While there are still producers who can flip a sample and make it sound interesting and vibrant, more and more beats based on old funk breaks sound nostalgic or old-fashioned. It’s too expensive to sample even moderately well-known stuff, and most of those songs have been mined to death already. Right about the time sampling hit its creative peak with “Paul’s Boutique” and “It Takes A Nation of Millions,” a series of lawsuits served put stifling constraints on the practice of borrowing seconds of another artist’s music.
As hip-hop progressed the technology around sampling breaks got more sophisticated, culminating in the complicated sound collages of the Bomb Squad and the Dust Brothers. DJ Kool Herc discovered the magic of repeating the funkiest instrumental breakdowns from popular rock, soul, and disco albums of the day, turning five seconds of The Incredible Bongo Band’s “Apache” into a irresistible sonic background that gave space for b-boys to breakdance and MCs to spit rhymes.
