hear "… and it goes a little something like this", which was reused on Jason Nevins and Run-DMC's It's Like That. The track has proved so adaptable that, at the time of typing, it's been sampled 686 times.
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