Hip hop artist Shock G make an analogy between sampling and taking a picture.
Perhaps it’s a little easier to take a piece of music than it is to learn how to play the guitar or something. True, just like it’s probably easier to snap a picture with that camera [looks at camera] than it is to actually paint a picture. But what the photographer is to the painter is what the modern DJ and computer musician is to the instrumentalist.
-Shock G
Electronic musician Kid 606 talks about using samples as building blocks for creating music…
It’s like Legos. If someone said, ‘Here’s a bunch of Legos, put them together, ’ you have something to work with— as opposed to, ‘Here’s a bunch of plastic, mold it, and then start building it.
-Kid 606
Hip Hop Journalist Greg Tate draws parallels between the emergence of modern/bebop jazz in the 1940s and the the culture of sample based hip hop. In both cases black artists were performing live remix performances, putting their own takes popular songs of the time.
A lot of people look at hip-hop sampling as doing what be-boppers did— taking standards of the day and putting a new melody on top of it.
—Greg Tate
