Sampling: Hip-Hop 101

Nas – NY State of Mind

Uploaded by digidrago

Nas ‘NY State of Mind’ record is from his Illmatic album, which was produced in 1994. DJ Premier produced the record. DJ Premier sampled Joe Chambers’s ‘Mind Rain’ for this record. DJ Premier tells Complex.com the process of working with Nas on ‘NY State of Mind’ record:

So I came in here, and flipped the ill, gutter, Joe Chambers sample (‘Mind Rain’). I can tell you because it’s cleared. [Laughs.] Nas watched me build the beat from scratch. And he wrote the verse in the studio. If you listen to ‘N.Y. State of Mind’ you’ll hear him going, ‘I don’t know how to start this shit,’ because he literally just wrote it. Before he started the verse, I was signaling him going, ‘One, two, three,’ and he just goes in like, ‘Rappers I monkey flip’em, in the funky rhythm.” He did that in one take. After he did that first verse, he goes, ‘How was that? Did that sound all right?’ And we were just like, ‘Oh, my God! The streets are going to go crazy when they hear this!

The sample appears at 0:00 and throughout the record.

Joe Chambers – Mind Rain

Uploaded by AMAruofAssassinz

Joe Chambers created the ‘Mind Rain’ record in 1977, which is from his Double Exposure album. The sample is taken from 1:08 mark of the record.