20 Of The Most Sampled Songs Of All Time

Popular music has always been built on a bedrock of the music that came before it, but in the late '70s, that sentiment started to become a lot more literal than ever before. Before rap was a recorded form, DJs spun break beats, the hottest rhythmic parts of records both popular and obscure, in parks and rec rooms while MCs rapped. The first rap records simply featured house bands recreating some of these popular breaks; the seminal "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang, for example, saw the label's house band laying down choice sections of Chic's hit record "Good Times" note-for-note. The rise of rap's commercial fortunes in the early '80s, however, happened to coincide with the advent of a spectacular new piece of hardware: the sampler, which allowed the user to record a snatch of audio and manipulate it in inventive ways.

Soon, producers such as Paul C and Marley Marl would be massively expanding rap's sonic template with a new generation of samplers, and by the end of the decade, sampling had evolved into a full-fledged art form, used to create masterpieces of sonic collage such as the Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique" and De La Soul's "3 Feet High and Rising." Along the way, a number of jazz, soul, R&B, and even rock recordings became foundational Hip-Hop documents, with many even finding their way into the mutating DNA of other genres. Here, then, is the musical motherlode — the most sampled songs of all time. 

The '80s arena rock titan Billy Squier catapulted to stardom with the release of his 1981 sophomore LP, "Don't Say No," which scored monster singles in "The Stroke" and "My Kinda Lover," and went triple platinum. But his debut effort from the previous year, "Tale of the Tape," while not nearly as successful, had already made him a legend in the burgeoning rap community for one simple reason: its opening track "The Big Beat" which began with a volley of skull-bashing drums that more than lived up to the tune's name. DJs immediately latched onto the break; its use by the iconic crew Cold Crush Brothers at parties in the early '80s, for example, is well-documented. But the break's status was cemented by its appearance on a pair of early future classics: Run-DMC's single "Here We Go (Live at the Funhouse)" and UTFO's smash "Roxanne, Roxanne," which improbably provoked a massive deluge of answer records.

These two records opened the floodgates, and the break would go on to be featured on tracks by the likes of Eazy-E ("Radio"), King Tee ("Bass"), and Jay-Z ("99 Problems"), to name a few. In a 2005 interview with the Boston Globe (via Ultimate Classic Rock), Squier expressed just a bit of puzzlement over his contribution to the foundation of rap music. "People sometimes write that Billy is the king of hip-hop," he said. "I didn't even know what hip-hop was then."

The funky R&B outfit Kool & The Gang can lay claim to one of the most instantly recognizable, widely-used samples in the rap canon: their 1974 tune "Summer Madness" has been jacked up one side and down the other, most notably forming the basis for DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's No. 4 pop hit "Summertime." But one of their songs has gotten even more mileage among rappers, and it's an unlikely one: "N.T.," an instrumental jam that appears on their little-heard 1971 live album "Live at PJ's." To say that the song isn't exactly a classic is an understatement — the band didn't even bother titling it ("N.T." stands for "No Title"). But near the end of the song, it breaks down into a jaw-droppingly dope drum beat that was destined to power dozens of rap tracks.

Most notably, the swaggering rhythm opens "New York State of Mind," the first track on Nas' legendary debut LP "Illmatic." Even prior to that, though, the loop had been thrown into the mix by the likes of Public Enemy ("B Side Wins Again"), Kool G Rap and DJ Polo ("Truly Yours"), Downtown Science ("This is a Visit"), and N.W.A. ("Gangsta Gangsta"). It's still getting thrown around today, in tracks like 2017's "Something Safe" by Corbin and 2019's "The Hit" by Diamond D — serving as a perfect example of how a little crate digging can go a long, long way.

It's now time to talk about Bob James, a legendary jazz fusion artist whose music became an unlikely goldmine for a ridiculous number of artists. Something about James' entire aesthetic appealed to the ears of many a rap producer; alongside James Brown, he is one of the most sampled artists in history, with tunes like "Westchester Lady," "Storm King," and "Sign of the Times" all seeing frequent usage. None of those songs, though, came close to having the impact of "Nautilus" — a spacey, jazzy track that has contributed many of its elements to rap's sonic palette.

The most well-used of these elements: a twinkling, vaguely ominous keyboard flourish that opens the song, and which has appeared in tracks by Jeru the Damaja ("My Mind Spray"), Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth ("Sun Won't Come Out"), and Organized Konfusion ("Stray Bullet"). Some of the track's more ethereal elements, all courtesy of James' keyboards, have popped up in tunes like "Beats to the Rhyme" by Run-D.M.C., "Follow the Leader" by Eric B. and Rakim, and "Take It Back" by Wu-Tang Clan, often serving to lend a woozy, surreal atmosphere to the sonic proceedings. "Nautilus" has been sampled literally hundreds of times — and yet, it's only the second-most sampled song in James' canon.

As one of the funkiest funk outfits to ever funk it up, Sly and the Family Stone have seen an absolute funk-ton of their tunes sampled by dozens of producers in a wide array of styles over the years. Alongside prolific sample mines such as "You Can Make It If You Try," "Dance to the Music" and "If You Want Me to Stay," though, one song rose to the top of those producers' record crates: "Sing a Simple Song," released in 1969 on the band's fourth album, "Stand!" The song is... well, pretty simple, but several of its elements have woven themselves into the sonic backbone of popular music — most notably an eight-bar horn-woodwind riff that's been used in ways both exceedingly subtle (as in KRS-One's "Sound of Da Police" and Dr. Dre's "Deep Cover") and shamelessly overt (as in UTFO's "Rough and Rugged" and Eazy-E's "Eazy-Duz-It"). 

Among the song's other snatches of sample-tastic sounds: some emphatic vocal exhortations along the lines of "uh!" and "yeah!" and "let me hear you say..." that have popped up in tunes like "Fight the Power" and "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" by Public Enemy; and a wailing, descending "hey, yeah" female vocal that will be immediately familiar to fans of the Beastie Boys' "Shadrach." Sure, the song may be simple, but it's darned effective.

Of all the artists on this list, none are as obscure — mysterious, even — as Skull Snaps. Originally founded in 1963 as The Diplomats, the group eventually changed its name and under the new moniker, it dropped a single, self-titled LP in 1973. While these days, we know the group was started by Ervin Waters and Samm Culley, at the time, the members and their origins were mysterious, especially considering they disbanded after this one album. They appeared to have simply stepped out of the ether, dropped their album, and stepped right back into the ether again — leaving behind a collection of pretty good tunes, and one absolutely slamming breakbeat.

That beat: the opening drum pattern to "It's a New Day," which sports a vibe more militant and intense than pretty much anything else labeled "funk" that has ever been recorded. Sure, it has been woven subtly into the mix; tunes like the Pharcyde's classic "Passin' Me By," Camp Lo's "Coolie High," and Big L's "Put It On" have all accomplished this nicely. But the break really works best when the producer just lets 'er rip, as examples like "Take It Personal" by Gang Starr, "Hippa to Da Hoppa" by Old Dirty Bastard, and "That's How I'm Livin'" by Ice-T illustrate quite well. Skull Snaps may be a mystery, but the skull-cracking power of their classic breakbeat most certainly is not.

ESG was a bit of an outlier in music history: an all-girl funk band, four sisters, in fact, from the South Bronx who were ushered into the music business by their working-class mother. Frontwoman Renee Scroggins learned to play all of the instruments dear old Mom bought the siblings, teaching her sisters one by one — and before long, they had a pair of tunes, "Moody" and "You're No Good," that were good to go. Oh, and one more track — "UFO," a weird instrumental piece anchored by a sinister, screeching feedback loop from Scroggins' guitar. Speaking with the Chicago Tribune, she explained, "My mother used to come and listen to us play, and when she heard that sound effect on my guitar she'd say, 'Renee, can you find another note besides that one?' I had to explain that I had just seen 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' and this was the sound of a spaceship landing."

The trippy sound was seized upon by the rap community, appearing in works such as "Ain't No Half Steppin'" by Big Daddy Kane and "Do the Right Thing" by Redhead Kingpin — but its totally unique vibe helped it bleed into songs from other genres as well, like Mark Morrison's R&B smash "Return of the Mack" and Nine Inch Nails' "Metal." ESG carries on to this day — but the intro to "UFO," a throwaway track, is a huge if unlikely part of its legacy.

Now, here's an odd little item: in 1967, bluesman Lowell Fulson released "Tramp," a shuffling, funky number that spawned an unlikely number of imitations, covers, and answer records. One of those covers was an instrumental interpretation by unheralded band the Mohawks titled "The Champ," which was released the following year. Bizarrely, both the original and the cover would go on to achieve immortality through sampling.

The first use known use of "Tramp" was by producer DJ Muggs, who used its face-grabbing guitar stab and slinky bassline as the basis for "How I Could Just Kill a Man," which kicked in the door for his group, Cypress Hill. That loop would pop up again many times, notably in EPMD and LL Cool J's "Rampage" — but "The Champ" got looped up much earlier, and far more often, than its inspiration. The track's intro, with its lively drums and weird, chirping instrumentation, held down a metric ton of classics: "Eric B. is President" by Eric B. and Rakim, "Step Into a World" by KRS-One, and "Smooth Operator" by Big Daddy Kane, to name just a few. Say, remember that massive, grimy hit "Slam" by Onyx? That chant of "Duh-duuh duh! Duh-duuh duh!" in the chorus is a vocal approximation of the loop, the boys' way of paying homage to what was, when the song was released in 1993, already a well-known part of the Hip-Hop canon.

Godfather of Soul James Brown is one of the most sampled artists ever, but his backup vocalist and faithful right-hand man Bobby Byrd was a sample machine in his own right. Eric B. and Rakim mined the ever-loving heck out of his 1971 tune "I Know You Got Soul" for their landmark single of the same name, and a slew of his songs have been jacked by the likes of Jay-Z, Kwamé, and Public Enemy. But one of his tunes was sampled far more extensively than any of the others: "Hot Pants (Bonus Beats)," a 1972 ode to one of Brown's favorite topics.

The song's funky fresh drum intro and vocal exhortations were perhaps most famously utilized as the foundation for 1987's "Raw," the aural shotgun blast that announced the arrival of Big Daddy Kane. But it's also underpinned many a pop and rock tune; the Stone Roses ("Fool's Gold"), Madonna ("Frozen"), and Twenty One Pilots ("Lane Boy") have all sampled it, and it's even appeared in a No. 1 hit — "Good Vibrations" by Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg and his Funky Bunch.

Let's get this straight: any discussion of the history of sampling in rap music must necessarily start with James Brown, whose body of work shaped the sound of the genre's early Golden Age. It would be far easier to list the Brown tunes that haven't been sampled to death than those that have, just as it would be much quicker to name all of the producers during rap's period of explosive creativity who didn't sample Brown than those that did. One tune, though, rose above all the rest, contributing one of the most widely-used, easily recognizable drum breaks of all time, thanks to the crack drumming of Brown's bandmate Clyde Stubblefield. It's a song that delivers on its title: "Funky Drummer." 

The song's drum solo by Stubblefield has been called the most important of all time, and it's easy to see what attracted producers to it — it's a viscerally exciting, midtempo chunk of slamming percussion over which Brown repeatedly inquires, "Ain't it funky?", vocal hits which have also been thrown into the mix countless times. To attempt to make even a short list of its most prominent appearances would be pointless — but literally anyone listening to the original break for the first time will be dumbfounded by just how many of their favorite songs have featured these drums. Stubblefield passed away in 2017, but his funky drums will live for as long as there is popular music.

There are heavily sampled songs, and then there is "Amen, Brother," the B-Side to a Grammy-winning single entitled "Color Him Father" by soul group The Winstons. It's not just that the song's four-bar drum solo, performed by drummer Gregory Coleman, has been sampled hundreds upon hundreds of times, virtually since sampling began and for all the years since. But the legendary "Amen Break" achieved one feat that no other sampled piece of music has — it has served as the basis for an entire subgenre of music.

As a break beat, the Amen Break is to a sampling producer's toolbox as bread is to a pantry. From Salt-N-Pepa ("I Desire," 1986) and N.W.A. ("Straight Outta Compton," 1988) to Skrillex ("I Know Who You Are," 2009) and 100 gecs ("gec 2 Ü," 2019), it is simply a touchstone of artists past, present, and certainly future. But, perhaps starting with its usage in Mantronix's "King of the Beats" in 1988, producers discovered that chopping the ringing, crashing beat into its tiny individual segments could produce a virtual drum kit ripe for rearrangement into all types of interesting layers, configurations and permutations. As such, the break became the foundation upon which jungle  — one of the most prominent subgenres of electronic dance music in the '90s — was built. It is the most sampled piece of music in history, an unimpeachable cornerstone of popular music — and this is only so because a mostly forgotten band from long ago gave the drummer the spotlight for a few golden seconds.