Original subtitles

-I'm in Grandmaster Flash's dressing room,

which is why I'm talking a bit funny,

'cause it's making me actually quite nervous. Aah!

And, um, they're doing things like bodybuilding.

And they're wearing surgical trusses.

So they're obviously ready for the Tube.

Um, how did you get your scratch act together?

-We used to to this out in the parks for free.

And for the way that I mix, I needed vocal entertainment

in between the way that I played.

So what it was is the vocals

had to complement with what I was doing.

So, at the time, throughout the span of maybe 2 1/2 years...

-Hip hop had barely learned to crawl back in 1982.

But it was about to jumpstart a revolution,

made possible by a cutting-edge technique known as sampling.

[ "Me, Myself and I" plays ]

-♪ Play it now

-♪ Mirror, mirror on the wall

♪ Tell me, mirror, what is wrong? ♪

♪ Can it by my De La clothes?

-When hip hop came into my life,

I became immediately just enamored by it.

-It was so much about taking it and making it

and breaking some rules and telling your own story.

-It was being able to actually make something

that seemed like a live recording with recordings

that already existed. -♪ Me, myself and I

-They're using music to create new music.

-There's no more important feeling in the world

than that "War of the Worlds" moment.

-♪ My Plug One style -♪ Work it, make it, do it

♪ Makes us harder, better, faster, stronger ♪

-They weren't just sampling one sound.

They realized they could sample, you know, dozens of sounds.

-♪ I need you to hurry up now

-We just had the advantage

of hearing all different types of music.

-We created the world we lived in through our music,

through our art, and through our culture

and it all was good.

-♪ Make it better, do it faster ♪

-I didn't want to make a rap record.

I wanted to create a revolution.

-♪ I need ya right now -I think most of the best music

was probably created by pushing the envelope of technology.

-Sampling has gone far beyond hip hop.

New styles have been built on it;

the whole idea of songwriting, changed by it.

For the last 40 years,

no single technique has had a bigger impact on recording.

-Sampling is -- it's -- it's deep.

For people to just write if off as like, "Oh,

you're just stealing people's music,"

like, they don't actually know what they're talking about.

♪

♪

-Okay, then. Okay.

-It'll be an F for you.

-Here we go.

Just one more time.

-Right after I say, "Are you sure?"

Da da da -- yeah.

-Oh.

-Hal, here's how I want to do it. Takes like this.

-All right, it's fun time. Fun time.

-Here we go.

-Oh, really? -17, take one.

-This will be the keeper.

♪

[ Mid-tempo music plays ]

-Yeah...turn around and...

♪

-Sampling is basically the ability

to take a piece of a song

and then loop it...

You make it go over and over again,

and then create a new song.

-Which most people equate with stealing other people's music.

This isn't exclusive to hip hop.

This has been going on since the beginning of time.

[ "Mary Had a Little Lamb" plays ]

[ Mid-tempo rock 'n' roll plays ]

[ Crowd cheers ]

-There's really a limited number of notes

and a limited number of chords.

And these have all been replayed throughout history.

-Generally, we just assimilate the information,

or the inspiration, and then disseminate it as our own bag.

-♪ We-e-e-e-e-ll

♪ I can't quit you, baby

♪ But I gotta put you down for a while ♪

-Led Zeppelin, rightly or wrongly,

have taken the very best of the great blues guys

and made it their own. -♪ I can't quit you, baby

-♪ But I've gotta put you down for a while ♪

-The goal of sampling is not sampling.

The goal of sampling is creating compelling music.

[ Deejay scratches record ]

-My first encounter with hip hop,

for me, was probably,like, 1976.

I was doing it in Brooklyn.

You know, they were doing it up in the Bronx.

-South Bronx was an area

that was having many problems at the time.

It was going through a street-gang age.

It also was an area that just came out

of the drug scene that was happening at the time.

And also it was an area that had

good people who was hard workers.

-The one thing that never escaped us, though, was

our love for music and our need to express ourselves.

Even though we didn't have much, we put something together

so that we could have a little bit more self-esteem.

-Hip hop and rap was like the equivalent of --

of folk music -- 'cause folk music was always about,

you know, uh, problems --

social problems, political problems.

And this actually was a voice in a new way.

-The holy trinity of hip hop and rap music

happened to be three deejays --

Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash.

Two of the three actually have Caribbean roots.

-[ Singing reggae music ]

-The art of toasting comes out of the Caribbean,

which is the guy who's the deejay

would speak on top of the microphone

on top of records.

That over-dubbing process is the same reason

they call reggae "dub music."

-[ Singing reggae music ]

-Some of the most incredible innovators,

Lee "Scratch" Perry, King Tubby,

they were producers who would do a whole album of one rhythm

and then have different MCs, you know, rhyme over it.

-I often describe hip hop as a kind of

result of the Caribbean-ization of global popular culture.

You had immigrants coming from Latin America,

and particularly from the Caribbean in larger numbers

and very often, they were moving to lower-income neighborhoods,

like the Bronx, in the 1970s.

They also brought their culture to the Bronx.

And in particular, one of the things that they brought --

or Jamaicans brought, in particular --

was the culture of sound systems --

mobile portable sound systems.

♪

-When Kuhar give a party, everybody be there.

-If you talk to Kuhar,

or a lot of those guys from the early era,

they were literally drawing on the content

that was around them and just experimenting,

and managed to create something that changed the musical world.

-Is Manhattan in the house? -Yeah!

-Is the Bronx in the house? -Yeah!

-Is everybody in the house? -Yeah!

Everybody kind of knows about the traditional block party.

Growing up, you know, black, the block party involved,

you know, speakers and deejays and party

and party punch and all that stuff.

-When we formulated this whole movement called hip hop,

we was usin' turntables that we would bring

that your mom and pop used to have in the house.

-♪ EZ -♪ Ay, D

-♪ Makin' your girl scream, but get on... ♪

-Rap is about two aspects of music.

It's the deejay and it's the MC.

The deejay is the one that gave birth to the MC.

But it's the MCs that gave popularity to the deejay.

-You had people who would be like, "Yes, indeed,

in the place to be, New York Ci-ty.

You know we cooler than a blade of grass.

And, you know, we showin' up for your ass.

This is what we gonna do tonight.

Everybody's gonna get right.

We gonna make sure that everybody gets up

and get tight to this jam right here."

-I used to pay $20 for a live recording

of African Bambaataa before rap was ever out there.

But we used to rap over James Brown big beats,

because on a James Brown record,

it was always a funky drummer beat for the MC.

-♪ Oh, let me tell ya

♪ What ya gotta do

♪ TCB so mellow

♪ Nobody can get through

♪ When he asks do you love him

♪ Smile and kiss his cheek

♪ Walk away and twist your hip

♪ Make sure you keep him weak

-You know, James Brown

was called the Godfather of Soul, right?

You know, I used to buy his records

and scratch them all day.

Some of his kicks, some of his snares,

has found its way into all of our music.

You know, if you think of a song like "Funky Drummer":

[as Brown] one, two, three, four...

♪ Buh-doo-doo-doo

♪ Ah-ah, tik-ah-ah-ah

♪ Tik-uh--uh ah ah

♪ Uh-eh ah

I mean, we used to cut that up all day

and then rap on it, slow it down, speed it up.

-♪ Unh! Ain't it funky

♪ Ha! Ain't it funky

-James Brown.

What he played in his role in hip hop --

let's put it this way.

All music would stink if there wasn't no James Brown.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ]

-I thought it was inconceivable in 1978,

and even the beginnings of 1979,

that there ever could be a rap record,

because to me, rap was a big event.

It was a hip-hop party.

[ "Good Times" plays ]

-♪ Good times

♪ These are the good times

♪ Our new state of mind

♪ These are the good times

-Chic comes out with "Good Times,"

this slow, funky record

which was totally different than anything else they did,

which just knocked off their disco following

and said, "Y'all got to get funky like this."

-Everywhere I went that summer, you heard, you know,

that beat and, you know, those vocals.

-♪ Let's all do it again

♪ Boys will be boys

♪ Better let them have their toys ♪

♪ Girls will be girls

♪ Cute ponytails and curls

-After "Good Times" went number one,

you saw a slew of "Good Times" imitators.

1979, Sylvia Robinson, former R&B singer, is in New York.

She's got a son.

They want to do a record

that sort of replicates the party experience

that's taking place in, like, you know, the South Bronx.

-Sylvia Robinson tended to be somewhat of an unsung,

you know, pioneer in a lot of ways.

She just knew what was happening in the clubs

and in these other places in New York.

And so she, in a sensible way,

approached people like Grandmaster Flash

and approached Lovebug Starski, who are all these top deejays,

and they all said, "This is never gonna work.

We're not interested. Move on."

-The story goes that her son -- I think his name's Joey --

is in a pizza parlor in New Jersey.

He hears this guy who's, like, rapping along to a tape.

-And said, "Well, do you know anyone else

who can, you know, recite rhymes like you do?"

And this guy thought about it

and went and recruited a bunch of his friends,

and auditioned for the Robinsons

in the back of a car and they --

the Robinsons seemed satisfied,

so they brought them out to Sugar Hill Studios,

where they had a band replaying the groove

to Chic's "Good Times." -♪ Clams on the half-shell

And that became the sound bit for the song "Rapper's Delight."

[ "Rapper's Delight" plays ]

-♪ I said a hip, hop, the hippie ♪

♪ The hippie to the hip hip hop ♪

♪ and you don't stop the rockin' ♪

♪ To the bang-bang boogie, say, up jump the boogie ♪

♪ To the rhythm of the boogity beat ♪

♪ Now, what you hear is not a test ♪

♪ I'm rappin' to the beat

-I used to hang out at this club and typically, at clubs,

when the deejay needs to go to the bathroom,

they'll put on a reel-to-reel tape recorder

or they'll put on avery long record.

I heard this song that I knew wasn't us playing,

but I knew it was derivative of our record.

So I thought that they had gotten a band to copy our groove

so that the rapper, meaning the deejay,

could rap over it. -♪ I brought two friends along

♪ And next on the mic is my man Hank ♪

♪ Come on, Hank, sing that song ♪

-♪ Check it out, I'm the C-A-S-AN-the-O-V-A ♪

-I looked in the deejay booth and it was empty.

I was like, "Whoa. How the hell is he doing that?"

I look at the bar, and I see the deejay.

And I said, "What is that?"

And he says, "Man, it's the hottest record in town.

I just bought this, this afternoon, up in Harlem."

I said, "Youbought that?"

'Cause it really was clearly the "Good Times" bassline.

-♪ I got a Lincoln Continental and a sunroof Cadillac ♪

♪ So after school, I take a dip in the pool ♪

♪ Which is really on the wall

-It was like a Big Bang Theory when the rap record came out.

But it was like people were headed

towards something that they didn't know.

-It sounds like "Good Times"

with percussion from this other record.

And I'm like, "What the [bleep] is that?"

-It's hard to describe

whether it kind of blew my mind or it was just,

like, "[Bleep], I've been waiting for this."

-It was a "War of the Worlds" moment.

-It wasthe first official rap record.

And that right there is the beginning

of rap music going into overdrive.

-♪ Then you take her friend

♪ Uh, Master Gee, am I mellow?

♪ It's on you, so whatcha gonna do? ♪

-♪ Well, it's on and on, and on, on, and on ♪

♪ The beat don't stop until the break of dawn ♪

♪ I said a M-A-S, a T-E-R

-The success of "Rapper's Delight"

took everyone by surprise.

No one expected it to be as globally popular as it was.

Hip hop, in the early '80s, you could say was divided

between the uptown, which was the Bronx,

which was the origin of hip hop,

and it was gritty, it was street.

And then you had the downtown scene

where you have, kind of, you know,

graffiti now enters into these art spaces.

-♪ Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly ♪

♪ Deejay spinnin', I said my, my ♪

♪ Flash is fast, Flash is cool ♪

-And it was really the work of a couple of people

that helped bridge that gap.

Obviously, Fab 5 Freddy,

namechecked by Debbie Harry in a Blondie song,

who helped bridge thathuge social-cultural gap

between 160-something-th Street and below 14th Street.

-The hip-hop thing sort of came out with, you know,

Rock"

because they were envisioning a better life

for all those people in the South Bronx who had nothing.

-I used hip hop as a cultural movement

to bring many people together to be part of

what we call the one race -- the human race.

-I think the first time I heard "Planet Rock"

was in a club in New York.

And the tune just had -- was just heavy in a way

that I had, like, never heard a track sound like before.

-When Bambaataa deejayed,

he would play the Monkees, he'd play Aerosmith.

He'd just play records that no one else would play.

He just cared that the beats were funky

and he would find funky beats anywhere.

-Sampling technology by the 1980s were, you know,

intrepid producers.

Afrika Bambaataa, Arthur Baker,

discovered that you can now use this ability

to take a few seconds from a song, from a record,

from any kind of sound source,

and replay it endlessly because of digital technology.

-They know she's pushing the word "like."

So you'll all go, "Like," real strong.

-♪ Electronic jams, like...

One, two, three...

-♪ Like! -Yeah.

-The first sampler only sampled maybe 1 or 2 seconds.

What it allowed a producer to do

was to actually capture a snare or a sound

from the records he used to scratch.

And that was a revolutionary thing for us

as hip-hop producers, because now, you know,

we could take the same thing that we would deejay all day --

'cause before you had to have a 4-track,

two turntables and you'll -- you'll keep scratchin'

back and forth and you'll overdub.

But now, you just capture the loop,

loop it, and actually create a song

and the template of your music with these samplers.

-Technology has just taken a giant leap forward.

Hello, I'm Roger Linn,

and this is the MPC60 Midi Production Center,

created by myself and Akai Professional.

-Roger Linn foresaw that sampling could be something

that people would really want to get behind.

-What he didn't really foresee --

and that goes for a lot of the early sampling people --

which was sampling complete, you know, sections of music,

actual audio, and using that as the basis of songs.

-♪ We have -♪ We have

-♪ We have -♪ Say what?

-♪ A whole lot of superstars on this stage here tonight ♪

♪ But I want y'all to know one thing ♪

♪ This is my house

♪ And when I say, "Whose house?" ♪

♪ Y'all know what time it is

♪ Whose house?

-Some people think Run-D.M.C. started hip hop.

Before Run-D.M.C. came along,

everybody was rapping over disco.

When we came along, we looked and said,

"Okay, how we gonna fit in?"

So Run-D.M.C. said,

"Ain't nobody rockin' over rock records."

♪ Gan-ing, boom-ba-bam-boom ♪

-♪ I'm the king of rock

♪ There is none higher

♪ Sucker MCs should call me sire ♪

♪ To burn my kingdom, you must use fire ♪

♪ I won't stop rockin' till I retire ♪

-♪ Now we rock the party and come correct ♪

♪ Our cuts are on time and rhymes connect ♪

♪ Got the right to vote and will elect ♪

♪ And other rappers can't stand us, but give us respect ♪

-We used creativity,

which created innovation, what created evolution.

-♪ I am from around the way

♪ And Run goes to school every day ♪

-We didn't say we were the kings of rap.

We said the the kings ofrock,

because we wanted to go take the throne

from Mick Jagger, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson.

Imitating is not allowed in hip hop or music.

-♪ She said, walk this way, talk this way ♪

♪ Walk this way, talk this way ♪

♪ Just gimme a kiss

-The original Aerosmith version of "Walk this Way"

was a popular break beat used by deejays in the hip-hop world.

-"Walk this Way" was just gonna be me and Run rapping

about how good we were.

♪ Tss da doo-doo-doo da

♪ Buh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh-duh

♪ I'm D.M.C., the K-I-N-G

♪ Been rhymin' on the mic since '83 ♪

♪ There will never be an MC like me ♪

♪ I'll be rhymin' and rulin' for eternity ♪

Whatever.

Rick Rubin, who was producing us at the time,

walks in the studio and goes, "Guys, y'all know who this is?"

-♪ Seesaw swingin' with the boys in the school ♪

♪ With your feet flyin' up in the air ♪

♪ Singin' "Hey diddle-diddle" -When I suggested to Run-D.M.C.

that we do a song using "Walk this Way,"

I played them the beat and they were like,

"Oh, yeah, we rap over that all the time."

-"This is 'Toys in the Attic.'"

"Nah, the name of this group is Aerosmith.

The name of that song is 'Walk this Way.'"

He gives us the 411.

He finishes and we looking at him like this: "And?"

-And I said, "But instead of writing new words to it,

let's use the original words that Aerosmith used

as a way to demonstrate the connection

between rap music and rock 'n' roll."

[ "Walk This Way" plays ]

-Jay goes -- Rest in peace, Jay --

being the great innovator he was,

[as Jay] "Yo, that might be a good idea."

We had never heard the lyrics.

Rick Rubin says, "Here, take the record.

Go to your basement, and you and Run learn the lyrics."

Me and Run put the needle on the record.

So that [bleep] said...

♪ Da-na-na-na nu-na-na nu-nu

♪ Backstroke lover hidin' under the cover ♪

Me and Run get on the phone.

"Yo, Rick and Jay, this isn't rap.

This isn't hip hop. We are not doing this record."

Russell's screaming at us. Rick's screaming at us.

Jay's screaming at us. "We're not doing this record."

We had to sit there and learn Steven Tyler's records.

-♪ Wasn't me she was foolin'

♪ 'Cause she knew what she was doin' ♪

♪ When she told me to walk this way ♪

-♪ The ho told me to -[falsetto] ♪ Walk this way

-♪ And the bitch said -We did those lyrics,

their record, over.

-♪ Seesaw swingin' with the boys in the school ♪

♪ With your feet flyin' up in the air ♪

♪ Singin' "Hey diddle diddle" with your kitty in the middle ♪

♪ Of the swing like you just don't care ♪

♪ So I took a big chance at the high school dance ♪

♪ With a missy who was ready to play ♪

♪ Wasn't me she was foolin'

♪ 'Cause she knew what was she was doin' ♪

♪ When she told me how to walk this way ♪

-♪ She told me to -♪ Walk this way

♪ Talk this way

♪ Walk this way

♪ Talk this way -♪ She told me to

-So when they first played that in Boston,

on the rock radio station,

20% of the people was, "This is blasphemy.

Who the hell do these rap guys think they are?"

But 80% was like, "Yo, this is cool."

Because we didn't talk about weed and bitches and hoes

on the record.

We did the record over.

-It helped connect the dots for people

to understand, "Oh, this is -- I know this song.

And here are these rappers doing it,

and it sounds like a rap record.

But it's not so different than when Aerosmith did it.

And maybe I'm allowed to like this."

-I hate that song. I -- I can't stand it.

The idea that rappers needed to link up

with these rock musicians, personally, didn't work for me.

It was a smart move

in terms of expanding the reach of the music,

but when I think about, like, D.M.C.,

that's probably the last song that I think about.

[ Electronic music plays ]

-There was a machine called the Fairlight,

which was a big, expensive sampling machine.

It would have a keyboard and you could --

you could record the sound of anything,

and then have it play back that sound.

-Want to do me a favor? -What?

-Could you just say your name into this microphone?

-Tatyana Ali. -Watch this.

-[ Distorted ] Tatyana Ali.

[ Laughter ]

-Like, for instance, pour water into a glass.

You could record it with a microphone,

put it into the Fairlight,

and the Fairlight would play that back.

But across the keyboard, and you could change the key,

the chord, the speed, the time, where it fell on the beat.

And there were subsequent machines

that followed the Fairlight,

which became more affordable for kids.

So you were able to make music

for the first time in your bedroom.

-The first major sampler that enters into the market,

at least in hip hop, is the E-mu SP 1200.

-The SP 1200 is my sampler of choice.

It's a very limited amount of sample time.

And you have to chop things up, which I like.

So I would just spend all day,

every day with the sampler, the SP 1200.

-I had an SP 1200 with no instruction manual.

And I stayed up for days until I figured it out.

And that same SP 1200 produced songs like "Bring the Pain."

-♪ I came to bring the pain hardcore from the brain ♪

♪ Let's go inside my astral plane ♪

♪ Find out my metal's based on instrumental ♪

-Hundreds of thousands of records sold --

millions of records sold off the "Method Man" album.

Two million records, we sold on that record.

And that came from a guy

who kept putting his energy and time into it.

So you can say that's a natural talent,

to sample and then break something down,

but the willpower of it

is also important, I think, in the artist.

-♪ The dark side of the Force ♪

♪ Of course it's the Method Man from the Wu Tang Clan ♪

-The producers using the SP 1200, producers like

Marley Marl, Pete Rock, Large Professor,

were making some of the most amazing,

sort of groundbreaking, music of the day.

-Marley Marl is this producer out of Queens

and he has been in the mix since the early 1980s.

And he's fiddling with a sampler,

realizing that he can not just loop up an existing drum sound,

but that he could actually replay it,

he could deconstruct and then reconstruct it

to create a whole new drum pattern.

-You know, he always added his own groove.

That's what's really incredible about him, to me.

If you think about a song, like, uh, "The Bridge."

-♪ The bridge, bridge-bridge

♪ T-t-the bridge, the -- the bridge, bridge-bridge ♪

♪ The-the-the-the bridge, the-the bridge, bridge-bridge ♪

-He does samples of a break beat

called "Impeach the President," right?

It's been sampled by many rappers

in the course of history.

But he did it, then he added his own drums on top of it.

And then he also added a synth sound

that I still don't know where he got it from.

-♪ The -- the bridge, the bridge ♪

♪ The bridge, the bridge, bridge-bridge ♪

♪ The bridge, the bridge, the bridge, the bridge ♪

-He was able to find and use break beats that was rare

before anybody else knew to use them.

-♪ Everyplace that said his name ♪

♪ It rang an alarm

♪ Otherwise known as Mean Team Tom ♪

-The second week of May of '88,

when "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back"

came out, I purchased this cassette

on the way to work at my short-order-cook job,

frying French fries,

and I had to walk 10 blocks to get to this job

and, by the time I got to this job,

I was at the end of side one.

And I was just like, "There's no way that I can...

I -- I got to hear this record."

And so on my lunch break, I told my boss,

"Okay, I'll be back at 3:00."

I never came back.

-♪ Don't

♪ Don't, don't

♪ Don't, don't, don't, don't

-♪ Now here's what I want y'all to do for me ♪

♪ Bang

-Late '80s, you have

what is known as the Golden Age of Hip Hop.

-Public Enemy's first record, "Yo! Bum Rush the Show,"

was amazing to me.

It didn't sound like any other rap record

that had been out at the time.

-Chuck D, the group's leader,

you have a person who is making music

and talking about black nationalism

-♪ Number one, not born to run

♪ About the gun, I wasn't licensed to have one ♪

-They perform at Rikers Island. They go to jails.

They're making socially conscious music.

-And that's the thing about Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad

is that we just wanted to destroy

the predictability of music.

-They put out their "Rebel Without a Pause"

as a 12-inch.

And I remember that coming out probably in the fall.

And when that hit with the...

♪ Brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters ♪

♪ I don't know what this world is coming to ♪

From Jesse Jackson.

♪ Fih, fih, fih [Imitating turntable scratches]

-♪ Yes, the rhythm, the rebel

♪ Without a pause, I'm lowering my level ♪

♪ The hard rhymer

♪ Where you never been, I'm in

♪ You want stylin'? You know it's time again ♪

-It was haunting. It was eerie.

It was -- it was -- it was rabble-rousing.

It was just agitating. And his voice...

[baritone] ♪ Yes! The rhythm, the rebel ♪

♪ Without a pause. I'm lowering... ♪

And I see all these names and I'm like, "The Bomb Squad."

I'm like, "Yo, this is dope."

-The Bomb Squad is a group of producers

I happened to work with.

That's Hank Shocklee, Keith Shocklee,

Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, Gary G-Wiz,

that made the sonic sounds for Public Enemy.

-The first element of Public Enemy

that has to be there, it has to be the beat.

And because my library was so big

that I can take snatches fromanywhere,

not only did I collect the Beatles's records

but I was collecting Rolling Stones;

Blood, Sweat & Tears; Three Dog Night.

And then at the same time, I'm collecting

Kool & The Gang; Parliament Funkadelic;

Earth, Wind & Fire.

And then at the same time, I'm collecting jazz, as well --

David Sanborn, Chick Corea, you know, Return to Forever.

-They're, like, sampling

television programs and speeches.

-We didn't land on Plymouth Rock.

-And it's just a much more complicated soundscape.

-I remember Flavor come up to me in the studio, tellin' me,

he said, "Hank, this is the worst record

I've ever heard in my life!"

-They weren't just sampling one sound.

They realized they could sample, you know, dozens of sounds.

-♪ Bring the noise! [Turntable scratches]

-Which was all about, you know, hitting you in the face.

It's kind of this wall of noise --

"Bring the noise," as they would say.

-♪ Yo, I don't understand what they're saying ♪

-When we first did the Public Enemy records,

nobody liked the records.

Matter of fact, they were

the worst records anybody's ever heard

when I brought them for people to listen to.

But the difference was that those records resonated.

-I always admire what Hank Shocklee did.

He brought a lot to sampling.

-Public Enemy, to me, is, like, the perfect hip-hop group.

I mean, it was hip hop. It was crazy.

-♪ 1989, the number

-♪ Another summer -♪ Get down

-♪ Sound of a funky drummer

-When you think about a song like "Fight the Power,"

the energy that that brings out,

Hank Shocklee and P.E.,

they was able to kind of have, like, the horns of that song,

the voice in the background, the scratching --

everything was at such a unique level with sonic fusion

and with Chuck D's voice heavy on top of it.

I mean, that song was --

made you feel like fighting the power.

-♪ Fight the power

-♪ Fight the power

-♪ Fight the power

-♪ Fight the power

-♪ Fight the power

-♪ Fight the power

-♪ Fight the power

-"Fight the Power" was a great song, you know.

"Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant [bleep] to me.

You see straight-out racist, the sucker was simple and plain.

[Bleep] him and John Wayne," right?

-♪ [Bleep] him and John Wayne ♪

-♪ 'Cause I'm black and I'm proud ♪

♪ I'm ready, I'm hyped, plus I'm amped ♪

♪ Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps ♪

-"Fight the Power" started with just a little loop.

And then we'll go back in and start embellishing it.

And by embellishing it is by putting in

all kinds of little samples, snippets, vocal hits.

And then Chuck would go in and start writing to the basic beat.

And then also adding in Flavor at the same time.

-The idea of having someone like Flavor Flav in the group,

who is so the antithesis of Chuck -- like, Chuck had

this serious message and this voice of a grownup.

And then he had Flavor Flav, who was ridiculous.

The seriousness could get old

without having Flavor Flav to lighten it up.

-♪ Rock the house

♪ Come on

♪ Do or die

-There's a kind of political aspect

to the sampling of Public Enemy.

They were sampling particular artists

and particular sounds that referenced the entire history,

I think, of black musical materials.

They're connecting the past to the present to the future.

-Back in '86, I didn't know what sampling was.

Like, it was like, you know, a magician just made it.

-Yo! -And then Chuck D rapped on it.

-Aah-aah-aah!

-What's up?!

We're the Beastie Boys!

-The Beastie Boys first explode on the scene in 1986

with their Rick-Rubin-produced album called "Licensed to Ill."

And this puts them on the map. It's a multi-million seller.

And it's mostly built off of drum-machine sounds,

because, in 1986, that was the dominant production tool.

-Come on now. Let's get busy, y'all.

Are y'all ready to get busy?

Yeah!

♪ Foot on the pedal, Never, ever false metal ♪

♪ Engine running hotter than a boiling kettle ♪

-We were a hardcore band, and we used to play hardcore songs.

All of our songs would fit into,

like, you know, 9 minutes or something like that.

And then we were, like, "Hey, we should rap.

Like, why not? That's all we listen to anymore

is rap records, so why not? We should do it."

-♪ No...sleep...till Brooklyn

-♪ Aw, yeah

-♪ No...sleep...till Brooklyn

-They were exactly what they looked like

when they became big.

They were punk rockers who rapped.

They came from wealthy families.

They loved music. They loved rock.

They loved rap.

And they had a good sense of humor.

-Ad-Rock, you forgot to tell me where you were from.

-I'm from moneymaking Manhattan.

-And you? -Yeah.

-I'm from Manhattan. And I'm not a bum.

-Well, that's -- that's -- that's plain to see.

-I, like all kids my age,

love, like, the kind of rebellious,

sort of angsty vibe of, like, "Fight for Your Right."

-♪ You gotta fight

♪ For your right

♪ To party

♪

-It was kind of Meathead-y, but, like, in a good way.

And -- And it was...

You know, they were so charming and captivating.

You wanted that to sort of be your life.

♪

-♪ You gotta fight

-The early days of hip hop really reminded me

of the early days of punk rock.

It was a very similar energy.

Music had been taken back to where anybody could do it.

You didn't have to be a virtuoso

in either field to be good at it.

You had to have a point of view

and be able to express this point of view,

both in punk rock and in hip hop.

-I think a lot of the Beastie Boys stuff

sounded like you went to a gig and you recorded it live.

-♪ Not like a fever, not like a cold ♪

♪ The beats are clear, the rhymes are bold ♪

-Now, well, I remember seeing the Beasties play

the Embassy Club in London

and there being beer everywhere, and vomit.

And it just ended in a riot,

and thinking, "Wow. This is really out-there."

-♪ It's time to party, so have a ball ♪

-I was with them in Paris

in a show that ended up being a riot.

Russell was throwing cans of beer in the audience,

like, to stir up the audience.

And people thought it was the Beastie Boys,

so people started getting totally rowdy.

And then when we left, we get in the tour bus

and the tour bus had been -- it was on fire, basically.

It was on fire. The fans trashed the tour bus.

-We were, like, into this idea now

of, like, samples or tape loops.

And, like, we were just, like, buying a lot of records

and trying to come up with different ideas and stuff.

And then I went to a party in L.A.

And there was this crazy music playing.

And I just happened to meet these guys at this party

and it was the Dust Brothers.

-He asked us if we had any more music

like the track we were playing and we said we did

and we ended up sending him a CD

and waiting patiently for 3 weeks to get a response.

And then, on a Sunday night, we get a call from Mike D

and he says, "We're coming out on a red-eye.

Book studio time.

We want to make a record with you guys."

♪

-"Paul's Boutique," for the most part,

was either us making the tracks or them making the tracks.

And, you know, their tracks

were probably a little bit better [Chuckles]

'cause they're really good at making them.

-♪ Riddle me this, my brother

-♪ Can you handle it? -♪ Your style to my style

-♪ You can't hold a candle to it ♪

-♪ Equinox symmetry, and the balance is right ♪

-♪ Smokin' and drinkin' on a Tuesday night ♪

-On "Paul's Boutique," I think the Beastie Boys

really wanted to make a statement.

They wanted to get away from the sort of one-hit-wonder aspect of

"Fight for Your Right to Party" and prove to the world

that they were real artists, because they were.

-♪ We're just three MCs and we're on the go ♪

♪ Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego ♪

♪ Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego ♪

♪ Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego ♪

♪ Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego ♪

-If you go back and listen to "Paul's Boutique"

and you identify the sources

where all these different samples are coming from,

they're coming from dozens if not, you know,

well over 100 different records.

-There's "Machine Gun," which was a Commodores song.

"Shake Your Rump" was from Afrika Bambaataa.

There's a whole bunch of Beatles samples,

and some of them are recognizable

and some of them aren't.

-♪ The Patty Duke, the wrench

-♪ And then I bust the tango

-♪ Got more rhymes than Jamaica got mangoes ♪

-♪ I got the peg leg at the end of my stump ♪

-♪ Shake your rump-a

-So this took forever. I mean, that's why

"Paul's Boutique" took 2 years to make.

♪

-I remember the first time I heard "Paul's Boutique,"

I was with Chuck D and we were at the Mondrian Hotel,

and we listened to it together.

I think we got a cassette and listened to it on a boombox.

And both of us said, "That's the future of hip hop."

It -- it blew our minds.

We loved it. We loved it.

♪

-When the Beasties came back with the Dust Brothers,

they had actually left the hip-hop hemisphere

and took this sound to other musicians.

And for a minute, you know, I don't think other musicians

knew how to get to where the Beasties were at.

-♪ You got what I need

♪ But you say he's just a friend ♪

-In the early '90s, there were a series of key lawsuits

that were brought about by artists

or by rights holders who felt

like sampling was, in essence, you know, stealing from them.

It was plagiarizing their work,

and that they had a right to assert

that they should be compensated for this.

-♪ But you say he's just a friend ♪

♪ So I took blah-blah's word for it at this time ♪

♪ I thought just having a friend couldn't be no crime ♪

-And this had very much a chilling effect on the industry,

because now you had to clear every sample.

If you failed to do so, it was gonna be really expensive.

So labels were very gun-shy

about allowing excessive sampling.

-Remember that traditional...

-You know, people take recipes and rework recipes

and add their own seasoning and [bleep] like that.

Then it becomes something totally different.

And the person who did the original benefits.

So it's basically, in theory, "a co-write."

Sampling is not a [bleep] bad word.

It's not.

-I believe -- and I could be wrong with this --

that Beastie Boys had a lawsuit against us

from the Jimmy Castor bunch and that was the first

legal document of the word "sample."

-Who gets paid, how much do they get paid, um,

and how do they get paid --

those are really complicated questions.

A record like "The Funky Drummer" is complicated,

because the part that you're sampling is

Clyde Stubblefield's work, but he is not the person

who will get paid those royalties.

But that part that he plays is so pivotal

inall of these other records.

-Now, it's become cost-prohibitive to use samples.

Usually, if you get to use one sample

on your record, you're lucky.

Just getting the clearance can be a nightmare, too,

because you have to track down all of the publishers

and I don't think you could make a record

like "Paul's Boutique" today.

You'd need more lawyers than producers

to make that record today.

-This is what a sample is worth.

The original song, and the classic,

a true classic being made out of it.

[ Music plays ]

Can I have some more amp?

-Now sampling is only available for the elite, if you would.

Those that can pay the exorbitant fees, you know.

A Kanye West can sample because he can afford

to pay $100,000 for a sample, whereas the average kid now

that wants to -- that's in their bedroom

that wants to come up, they can't do that.

-If you look at hip hop on the whole --

and I mean, including every place, every facet,

of not only America but abroad and people who do it --

sampling is a very small percentage of what,

you know, is going on in hip hop currently

and it has been like that for some time.

-And then I think you have like things that happened

a lot more in the '90s,

where people were obviously cashing in on a sample

because they were like, "Well, that's already a hit.

Let's take that. That'll be easy."

-♪ In the future, I can't wait to see ♪

♪ If you open up the gates for me ♪

♪ Reminisce sometimes, the night they took my friend ♪

-Puffy had a huge success with obvious samples

that sold millions of records.

-♪ Give anything to hear half a breath ♪

♪ I know you're still living your life after death ♪

-♪ Every step I take

♪ Every move I make

♪ Every single day, every time I pray ♪

♪ I'll be missin' you

-The best producers are able to take really familiar songs

and sample them in such a way

that you don't even recognize what they are.

And then there are other people who are like,

"I'm gonna just loop this and find somebody to rap over it"

and they're letting the old song do all the work for them.

-♪ It's kinda hard with you not around me ♪

♪ I know you in heaven, smilin' down ♪

♪ Watchin' us while we pray for you ♪

-Like anything else, sampling is creative.

It can be really interesting and compelling,

or it can be simply

a rehashing of something that already existed.

-♪ Every move I make

-♪ I miss you

-♪ Every single day

♪ Every time I pray

♪ I'll be missin' you

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah

-♪ Thinkin' of the day

♪ When you went away

-I started deejaying in the spring of 1993

and I went to Rock and Soul,

the old record store on 35th and 7th,

where everyone went to get their vinyl in Manhattan.

And there was --

I have the original 12-inch of "Protect Ya Neck."

It was on Wu-Tang Records.

Like, this kind of cheap-looking, you know,

just pressed up in a black sleeve, nothing fancy.

And it felt like this exciting thing.

Like, "Who the hell are these guys?"

There's 11 people rapping,

and every single verse is better than the last.

I mean, the Wu-Tang was everything, sort of,

when it came out.

-♪ I grew up on the crime side

-♪The New York Times side ♪

♪ Staying alive was no jive

♪ Had secondhands

♪ Moms bounced on old man

♪ So then we moved to Shaolin land ♪

♪ A young youth, yo, rockin' the gold tooth ♪

-Wu-Tang Clan is different from anybody else.

Like, they're just -- they're different.

You can't put them in...

There's no category that the Wu-Tang Clan goes in.

-We developed our skills and our techniques

on Staten Island, New York.

Now, Staten Island is a place that's surrounded by water.

It's isolated from the rest of the city.

You know, in the science-fiction movie,

you'll see something like King Kong,

and they have to take a big boat to some island.

And on this island, there exists something that's that old.

Being isolated from Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens,

it helped us to develop our own style,

our own New York slang.

It was New York, but it was a different New York.

-♪ So I got with a sick, tight clique ♪

♪ And went all-out

♪ Catchin' keys from across seas ♪

♪ Rollin' in MPVs

♪ Every week, we made 40 G's ♪

-Your wisdom is a manifestation of your knowledge.

Once you know that you're sure without approval,

that's the understanding.

So we know what time it is.

We gonna show y'all niggas what time it is

and we gonna prove what time it is.

That's right.

And for the hip-hop world it's Wu-Tang time, nigga.

-RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan is a really interesting figure

in this, because by the time we start hearing

the first Wu-Tang songs, around 1993, '94,

he was still using older sampling technologies

such as, like, the SP 1200,

because that gave him a grittier sound.

It wasn't cleaned up. It wasn't pretty.

It wasn't, you know, at the cutting edge.

-They would take Ultimate Beats and Breaks hip hop.

They will take jazz music.

They will take any noise whatsoever.

They will take dialogue from other films and loop it,

and sound sloppy as hell doing it.

-He's, like, "The dirtier, the better."

That dirty, stank, crusty feeling.

He just likes the agitation.

He likes to get your blood boiling.

-It don't have to be always on beat.

I heard the CD skippin',

'cause I was trying to get a sample off of something,

and the [bleep] CD was scratched and was like...

♪ Dun dun, duh dun dun, dun dun dun, duh dun dun ♪

I was like, "I like that."

-♪ Can it be that it was all so simple then? ♪

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪ Or has time rewritten every line? ♪

-When you look at songs like Gladys Knight,

we sampled on "Memories," "The Way We Were,"

on "Can It Be So Simple?"

It starts off exactly

how I programmed it in my beat machine.

-Hey, you know, everybody's talking about the good old days,

right?

Everybody, the good old days, the good old days.

-I programmed it with her intro,

a long intro, and then my beat drops.

-♪ Can it be that it was all so simple then? ♪

-That was my thing.

When I had the power to sample longer,

I was able to kind of make my idea more cinematic.

-♪ Can it be that it was all so simple then? ♪

-♪ Yo, started off on the Island, AKA Shaolin ♪

♪ Brothers wildin'

♪ Gunshots thrown, the phone dialin' ♪

-It's like, how did you make "Can It All Be So Simple"

so dark and --

and make it sound like this was its original home,

this is where it was supposed to be,

as opposed to how it was originally constructed?

I think it's truly a gift.

-♪ That's the life of

-RZA's just, like, creative.

He makes music that sounds historical

and from the future, all at the same time,

which is something I really love.

-♪ Can it be that it was all so simple then? ♪

-♪ Ah

-♪ Can it be that it was all so simple then? ♪

-♪ Ah

-♪ Can it be that it was all so simple then? ♪

-That's what made the Wu-Tang the Wu-Tang.

-Always talking about, you know, "You biting.

You biting my style.

You bite everything that I did a lot."

But hip hop itself is based off of bite.

-I think what you've seen

over the last, especially 10, 15 years,

is just the explosion in not just sampling technology,

but just production technology and software in general.

-First, we had the drum-machine sampler,

then it went to the keyboard sampler.

And then from there, you know, the synthesizer

and the workstations.

And now we at the level of digital audio workstations,

which gives you your tape machine, your sampler,

your drum machine, all on your computer screen.

-♪ Where it's at

-♪ I got two turntables and a microphone ♪

-Technology is humanity's response to its own dreams.

I mean, if we can think of something, we can make it.

-[electronic] ♪ Got two turntables and a microphone ♪

♪

-♪ That was a [scratches] that was a good drum break ♪

-Beck's "Odelay" was really the most successful use

of this new technology for us.

Instead of actually sampling records,

we were just going for sounds.

So we would listen to a record, and Beck would say,

"Oh, I love the way this record sounds!

I think I can get that guitar sound."

And so Beck would -- would dial up that guitar sound,

and we would take the very best sections,

and we would cut and paste those together within the computer

and create our own loops,

instead of sampling them off records.

-♪ Don't stop, get it, get it

♪ I don't wanna be a player no more ♪

-♪ Punisher, Big Punisher

♪ Big Punisher, still got what you're lookin' for ♪

-♪ Big Punisher

-The radical innovations of hip-hop producers

created in the 1980s,

and perfected in kind of the late '80s and early '90s,

have disseminated throughout the musical world.

-♪ I got a bad boy, I must admit it ♪

♪ You got my heart, don't know how you did it ♪

-Almost all pop-music producers

make their records like hip-hop guys once did.

-♪ I love the way, I love the way ♪

♪ I love the way, I love the way ♪

-Music has a foundation. It has a circle of notes.

It has been tried over and over from the Egyptians

to, you know, the Renaissance to American music --

to jazz, folk, hip hop.

There's been ways that's always been tried.

-It's so crazy to dismiss sampling.

Some of the most ingenious, progressive music

of the past 20 years has come from combining

the use of sampling with original material.

Bjork, one of those great things she does, like, you know,

"Dancer in the Dark" and all these things

with found sounds. I mean, that's sampling.

-♪ I have seen the willow leaves ♪

♪ Dancin' in the breeze

-It's the same thing the Beatles did when they wrote songs.

They would get inspired by a Roy Orbison song,

and then write a song.

You know, "Please, Please Me" was their version

of a Roy Orbison song.

Doesn't sound like that to us, but that's how they wrote it.

-I remember people saying, "This isn't music.

Like, the Sugar Hill Gang,

like, people would say, "They're not even singing.

They've used some -- They've used a Chic song

and they're talking over it. How is that even their record?"

And now we hear it at weddings and we just dance along to it

because it's the most familiar piece of music we can imagine.

-If the idea is an original song,

where is the line that divides what is original?

People like Kanye West, who very creatively sample.

And it's kind of -- it's -- it's tough sometimes to tell,

how much of that is the songwriting

and how much of that is the production?

-♪ Lost in the world

♪ Been down my whole life

-The recording experience is never finished.

It just goes on and on, and people cut and mix records.

They take them, recontextualize them.

Turn them into --

into new moments, into new meaning.

-♪ You're my devil, you're my angel ♪

♪ You're my heaven, you're my hell ♪

♪ You're my now, you're my forever ♪

♪ You're my freedom, you're my jail ♪

-Well, we got to say, um, many of the youth

always grab a new language to whatever music.

Then we got to look at, is it really new?

Is anything really new under the sun?

-The beautiful thing about that great era,

that great generation, that time of music

is everything that they said was truth.

It wasour truth.

-To me, and to us, like, it never mattered.

Like, there's no, like,real music.

Like, the real music is what you like.

-It's been very helpful. It has grown us.

It has made musicians out of non-musicians.

It has made producers out of those

who wouldn't normally be producers.

-The production techniques, the sampling technology,

the types of recordmaking that were forms that were invented

by hip-hop producers, have become ubiquitous.

It's now changed the way we listen to music

and what we regard as music.

-♪ I'm new in the city

♪ And I'm down for the night

♪ I'm down for the night

-♪ I'm down for the night

♪

-"Soundbreaking" is available on DVD.

The companion book is also available.

To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-Play-PBS.

♪