Hip Hop samples Steely Dan, Steely Dan samples Horace Silver

Worlds collide.  They're bound to.  But the first few times they do always stay with you .  That Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz video Deja Vu (Uptown Baby).  I remember being sure it sounded like a song my dad and uncle would play on their record players.  It always gave me shivers.  I remember the video being shot in a big baseball stadium in my child brain.  I also remember knowing the beat, although I wouldn't have known the term - was 'sampled' from Steely Dan.  Something from Aja, maybe Peg or as it turned out Black Cow (MF Doom in 1989 later sampled the same cut on Gas Drawls). The Dan is of course ripe for sampling with its double rate session musicians and micro sampling of guitar solos by multiple guitarists. Its not a far stretch that their albums - post their debut Can't Buy A Thrill - when they moved past being a 'real band' to a studio band; if not The Studio Band; to describe their approach to the studio as an instrument as proto- Hip Hop.

(l to r) Walter Becker and Donald Fagen 

Prominent contemporary Hip Hop artists that have sampled Steely Dan include notably De La Soul on Eye Know which samples another Aja staple Peg.   Scene stealer Kanye West (before he became Kanye West- per se) sampled Kid Charlemagne (an ode to Owsley the LSD chemist working by 'candlelight'  that kept the West Coast lit up and the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound - known as Bear in those circles- rolling down the road) on Graduation's Champion.  Ice Cube sampled Green Earrings from The Royal Scam on Don't Trust 'Em and Organized Konfusion sampled the same track a year before in 1991.

What's less known is that Steely Dan also 'sampled' or interpolated (replayed the hook or riff as a 'sample') on their own recordings.  One of their lesser known but deeply revered albums Gaucho does this to masterful effect on the title track Gaucho, interpolating Keith Jarreau's Long As You Know You're Living Yours (1974) throughout the song.

Most notably their most palatable AM Gold staple Rikki Don't Lose That Number faithfully pulls its central melody from the opening notes of Horace Silver's Song For My Father.  That ain't a rip off. That's an homage.

The Gaslamp Killer - The Mayan (live set)

When I started this blog 2 years ago, out of a renewed interest in music in general, particularly a renewed appreciation for certain types of - largely Detroit- Hip Hop (the production opus of J Dilla, Black Milk, a young honk named Danny Brown) as well as a handful of Electronic Dance Music producers and DJ's who fascinated me.  The Gaslamp Killer was exactly that cat.  His infectious mixes of everything from Jimi Hendrix to Dilla, to psychedelic pastiches of the Turkish Pop his grandfather cultivated a deep and abiding love in, spoke to types of devotional and psychedelic music I've always been drawn to.  I scoured the internet looking for the best performances of him live, such as this one which I called The Best Backyard Party Ever for obvious reasons.  Another particularly brilliant set in a unique setting I came across was at the Natural History Museum First Fridays (06.05.09). 

William Benjamin Bensussen is a Turkish American (he is in fact the son of a Turkish-Lebanese-Jewish father and Lithnuanian-Jewish mother) visionary who came to prominence in the DJ club culture of San Diego.  The questionable club district was dubbed The Gaslamp District and so arose a counterpoint to that glib surface side of club culture.  In 2005 he relocated to LA and co-founded an experimental party series (Low End Theory) with Daddy Kev and DJ Nobody in the area of Lincoln Heights.  In the eclectic LA beat scene he played frequently alongside Daedalus, Samiyam and Flying Lotus; all of whom he collaborates with on his brand new Breakthrough LP (on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label).  In the interim he seems to have done everything from playing over-inspired sets for under-enthused hip hop fans waiting for headliner MF Doom to take the stage (or someone wearing his mask) to producing the bulk of Gonjasufi's A Sufi And A Killer.

With Electronic Dance Music having become hyper-popular and lionized some very questionable button-pushing barbarians at the gate will The Gaslamp Killer prove to be the refreshing antidote for DJ culture gone wrong?  Or gone right?  Despite his prodigious skills as a producer the Killer is best heard as a DJ such as here in his set the other day at The Mayan in LA. Listen early in his set for his debut of Nissim with Amir Yhagmai (who predictably for LA is a member of a musical duo Jogger with Alan Thicke's son Jonathan) plucking a virtuous line on yiali tambur and guitar.  The track also features Daedalus on bass as the three tried to extend and breakdown a Turkish record the Killer found one day.