Att Will - "Just Another Day in Compton" (Big City Records, 1993)
Although sampling is one of the most brilliant musical
innovations of the last several decades, it does present two major problems.
One is someone taking an extremely popular song and essentially lifting it
wholesale without alteration in order to fuel a chart hit for yourself (call it
the Diddy method). The other is the reuse of the same samples over and over
again. There are many instances where this isn’t a problem, such as Leon
Haywood’s “I Wanna Do Something Freaky to You” being used to create two very
different songs in Dr. Dre’s
“Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” and Redman’s
“Rockafella,”
but more often than not, cats reusing samples that have already been used
memorably before is not a good idea. Roy Ayers’ catalog is an embarrassment of
riches, and “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” is both one of his best songs. In
1990, Grand Puba sampled the song for arguably the best song his group Brand
Nubian ever made:
“Wake Up (Reprise in the Sunshine).” Some other artists,
including Common, Mary J. Blige, and Mos Def have made songs with an “Everybody
Loves the Sunshine” sample since and these songs have been mostly effective,
but now that it’s been over twenty years since Brand Nubian completely owned
that sample, hearing it in a new song is frustrating. It shows that artists are
either ignorant of hip-hop’s history (as might have been the case when it
showed up on Flatbush Zombies’ occasionally great first mixtape last year) or
they’re just lazy (as in the case of “Sunshine” from Sadat X & A.G.’s collaborative
album from last year).
There are a handful of samples that will never ever get old
for me. If I was to make a very short list of these samples, Kool and the Gang’s
“Summer Madness” would probably come in at #1. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh
Prince’s “Summertime,” Mad Skillz’ “Get Your Groove on,” Big Pun’s “You Ain’t a
Killer,” Gang Starr’s “DJ Premier in Deep Concentration.” I could keep listing
great songs that use prominent sample from “Summer Madness,” and that’s not
even counting the interpolations, such as its appearance near the end of Summer Suite by the Last
Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble, one of Madlib’s many
Yesterdays New Quintet offshoot groups. So when I was scouring the internet for
obscure funky west coast hip-hop a while back and clicked on Att Will’s “Just
Another Day in Compton” and heard that familiar rising sunny synth line, I was
sold.
