Songs That Use a Sample in a Musically Revealing Way

Milk Dee sampled the opening drums of the Honey Drippers’ “Impeach the President,” then reprogrammed the hits. Listen to the kick and snare catch and start over under his voice. The original break rolls by smoothly, so hearing it first makes the gaps in the new beat easier to pick out.

Steely Dan’s recording of “Peg” supplies the answering voice on the hook. The sample gets room at the end of the line, giving the impression of someone answering the rappers. There’s a lighter answer in the whistle lifted from Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.”

The piano figure comes from the opening of the Charmels’ “As Long as I’ve Got You,” a Volt single. The figure passes quickly in the soul recording. RZA loops it so it hangs over the verses, giving their accounts of growing up a sound that keeps coming back.

Ronnie Foster’s “Mystic Brew,” from Two Headed Freap, supplies the repeating bass and keyboard figure. The notes hang in the air as Q-Tip and Phife Dawg trade verses. Hear Foster’s track first and you can pick out part of its groove still intact in the middle of the rap record.

Portishead builds the track on a passage from Isaac Hayes’s “Ike’s Rap II,” from Black Moses. The bass and strings keep circling underneath Beth Gibbons. That steadiness lets her stretch the vocal phrasing and makes the guitar stand out sharply when it arrives.

DJ Shadow starts with the piano from Jeremy Storch’s “I Feel a New Shadow,” off From a Naked Window. The phrase keeps repeating as drums, voices, and other sounds alter what surrounds it. Listen to how much the beat changes your sense of where the notes fall.

Jimmy Jam lifted a line from Joni Mitchell’s 1970 studio recording of “Big Yellow Taxi.” Mitchell’s bright voice keeps cutting through the soft beat, with Jackson and Q-Tip leaving it space to answer them. A line about realizing what you’ve lost becomes the refrain of a different story.

Moby takes Vera Hall’s unaccompanied “Trouble So Hard” from the Sounds of the South collection and puts it at the center of a new arrangement. Listen to the way Hall sustains the ends of her phrases as the piano and steady beat move underneath. The record gives the old vocal a pulse without taking away its pauses.

“Stan” takes its sung refrain from the opening verse of Dido’s “Thank You,” heard on No Angel. The melody plays before the character’s first letter, then returns between verses as his tone changes. Hear the same words in Dido’s song and you can catch how much of their new unease comes from the placement.

The choppy keyboard figure comes from Edwin Birdsong’s 1979 “Cola Bottle Baby.” Its bounce keeps the beat legible while the vocoder first lays out the words and then breaks them into progressively smaller bits. Try following the Birdsong fragment when those voices start moving much faster.

Rich Harrison uses the horns from the Chi-Lites’ “Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So),” the version on I Like Your Lovin’ (Do You Like Mine?). That loud opening figure keeps returning on cue. It can announce a verse or hold a space open for Beyoncé’s answer, and it gives the recording much of its forward push.

Madonna and Stuart Price put the curling synthesizer figure from ABBA’s 1979 “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to work under a new vocal. It returns before the chorus and keeps up the feeling of waiting that the ticking intro sets up.

Producer Soundtrakk samples the “Magtaksil Man Ikaw” portion of Celeste Legaspi’s Bolero Medley. Listen to the sweep of the orchestral phrase as it comes around again. Fiasco uses that recurring lift to give the skateboarding story a little momentum each time the beat turns over.

Diplo loops the start of the Clash’s “Straight to Hell,” from Combat Rock. The unhurried guitar and percussion give M.I.A.’s verses somewhere to settle. Hear how abruptly that familiar bed is punctuated in the chorus, then how readily the loop carries the song back into the next verse.

Burial chops up the vocal from Ray J’s “One Wish.” The voice comes in short bursts that change pitch and position, with gaps where a singer would usually carry the line through. The shuffling beat fills some of those gaps, and the voice itself starts to mark out a rhythm.

The opening half takes its guitar figure from Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Happy House,” from Kaleidoscope. It keeps the same clipped movement around the new vocal. When the second half changes the beat and lets the riff go, it becomes clear how much of the first half’s restless energy came from that loop.

DJ Koze takes a goodbye from Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye).” The clipped vocal returns over a busy disco rhythm whenever you might expect the singer to move on. The longer the groove lasts, the longer those few words have to sit with you.