Best Songs That Sample Old Songs

What was sampled: guitar riff and opening fanfare

Kanye pitched King Crimson's prog-rock guitar fanfare down a step and built one of rap's most maximalist statements around it. The original is a nine-minute jazz-rock freakout from 1969; the sample reduces it to a chest-expanding two-bar loop that makes 'POWER' feel genuinely cinematic.

What was sampled: guitar lick and horn stabs

Pharrell flipped the Isley Brothers' call-and-response guitar hook into the nervous, hopeful pulse of Kendrick's protest anthem. Sixty years separate the two recordings but the emotional DNA is identical -- both songs are about survival and insisting on joy despite the odds.

What was sampled: vocal and full arrangement

Rather than excising a single drum loop, Kanye kept Otis Redding's entire emotional arc -- the slow build to the breathless final minute -- and let two of rap's biggest names ride it. The track works because the sample is not a backdrop; it's the story.

What was sampled: piano riff and vocal hook

Ray Charles invented the formula of gospel structure plus secular subject matter back in 1954. Kanye fast-forwarded it fifty years and let Jamie Foxx flip the vocal hook from reverential to satirical. The original's joy survives the transformation intact -- 'Gold Digger' is genuinely funky, which is not a given when you sample a civil-rights-era record.

What was sampled: filtered vocoder loop and chord sequence

Daft Punk themselves sampled Edwin Birdsong's 1979 synth-funk record 'Cola Bottle Baby' for their original -- Kanye then sampled Daft Punk, creating one of pop's great chains of influence. The vocoder hook is so immediately recognizable that 'Stronger' works as both a rap song and a sample-history lesson.

What was sampled: drum break and bass synth

Organized Noize layered a Zapp drum break under Andre 3000's most vulnerable vocal, producing a song that somehow made an apology letter to an ex's mother into a decade-defining hit. The funk source keeps the track loose and human even when the subject matter is raw.

What was sampled: flute melody

Metro Boomin looped Tommy Butler's meditative 1975 flute line -- originally recorded as a reflection on incarceration -- and built 'Mask Off' entirely around it, letting the flute carry all the emotional weight. The sample's mournful beauty turns Future's most brazen drug references into something genuinely haunting.

What was sampled: guitar stab and rhythm pattern

Daft Punk reversed decades of hip-hop's relationship with sampling -- instead of building electronic music from funk samples, they hired live musicians to recreate the analog warmth of the source era. The result is a tribute to the 70s that could only have been made in 2013.

What was sampled: bass line and groove structure

Donald Glover built 'Redbone' around the feel of Bootsy Collins's rubbery 1976 bass groove, recording it at a pitch slow enough to feel like a warped record. The technique is a deliberate reference to the physical experience of crate-digging -- playing a record at the wrong speed and discovering something better.

What was sampled: organ melody and drum machine pattern

Timmy Thomas recorded his 1972 soul hit alone with a Lowrey organ and a drum machine -- one of the earliest drum-machine-driven recordings in soul music. Drake and 40 stripped the arrangement back even further, keeping only the organ melody and building the track's emotional vacancy around it.

What was sampled: guitar arpeggio

DJ Dahi sampled Beach House's hazy guitar arpeggio to build 'Money Trees,' turning indie dream-pop into the sonic backdrop for Kendrick's most detailed portrait of Compton ambition. The contrast between the lulling sample and the weight of the lyrics is exactly the point.

What was sampled: vocal hook

Sister Nancy's reggae-dancehall classic had been sampled hundreds of times before Kanye lifted the 'Bam Bam' vocal for 'Famous,' but his version introduced the original to a new generation. The contrast between the song's gleeful Jamaican party energy and the track's contentious lyric is intentional and jarring.

What was sampled: opening synth melody

Sounwave looped Peter Gabriel's iconic opener from 'In Your Eyes' -- the track that defined the boom-box-in-the-rain scene in 'Say Anything' -- to anchor Kendrick's most straightforward love song. The sample is so recognizable that it immediately signals warmth and nostalgia even on first listen.

What was sampled: vocal performance and horn arrangement

The original is one of the most emotionally naked recordings in soul music -- Redding building from a whisper to a scream over three minutes. Kanye sliced it into a loop and let two of the most commercially successful rappers of their era play with the contrast.

What was sampled: vocal hook and beat

Mike Will Made It and Sounwave sampled XXXTentacion's viral underground track and used its raw aggression as the chassis for Kendrick's most kinetic verse. The sample arrived so quickly after the original that it felt less like homage and more like a live conversation between artists.

What was sampled: synth pad and chord progression

Kanye and Symbolyc One flipped the warm, pillowing synth pad from Erykah Badu's debut into a gospel choir piece about faith surviving public humiliation. The sample's original hazy serenity becomes reverence -- the track opens 'The Life of Pablo' as an act of sonic cleansing.

What was sampled: guitar chord strum

Frank Ocean's production team buried Tom Petty's chord strum so deep in the mix on 'Nights' that most listeners never consciously register it -- it functions as subliminal textural warmth rather than an audible sample. That restraint is part of what makes 'Blonde' feel emotionally spacious rather than busy.

What was sampled: bass and drum pattern

Hit-Boy built the urgent, ascending pulse of 'Backseat Freestyle' on a reworked Aerosmith figure -- a rock-band drum-and-bass groove repurposed to match the adolescent recklessness in Kendrick's verse about being 16 and invincible. The source being a classic rock band is precisely the kind of unexpected crate-dig that makes a sample land.

What was sampled: synth arpeggio and chord progression

Charlie Handsome and Disclosure co-produced 'Location' by flipping the emotional blueprint of 'Latch' -- same rising-chord optimism, same electronic shimmer -- into a lo-fi bedroom-pop frame. It's a rare case where the sample makes the new song feel more intimate rather than larger.

What was sampled: guitar riff

Swizz Beatz interpolated an industrial metal guitar figure and buried it under distortion until it sounded less like metal and more like an alarm signal. The sample choice is quintessential Kanye -- the surface genre is irrelevant; only the emotional register matters.