Unsurprisingly, the self-proclaimed Minister Of New New Super Heavy Funk – and his associated acts – was mined by all and sundry during hip-hop’s late 80s Golden Age, and his influence on the music remains deeply felt today, as Kendrick Lamar proved when lifting from ‘The Payback’ for ‘King Kunta’ on last year’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Other classic breakbeats came in the shape of James Brown’s 1970 cut ‘Funky Drummer’, which provided ample beats for B-boys to break to, and which, 20 years later, lent a funky backbone to Public Enemy’s incendiary ‘Fight The Power’. So important is the song in hip-hop’s history that it’s been claimed as the genre’s “national anthem” and, in 1981, Sugar Hill Gang, the group who first took hip-hop into the charts with ‘Rapper’s Delight’, recorded a tribute, ‘Apache’, capturing the spirit of those early block parties. Their 1960 chart-topper ‘Apache’ was covered by The Incredible Bongo Band on their 1973 album, Bongo Rock, and it’s this latter version that soon found its way into the arsenal of every block-party DJ of the 70s, the mix-masters keeping its distinctive drumbeat going ad infinitum for breakdancers (or B-boys and B-girls) to bust a move to. Hip-hop’s unlikely heroes are The Shadows: a British instro combo led by bespectacled guitarist Hank Marvin, and best known for backing Cliff Richard. Legendary block party DJs such as Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa would scratch out the labels on the records they were playing with, in order to keep their sources secret – and keep their punters dancing. Though many songs might now be more recognisable for a track they were later sampled in, in many cases the producers would have been looking to bring obscure gems to light, both in order to surprise their listeners and ensure that their music was fresher than anyone else’s. And respects are being paid in the process: hip-hop producers wouldn’t build their work on something they thought was terrible. It’s all part of a wider patchwork, in which something old becomes something new in the hands of a younger generation. Or Bob Dylan: that great wordsmith who’s pilfered from sources as wide-ranging as British folk song ‘Scarborough Fair’ and the Japanese crime memoir Confessions Of A Yakuza. Think of all the old blues riffs that have been recycled over the ages… and then the white rock bands that supercharged those licks and helped to forge hard rock and heavy metal in the late 60s and early 70s. You could look at it that way – or you could say that appropriation has fuelled the evolution of music ever since Day One. Hip-Hop: that’s music that rips off other people’s songs, right? Why can’t these rappers write their own? Sampling is stealing!
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