If you haven't scoured WhoSampled for every song Kanye West has ever sampled in his entire career, I'm not sure we can be friends. Fortunately, it's never too late to start. On this fine Friday, the 13th anniversary of the release of Ye's untouchable debut The College Dropout, we decided to lay out for you an introduction into the LP's notable samples.
Hip-hop samples can introduce young listener's to artists and genres they otherwise never would have heard about, and create new fans for artists as disparate as Chaka Khan and Michael Bolton. And when an elder asks how they discovered such old tunes, they can snarkily respond, "Yeezy taught me."
Flip through the gallery above to get on that level.
(Cover photo courtesy of Carlo Allegri/Getty Images)
Jimmy Castor's "I Just Wanna Stop" from "We Don't Care"
"We Don't Care," Kanye's friendly drug dealer anthem, might have been Yeezy's first great troll. Getting a choir of children to sing about slanging drugs and dying young, Mr. West took on the establishment of hip-hop (and everything else) with too much good humor for anyone to hate. Jimmy Castor's cover of Montreal singer-songwriter Gino Vanneli's "I Just Wanna Stop" provided Kanye with a squeaky clean palette to launch his timeless Horatian satire.
Catch the material sampled from "I Just Wanna Stop" above at 0:01 and 3:15.
The ARC Choir's "Walk With Me" from "Jesus Walks"
The ARC Choir, an a capella gospel group of the Addicts Rehabilitation Center in New York City, is actually comprised of "thirty-five current and/or former substance abusers." Their "Walk With Me" record, released in 1997, is the entire backbone of Kanye's first transcendent hit, "Jesus Walks." The authenticity of the song's message, reclaiming Christianity for the drug dealers, addicts, and sex workers marginalized by the rest of society, lies squarely in the sample itself.
Catch the material sampled from "Walk With Me" at the very start of the song, spanning nearly the entire record.
Blackjack's "Maybe It's The Power of Love" from "Never Let Me Down (Feat. Jay Z)"
Before Michael Bolton returned to the spotlight in 2011 as his own cinephile alter-ego for The Lonely Island's "Jack Sparrow," his musical legacy was pumped with new life by Kanye and Jay Z's "Never Let Me Down," a colossal moment in The Throne's history. Bolton, once the frontman of short-lived rock band Blackjack, recently spoke on having his track "Maybe It's The Power Of Love" sampled in "The College Dropout." Here's what he said:
"When Kanye and Jay Z’s publishing reps reached out to me about clearing this sample, I was surprised and flattered ... I wrote this song in the early 80s. If you told me back then that 20 years later it would have a second life in the work of two great hip hop artists, I would have called you crazy! Happy as I was, I wanted to make sure that I was cool with the content of the song before giving the go-ahead. So I had them send me the lyrics. I read them, and I thought 'I love this. It’s great. What a positive message.' And the song turned out beautifully – I’m totally happy with it ..."
Catch the material sampled from "Maybe It's The Power Of Love" above at 1:32.
Luther Vandross's "A House Is Not A Home" from "Slow Jamz (Feat. Twista & Jamie Foxx)"
"Slow Jamz" seems to be Kanye West's forgotten mega-hit, oft not mentioned in "College Dropout" discussions, despite it being Yeezy's first number one Hot 100 hit. Is there any way to sample a song more respectfully than to shout out the sample's artist in the chorus? Probably not, and we aren't sure there's another song in existence that does this.
Catch the material sampled from Luther Vandross's "A House Is Not A Home" above at 6:12 and 5:54.
Chaka Khan's "Through The Fire" from "Through The Wire"
This is the sample flip that started it all. It's alleged that before Kanye released "Through The Wire" with his mouth wired shut on his Get Well Soon mixtape, the folks at Roc-A-Fella were content keeping West's debut album shelved indefinitely. This song blasted through the barriers that prevented Kanye and the whole generation of rappers to come after him to succeed in the close-minded rap world of the early 2000's; all it took was a nearly fatal car accident and a misheard Chaka Khan chorus.
Catch the material sampled from Chaka Khan's "Through The Fire" above at 3:15 and 4:02.