One of the fun parts of record digging is finding that obscure LP with a break you instantly recognize from the hip hop of yesterday. I say yesterday, rather than today, due to the increasing record label heavyweights flexing there copyright infringement arm, behind hordes of lawyers. Samples either won’t clear, or they’re just way to expensive to clear nowadays. Don’t get me wrong, I like credit “paid in full” when it’s due, but the difficulty in sample clearance is beginning to slowly kill off the distribution of a style of music I like to call “Sound Collages.”
Artists like DJ Shadow, RJD2, the Avalanches, and so on come to mind when I speak of “Sound Collages”. But before you blame hip hop altogether and thumb your nose at the concept, think of artists such as Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, and The Beatles all of whom embraced the cut and paste music methodology.
Erik B and Rakim’s “Paid in Full”, is hip hop sound collage 101. Easy to deconstruct if you have the patience (and more importantly, desire). The famous drum break, which would be heard again in M.A.R.R.S. “Pump up the volume” is taken from the worlds most sampled artist, James Brown. Listen to his 1971 “Hot Pants”, you’ll find the break. However the sample that has interested me the most throughout the years is the Israeli singer. Who is she. What is she saying.
This burning question came up again in conversation today, and rather than remind myself to research the sample, I started digging on the spot. Luckily, in the age of Google, it didn’t take too long. The Woman I was looking for was named Ofra Haza, and the song was titled “Im Ninalu”.
From ElvisPelvis.com:
Haza was among the [Isreali] artists who distanced themselves from efforts to consolidate an “Israeli” sound and delved into their parents’ ethnic roots.
“Yemenite Songs,” released in 1985 with a photo of her in full Yemenite wedding gear on the cover, was an instant Israeli hit.
Its signature track, “Im Ninalu,” (“If the Gates of Heaven were Locked”) expanded a devotional poem by 17th century rabbi Shalom Shabazi into a modern love song. The melody was pure Persian Gulf, a climactic assemblage of rising quarter tones; the beat was pure 1980s drum machine.
But it was not until 1988, when American rap artists Eric B. and Rakim sampled “Im Ninalu” on their dance hit “Paid in Full,” that Haza became an international phenomenon.
A bit more digging had my ears wrapped around the surprisingly beautiful song, in all it’s 80’s glory. I love me this thing called the “internet”. Give it listen here.
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Written by mau
Topics: projects