What Are the Best Classic Rock Samples in Hip-Hop?
Outside of a few old-school East Coast joints from our high school days, we admit that most hip-hop goes over our heads here at UCR. But every once in a while we’ll hear something that strikes a note of recognition to our classic rock-loving ears, and it’s the subject of a new list.
Over at the Boombox, they’ve compiled the 10 Best Classic Rock Sample Flips. The choices range from some well known choices (Aerosmith’s ‘Walk This Way’ and Led Zeppelin’s ‘When the Levee Breaks’ over, respectively, Run-DMC and Ice-T) to hits by Queen and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
But the list isn’t just filled with classic-rock radio evergreens -- as with our own list of the Top 10 Beastie Boys Classic Rock Samples from a few years ago -- Boombox also finds some samples found in the deepest recesses of our stacks, like Terry Reid and David Bromberg. That said, the Steely Dan lovers among us are upset that Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz’s 1997 hit, ‘Deja Vu (Uptown Baby),’ which sampled the Dan’s ‘Black Cow,’ didn’t make the cut.
Even if the music doesn’t strike your fancy, you have to give the producers credit, both for their crate-digging inventiveness and their ability to find a snippet of a song to mesh with the beats. After all, whoever would have thought that the organ part from perpetual nice guy Graham Nash’s ‘Chicago’ would work seamlessly into a profanity-laced hip-hop track?