Sanguine Sunday - The Sample Edition

In store for you this episode on Sanguine Radio we dropped a full fledged show dedicated to the sample. What many don't realize outside the fairly insular Hiphop community is that the layering of samples cut from previously recorded tracks is a highly refined aesthetic formula. Taking bits and pieces from old grooves, the Hiphop beatsmith arranges and manipulates a montage of sounds to cast an entirely fresh composition. The art of sampling is no simple theft.

The emcee flows over these beats, letting their ink spill over the multi-tiered archeology. In a sense, the lyricist spits over history, rejuvenating the past with a new horizon of meaning, and informing the present with the soul sonic flavor of the ancestors. In fact, we could call this craftwork musical montage in line with Eisenstein's montage theories on film. I like to think that this sample episode is a continuation of the Sound Lesson series, just a lot of back and forth dialogue between the originals and the new songs which reference them.

For the past couple decades legal battles have entangled the sample aesthetic intrinsic to this unique craft of beat production. And in recent years, the laws become stricter and more intensified, casting a hazy gloom over the future of this musical style. We turn to our legal expert, Danielle Furman from Art Venture Law, to drop into the studio and shed some light on the copyright issues relevant to the recording industry. What she tells us is certainly alarming yet at the same time hopeful for the future of sample production. Tune in and tell us what you think about the current state of sampling laws--whether they restrict the proliferation of new forms of art or protect the recording industry and the artists it represents!

Sound Lesson: Soupy Jenifa

De La Soul - Jenifa Taught Me (Derwin's Revenge)


Maggie Thrett - Soupy


Wow, it's been nearly a year since my last sound lesson. I need some crate digger out there in the internet waves to help me out with this feat. Let's kick it off again.

The idea behind these sound lessons is to dig out the dusty history sampled by classic Hiphop tracks. It is always fascinating to hear an old drum break or vocal cut completely reworked into a new sonic landscape. The montage made out of old pieces not only rejuvenates the energy of those aged works, but it also constructs a fresh and new perspective on the musical resonance.

Although accomplishing such innovation with production skills is not an easy task. And many beat conductas have failed along the way to actually construct something blazing new out of the old. But then you got the geniuses like Prince Paul of De La Soul acclaim, an innovator and true taste maker of stylized sound and theatrical Hiphop (the originator of the album skit). Their highly original and brilliant 1989 album, 3 Feet High and Rising, bumps 24 fresh joints patch worked together by literally hundreds of songs from America's pastime. You can even get a taste of the breadth of the samples at sample lesson grandmaster, Kevin Nottingham's, archive.

There are a couple glaring oversights, but for me the most important one gives the life to "Jenifa Taught Me". What happened to stunner Maggie Thrett's anthem, Soupy, released in 1965 off DynoVoice Records? Soupy is a brilliant jam, just that raw uncut funky soul for yo ear. Not to mention that Thrett was also an actress, crooning that futuristic spirit on the mothership.

It makes me understand all the more clearly why De La got their minds all worked up for this girl named Jenifa, oh Jenny. But who the hell is Derwin? Just a virgin? There's got to be more.

Also, Maggie Thrett was an actress who elegantly displayed her futuristic beauty on Star Trek among other cult hits. That's her on the left up her. A sparkly mothership crooner.

Interview: Exile and his Universal Sound

Exile Interview (original)


Exile Interview (with beat)


I had the chance to chop it up with Exile after his performance with Blu at Berkeley's annual Hiphop in the Park festival. We sat on a gnarled park bench straight out of Middle Earth, and Exile traced the journey from his humble beginnings making music to where life is taking him now. I already thought Exile demonstrated some mad ingenuity in his creative process, but now I am ever more convinced that the man has just got a serious gift, and deep sympathy, for stylizing sound.

If you're not familiar with Exile's unique brand of earth power production, then you've got an expansive catalogue of music to experience. Spanning the gamut from soul spliced grooves tapping into the richness of the human spirit to gritty beats urgently calling forth action, this Los Angeles beatsmith is capable of a universe of sounds.

Exile gained notoriety for his masterful production for Blu on their seminal 2007 release, Below the Heavens, an album quickly garnering recognition as a Hiphop classic. However, Exile got his start much earlier in the game, collaborating with LA rapper and crooner, Aloe Blacc, in the noname backwards group Emanon. In 2004 they released a groundbreaking soundscape harmoniously politicizing music (or to coin a phrase, musicifying politics), The Waiting Room, and recently reissued their smoked out underground tape, Imaginary Friends, originally put out on the grind in '96. And before all that, dude made his way around beatboxing and flipping loops on the tape deck, or spitting helium induced raps about scandalous moms light years before Quas. And amidst all that science, he made a name for himself bombing the walls with sweet and sticky aerosol paint.


The honey drenched drums and textured harmonies don't stop there. Exile dropped Dirty Science in 2006, showcasing his talent collaborating with monster lyricists like Oh No, Ta'Raach, and Ghostface. And most recently, Exile concocted his first instrumental album purely out of samples from the radio. This concept album, simply titled Radio, stretches the creative process of Hiphop to its limits. Exile crafts music out of disparate elements broadcast on the air, bits and pieces of sound which he affirms himself, you're not supposed to make music out of. The end product is a compelling montage of human voices and mechanical noises layered upon each other, a rhythmic sound sphere depicting the way we see the world.

In tune with "Radio", we broadcast the interview with Exile on Sanguine Sunday Radio for our dedication to Hiphop in the Park episode. I decided to post up the interview separately in two forms. The first is tiered with Exile's beat mix for Mary Anne Hobb's Radio 1 show, and the second is the sparse interview in its original taping, full with the lush sounds of Berkeley's very liberated and never duplicated, People's Park. You can also cop the Radio 1 mix and peep the playlist of unreleased beats at her BBC home.

Rapper Poets: DOOM vs. Bukowski

Two weeks ago DOOM (dropping the MF) crept out of the shadows to unleash an apocalyptic maelstrom onto heads. His latest effort, Born Like This, is still resonating in the soundwaves, listeners and critics alike scrambling to make coherent DOOM's catastrophically pleasing formula. I don't plan to give any definitive answers here, but I anticipate that the album's title offers some clues to understanding DOOM's broodingly vicious cartoonery.



It is rare that a rapper makes reference to a white American poet of longstanding acclaim in the cannon. Although it would be unfair to call the haggardly magnificent Charles Bukowski a conventional member of the West's finest lyricists. DOOM chooses the title "Born Like This" to directly reference the revealing documentary on the life and work of Los Angeles' most prolific barfly, Bukowski: Born Into This (2003). A poet born into ugliness and horror and loneliness; a rapper born like a cartoon clip and masked warrior and tragic tale.

In the documentary, director John Dullaghan splices some of Bukowski's spoken poems over archived footage of the man going about his daily affairs. The montage of Bukowski's keen lyrical despair over sparse 1960's - 70's Hollywood is gripping if not completely unsettling. The brutally honest and troubled words of "Dinosauria, We" are particularly compelling.



DOOM's "Cellz" begins with revamped vocals cut from the film's clips of "Dinosauria, We", an apocalyptic meditation on the filth bred by humankind in the end of days. The minimal quality of the Bukowski's short of breath rhythm is filled out with gong-like dissonant drums warning of explosive terrors and shots. Dramatized keys straight out of a cult detective film whirl "Dinosauria" into a hyperbolic cartoonish tale. And perhaps that's all it ever was. The end of days foretold by Bukowski sets the horizon for DOOM's coming, "Born out of that / The sun hidden there / Awaiting the next chapter".

DOOM / Cellz (10) / Born Like This

Enter DOOM, a rapper with poetic ambitions. A mask striving for authenticity. A name always changing. A lyricism fighting to be heard. And some unadulterated, mad live, ridiculously talented flow from the metal faced bard.

For more tales of human caused mass destruction like "Dinosauria, We" look for Bukowski's insidious collection, Last Night of the Earth Poems.

Sound Lesson 3: ESG

Before we get on to the very important lesson of the week, I'd like to welcome to Crooks and Grannies a new addition to the team, Cyrus the Humble, but as far as I'm concerned, I'll call him Cyrus the Magnificent... Humble the Magnificent? I think Edan already beat me to that. So, it seems that the trinity is complete, Cyrus will be taking care of writing imagery and recording some sounds, and that will hopefully turn into a cohesive exploratory project of San Francisco.

And yo, Granny Wesson where you at? Besides that, if D-Rock ever gets his act together, then he can join the team for an occasional punch to the face. Get off your turntables and start writing! Or at least throw me a mix, son. Enough of that, let's get to the program.


The saga of the art-funk ensemble ESG (Emerald Sapphire Gold) begins with a healthy dose of South Bronx mythology that necessarily gives birth to anything seminal in the world of Hiphop. So the story goes, streetwise Mother Scroggins figured that she could keep her four daughters out of the mean BX streets by hooking them up with some instruments to jam with. Does this not sound like an Afrika Bambaataa remedy for street violence? Maria took the congas and negotiated the vocals, Renee handled the guitar, Valerie beat on the drums, and their friend Leroy Grover strummed the bass until the youngest sister Deborah took over.

The Scroggins sisters swooped into the downtown NY scene where they found a medley of influences in Hiphop, post-punk, new wave, and house during a time in music history when the boundaries of the genres weren't so cemented into place. Inspired by the evolving sonic zeitgeist the band developed an enigmatic sound boasting complex poly-rhythms laced together with pop guitar hooks that waft breezily over a resounding bass line.

Their first single was produced by the legendary Martin Hannett of Joy Division allure in 1981, the self-titled debut EP released in America on 99 Records (the same label as Liquid Liquid) and Factory Records in England. Hannett's keen ear for body wrenching rhythms emphasized by steady abysmal voids informed ESG's distinctive sound for the rest of their 30 year career.

So who sampled ESG? Their original Hannett produced single "UFO", a sweaty groove fitting its name due to the works of an ominous fast pasted guitar pluck that sounds like an extraterrestrial police siren cut over a clamoring drum break, reaches toward Funky Drummer notoriety in the sample game. Big Daddy Kane, The Beastie Boys, EPMD, Madlib, 3rd Bass, Pete Rock, Public Enemy, even indie rockers The Liars - and in fact, any list that claims to cover the definitive archive eventually admits defeat by adding a new track that escaped everyone's aural grasp. So I won't even try it.

This one resonating cut may serve as the defining element of the brand of aggressive, strong headed Hiphop that slices your eardrums into pieces. Just peep the recent additions of Dilla's "Geek Down" off the Donuts LP or Edan's "The Science of the Two" with Insight off Beauty and the Beat.

So why does ESG not get the James Brown love, you know that credited and compensated love, that they deserve? The group addressed this issue with their 1992 EP Sample Credits Don't Pay Our Bills. They recently called it quits while Renee Scroggins hopes to take more seriously her production of other artists.


Soul Jazz's Universal Sound revisited the band's illustrious career with the release of the powerhouse compilation, ESG: A South Bronx Story. Don't forget to help pay ESG's bills by copping the second chapter of the Story, Rarities, released in Nov. 2007.