One of hip-hop's main pillars of its compositional style is what is called sampling, or the strategic usage of other musical works in the construction of a new one. As Will Brooks-Jones explains in his historical recount of sampling, "Sampling in music involves taking a section of audio from another source – in this instance, an existing song – and then reworking it into the creation of a new track...This can sometimes result in a completely unrecognizable sample, leading to something that’s truly new!" Usually, when something is sampled, the material is altered in some way and then fed into the new work's musical texture as its own element in the fabric. However, as infrastructure for digital manipulation improved over time, the ways in which sampling occurred also changed as well.
However, prior to sampling DJs had to rely on looping breaks (instrumental passages) together from other songs while MCing over it in order to fill time or create energetic contrast. But around the mid-1980s with the release of tracks by Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. and Rakim, and Kool G Rap, which heavily referenced songs by James Brown, the practice of sampling would soon become a ubiquitous practice the hip-hop community. By the early 1990s, when the album under question in this post was published, sampling had become a real issue in the hip-hop world, as artists would unlawfully use other people's music and thus opening the door for copyright infringement. As a result the collaborative spirit of the art form began to deteriorate, and a prime element of hip-hop musical aesthetics effectively erased. For beginner hip-hop musicians, sampling had become far too risky and the reward far too little. And yet, in Russia sampling was (and still is) booming!
In the transformative, disco-funk 1992 album "Поговорим о сексе" by Bachelor Party, one of the earliest rap groups in Russia coming from the heat of the 80s breakdancing scene, they use five stated samples with their overall musical aesthetic heavily invoking the American 1980s Old School funk universe. Russian hip-hop, before the 2000s came along and the rise of "contemporary R'n'B" took hold, the aesthetics of funk, groove, and disco were by far the most popular styles that first-wave Russian rappers used. Although by the mid-90s the rise of gangster rap and g-funk began pluralizing the sound, it was the spirit of disco and club culture that first got the domestic genre on its feet and running. The samples that they used are fascinating and the selections indicative of where the Russian rapper's ears were at the time. The question remains, however, where they would have gotten a hold of these records and how they managed to become popular but such questions are for another time. I'll go through the five (known) samples that they use and how they use them.
One of the most popular tracks to sample in hip-hop and popular music, "The Champ" has been featured in over 700 different tracks spanning four decades. From 'Groove Me' (1988), 'Smooth Operator' (1989), 'Let's Ride' (1999), to 'On Fire' (2004), 'Machine Gun Funk' (2008), and 'Yesterday' (2015), the quintessential funk instrumentalism is a great fit for any sampling due to the lack of words and flexibility in its manipulation. The sample is featured on the first track of Bachelor Party's album, "Sex without Break', and forms the main bulk of the instrumental opening, being treated of course to some cleaning up and audio boosting.
While not a technical 'reference' like the previous, the opening staccato ostinato is a dead-on match for the opening of Run D.M.C's smash hit, a track that has been featured in films like 'White Chicks' and topped charts well into the 90s, and is still sampled even today, most recently in 2021 by Swedish dance group Crazy Frog. The track itself contains samples, and thus to use this is to continue a legacy of sampling from the 80s onwards. The allusion comes from the fourth track on the album, "I Want You", and it's not surprising that they were sampled, given that Grandmaster Flash and The Fearless 4 are aesthetically invoked here.
The ingenuity of this sample can't be understated because although it's not a music-based reference, the fact that a live-recording sample is being used, and not even the music but the speaking before the music begins, by someone as seminal as Otis Redding is not an accident or a fluke on the music producer's side. First off, his album "Good To Me" was a live recording at the Whisky A Go Go club in Los Angeles, a historic site in its own right. The particular song that is being referenced is 'Chained and Bound", whose texts Redding wrote himself. The sample comes from the first eight seconds of the 7:19 song, and thus the claim of blind usage cannot be made. This was a deliberate and constructed aesthetic choice!
The world of sampling is fascinating, and more research will be done in the future to try and understand how sampling played a role in the development of Russian hip-hop. I hope this little introduction into how one of the earliest groups dealt with American material has helped you see hip-hop in a different light, as sampling is a key way artists can coalesce the musical present with the musical past, and redefine classics in new and exciting ways.
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