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Lupe Fiasco Food & Liquor Samples...and Breaks

NWord Trav

Dig Deep

Hey everybody! We are here for a new installment of Dig Deep.I read an article about lyricism in hip hop and was inspired to do the post about every one's favorite skater/muslim/colorful hoodie afficinado Lupe Fiasco. Being a black man myself, I hate that others of my brood have taking to the sport of skateboarding in a sad attempt to be the next super cool Fro Hawked, tattooed, hipster kicking and pushing his way through my neighborhood. Having said this, its pretty impressive that one person made such an impact on youth culture. I remember that about six years ago you would get your ass beat for skateboarding... period. Now every high school age black kid i see in the greater los angeles area is sporting skinny jeans and doing kick flips and whatnot.(Gay?)It seems as though Lupe is blessed with a need to be original. He has to be on the next level far before the rest of us. Sometimes, like Kanye's 808's and Heartbreak, you can go to far trying to do something different. Other times, you end up with some great shit! Here are my favorite songs from lupe's first album Food and Liquor. You Must like them or you are a terrible person.

The first track is Life On Mars from the Dexter Wensel album of the same name. Keyboardist Dexter Wansel is a well known figure in the "philly sound" movement. Philly has been consistently pumping out great artists since forever,so it says something that he is usually mentioned among the greats of his area. He's been involved as a studio player for everybody from the Jacksons to Teddy Pendergrass.To speak of the Lupe track itself, the Kanye production is a little lazy but Lupe definitly shines lyrically on this one. Just the fact that someone is doing a story rap in this day and age as appossed to the autotuned "Hook Plus Beat Equals Success" theory, makes me happy.

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Newcomer to the game at the time, Soundtrakk, provided the dreamy backing for the anthem of the disenfranchised, multicultural, and "Kids"- like groups around the world.Like I said earlier, this track created a lot of biters. I really don't have to say much else. Anybody know what Soundtrakk is doing now other than making RIAA cerified platnium singles like Superstar and having like eleven songs on The Cool.Its probably not recession for him. What the hell! Good for him... I guess.

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Not my favorite song on the album due to another onset of lazy production, you'll hear that Soundtrakk really didn't do much to the Harvey Mason original. This shit is filler at best. Check out Harvey Mason though. The Jazz drummer from Fourplay with Bob James has a pretty impressive catalog.

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Common said on One Day It'll All Make Sense, " Not For the money, I would have sampled Diana Ross a long time ago'". My thoughts exactly... BOOOO Soundtrakk.

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AHHH Prolyfic. There is apparently a huge back story between rapper and producer here. Before the"Leak Heard Around the World" Pro had something like seven or eight tracks on Food and liquer. This number was cut to just three after bootleggers flooded the internet with stolen tracks. Sometime after that the producer left the company due to "shady" business practices and sought legal aid. He has been quoted as saying that Lupe is the most disloyal person that he has ever met in his life. You never know who people are or who to believe I guess. Music and business divides a lot of people.Here are two of the tracks Pro is credited with...

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I don't like a lot of things, but I like, nah I say love American Terrorist. Only the truest douche bag would dislike this song. Your not a D-Bag are you??

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I'm not going to write too much about this.I can't do everthing for you, so go on youtube and check out all the videos, they're all awesome espcially the Wallace Collection vid. It's dope if your into the dirty hippy vibe. Thanks to Jill Scott ( who i'll forgive for that The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency accent and acting) this is most likely my favorite song on the album despite its sappy pop(poop?) appeal. Who doesn't love a giant robot song. They kick ass - period.

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Breaks...April 28th

For those who have been patiently waiting to see what will come next i regret to inform you there will be no samples on this joint only breaks and drum hits...but were working on some lupe fiascco food and liquor tracks for you,hope it's worth the wait...

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Breaks & Dilla Samples

N Word Trav

Dig Deep

So to make up for the last post which was plagued with technical difficulties on our part, I decided to post some Dilla tracks as an apology. Hooray Dilla! I dont want to be like all of the other Dilla "band wagoners" that have popped up since his untimely death, but hopefully this will inspire some of the younger generation to search out for better music than what the evil mainstream media presents to kids nowadays. Rap seems to be making childern more socially inept and more likely to get punched in the face when they talk to me. If more people listened to Dilla maybe our society would be just a little bit better. F U with a hammer Flo Rida...

First up we have Lightworks off of the new MF DOOM album Born Like This. Not the best MF album but terrible Doom shit is still better then most things.This track has been used a bunch obviously but its always fun to here Doom over anything really.The sample comes from Raymond Scott who is recognizable for the Carl Stalling adaptations of his works in tons of the Looney Tunes cartoons. I threw in the song Powerhouse just so that you get the idea. If you dig a little bit you'll also see that he's been sampled by other well known artists like the Gorillaz and EL-P.

MF DOOM-Lightworks

Raymond Scott-Lightworks

Raymond Scott-Powerhouse

Second we have Raise It Up from Slum Village Fantastic vol.2. The original was snatched from Thomas Bangalter. He's one half of the french house music duo Daft Punk.I read somewhere that the sample was never cleared but Thomas let it slide in exchange for work on a later album. It 's a cool flip for a very simple loop and I think made a better song than the over produced Kanye/Daft Punk sample smash hit bullshit. No offense Gay Fish.

Slum Village-Raise it up

Thomas Bangalter-Extra Dry

For number three we will go with Players , one of my personal favorite Dilla tracks, jacked from Singers Unlimited, a jazz vocal group formed in 1971. I heard the original sample while i was in college and it still amazes me to this day. Jay Dee pitches the sample down but it still maintains the original tempo and gives the false impression that the singers are saying players when its really Clair.

Slum Village-Players featuring Pete Rock

The Singers Unlimited-Claire

Lastly The Offical from the Jaylib album. J grabbed this one from the heavily sampled Gap Magione. The song is Diana in Autumn Wind. The second loop in the song is used for Fall In Love also a personal favorite. For some reason I couldn't find the song in my personal library but here it is from the Tube baby.

JayLib-The Official

Gap Mangione-Diana in the Autumn Wind

Slum Village-Fall in Love

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Craig Phelps (I'm a Douche)

Beats...It's What's For Dinner

percussion

punchy/off-kilter

rides

individuals

somewhat punchy

punchy

individuals

Breaks, plus DOOM/Beef Rap & Onyx/Last Days samples

More joints for your sampling pleasure...plus i'm introducing N Word Trav, who will present various hip hop tracks with the original songs from which they were sampled, in his blog Dig Deep...

The origins of songs have always fascinated me. When i was very young I always wondered how music that others rapped to was produced. In the coming weeks i'll be talking about some of my favorite songs and providing background information from the originals songs that were used in their creation. Hopefully as time goes on we can put together a larger sample library for users, but lets start off slowly. Here's a couple for you.

MF DOOM-Beef Rap