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0 pointshnlmorg4y ago0 comments

Yes, when the authors found out. My point was that sample was in circulation for years back when the scene was underground and most of the artists sampling it would have taken that sample from other electronic artists rather than from the original Winstons vinyl.

I used to see this kind of thing happen all the time and not just the Amen break.

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ratww4y ago· 2 in thread

> and most of the artists sampling it would have taken that sample from other electronic artists rather than from the original Winstons vinyl

It was already popular in hip hop several years before it became popular in the underground electronic scene. It was used by Salt-n-Pepa in 1986, and by NWA, Ghetto Boys, 2 Live Crew and Ultramagnetic MCs in 1988. Even Janet Jackson used it in 1990. Heck, Informer by Snow used it! And those are the ones we know. Hardly underground.

In hip hop it was most certainly taken from the vinyl, as samplers with the required storage were still quite pricy at the time, not to mention most producers were doing their own sampling. The track name was probably passed from DJ to DJ.

The Amen craze in Electronic music only started in the early 90s. There was already some break beats in the last years of the 80s, but it was mostly Funky Drummer. It was around 90/91 when electronic musicians started doing it, from Atari Teenage Riot to Carl Cox, but it was already a thing in hip hop.

hnlmorgOP4y ago

> In hip hop it was most certainly taken from the vinyl, as samplers with the required storage were still quite pricy at the time

Hardware samplers were. But a lot of home studios had an Atari ST or Amiga. Plus regardless of the hardware used, those samples would have to be stored somewhere (even on hardware samplers) to be able to playback in the first place. I mean how else are you going to sequence it, save it when you're done and recall it again after? A lot of hardware from that era, and especially the Atari ST and Amiga, would have floppy drives and it was pretty common for people to share a sample disks.

I've posted this before but here is a video of Norman Cook showing off his Atari ST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLjgXPDzeZo

ratww4y ago

The Creator app he runs on the Atari ST is a MIDI sequencer, not a DAW or sampler. The machine is probably not fast enough for realtime sampling. For sampling he is very well known for having used a pair of Akai S950s, each with 2.25MB of RAM. You can see them both on the rack behind him with the round yellow stickers. Just in case: this specific model also came out after most of the recording I mentioned.

Anyway, I was talking about 1986 and 1988... Rockefeller Skank was released in 1998. It's not exactly representative of a hip-hop setup from 12 years before. Either way, it is quite clear that he also samples from vinyl, like I said.

Anyway, I don't see how this is relevant to the topic. My point is that the sample was well known and was used in mainstream hip-hop from the beginning, it was never only an "underground secret distributed in disks"... that happened much later than the usage in hip-hop.

If there's any pre-1986 underground track using the Amen Break, or any documented use, it would be very interesting to know, because it would should be part of music history!

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