The science of sampling music was the foundation of the beginning of hip hop music. Sampling for hip hop began at the start of its movement. According to Computer Music, “Hip- hop was the first genre to explore the sampler’s ability to recycle musical ideas and put them into entirely new contexts.” Since the 70s, DJs have taken samples from all genres of music like rock, jazz, reggae, etc. to incorporate and reconfigure to create an exclusive and rare sound. This helped to set a foundation to promote the building of a new and unique sound, while integrating the best of each genre to create one unified sound to attract people from all walks of life. But through research, I have learned that there is more to sampling then one thinks. Sampling is not just as simple as taking the beat of a song and using it to rap or sing over. In Amanda Sewell’s dissertation, A Typology of Sampling in Hip Hop, she shares the three ways sampling can be categorized: “…first, records that sample familiar material which allows the listener to recognize the quotation; second, records that sample both familiar and arcane sources; and third, the process called “quilt-pop,” where multiple samples are stitched together to create a new recording” (3). I also did not know that sampling can be done without using any musical beats or chords at all, just using lyrics alone can be a form of sampling.

To dissect this, I want to take this a step further. Sewell was able to label the forms of “structural samples,” which is what, “…creates the groove in a sample-based track” (47). Surface samples have three forms: momentary, emphatic, and constituent. “These surface samples exist in a place between the lyrics and the groove because they are not necessarily part of the groove itself but are still an integral participant in the sonic character of a sample-based track” (48). Momentary surface samples only appear one time on a song, but could include additional samples from other songs that are only used once as well. Emphatic surface sampling indicates the start or finish of the song, or it can cue the start or finish of a particular verse, hook, or chorus of the song. Constituent surface sampling are only samples of a beat that are a second long and only occur every one or two measures in the song. These were the body elements of sampling to create the groove, melody, and frame of a song. But what about the lyrics? Lyrics can also be sampled and used in a song as well. Lyric sampling is a whole entity in itself away from structural samples. Unlike surface samples, it has nothing to do with the beat or groove of the song, “…lyric samples are heard and understood as words in a sample-based track” (54). With sampling lyrics, words that may have meant one thing in its original context, can be made to mean another in the new context. Sometimes the arrangement of the new song can reshape the meaning of the words or phrases used. Things like modifying the lyrics by shortening words or phrases, and canceling out the words of the middle of a phrase shift the subject background to a fresh outlook.

In Eduardo Navas’ book, Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling, he takes a different approach to the subject of sampling music. Navas breaks down the meaning of sampling expressing that it is not a term for music. Instead he suggest that “…sampling can only be conceived culturally as a meta-activity, preparing the way for Remix in the time of new media. Early recording, in essence, is a form of sampling from the world that may not appear as such to those used to the conventional terms in which the concepts of recording and sampling are understood. According to the basic definition of capturing material (which can then be re-sampled, re-recorded, dubbed and re-dubbed), sampling and recording are synonymous following their formal signification” (12). He explains that the prevalence of sampling in early hip hop music took place in what he calls the “second stage of remix.” Navas refers to the sampling of music as being remixes as to almost censure sampling for its lack of complete originality. He even goes as far to call hip hop the “remix culture” (11–12). This only opens up the subject of are the scientist of hip hop (DJs and producers) creators or plagiarists? These scientist have increasingly become questioned for if their creations are deemed originals or copycats. To get to understand the truth you first have to know what a scientist is and what they do. According Google, a scientist is “a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences.” In this case, music is their subject of study. When it comes to sampling they take hundreds of elements to invent or maybe reinvent (depending on how you look at it) a masterpiece. Those same questions can very well be applied to the subject of sampling like: what makes sampling a science? Sampling is a science because of the ability to take music (one art form) apart and put it back together to design a completely different structure. It’s genius! When you think about the studying method behind sampling music from rearranging certain chords, beats, breaks, or even words and add to ones own originality, it morphs into something fresh and new which sets the bar for more complex creativity. Many decades of using the science of sampling, has been proven to be a staple for hip hop/ rap music. The continuous experimenting of sampling is what has made hip hop/rap music so diverse and relevant till this day.