Prologue
Usually, my music posts about sampling are based on selecting a song that has used some different sampled songs, and I deconstruct it musically, to discover the origin of the sounds that give form to that new musical song. However, while reviewing my music library to choose the theme of a new post, I found a jewel I had almost forgotten, but instead of containing samples it has been used numerous times as sampled sound for other songs. After thinking a lot, and stopping to write other posts in which I had been working under the scheme that I mentioned before, I decided to do a reverse post and would tell the story of a song that has served as an inspiration sound to many others.
And everything starts here...
Mr. Isaak Hayes
I do not know if you had heard the name of Isaak Hayes. I did not really meet him until a couple of years ago when I started to get interested in the samples in music. However, I did not start to listen to his music because I was caught by some song I had heard, I knew him because I was caught by the sound of a song sampled by another artist, which in the end was not so bad either.
Some highlights of Isaak Hayes to enter into context:
- He was born in Tennessee
- He was the third Afro-American to win an Oscar award (for the music of "Shaft")
- For the same film he won two additional Grammy Awards, and a third one for his album "Black Moses" (of which we will talk a little later)
- He was recognized by the Grammy's Hall of Fame for having composed, with David Porter, "Soul Man", considered one of the 50 most influential songs in history according to this academy.
- He owned a Basketball team, the Memphis Tams
- He worked as an actor in more than 80 Films and TV series
- He was the voice of Chef in the TV show South Park, until 2006, when he left due to discrepancies with the producers due to the criticism of the series to Scientology.
Yes, he did Chef's seductive voice.
The list of what Hayes did in his life, his importance in the industry, and his achievements is much longer, but what brings us here today is something much more concrete and specific, this post is about the musical importance of one of its songs: Ike's Rap II!
Having said that, let's get into the subject and start listening to the song that inspired this post (I also drop the lyrics below).
Relax and enjoy:
Ike's Rap II
Love, love, I know you can hear me
See we've known each other a long time
I guess right now you've got the last laugh
I know I abused you
I took advantage of you
I used you selfishly
I apologize now
See because after suffering so much
I know now I was wrong
You've the only one I can turn to
Because I missed you
You've the only one that can straighten me
You see love
I can't sleep
I can't even eat
I don't go anywhere anymore
Love, if you help me just this once
I'll never misuse you anymore
I won't be cold anymore
And I'll forever keep you in my heart
Please baby, please
Help me love, find my way
I'm still living in yesterday
There are some things I don't care to reveal
You see they make me feel the way that I feel
I think if I told you, you might just understand
Why I appear to be such a cold-hearted man
Once upon a love, that was so untrue
It turned my heart into stone, and left me so blue
You got to help me love, you're my only chance
I need you to help make me once again a man
Take this heart of mine, and make it new
Please, don't ever leave me blue
And if there's anyone in this whole wide world
It would be you, you're secret baby love
Just give me love like I never had
Treat me good, I'm so tired of being treated so bad
Help me love, I feel so bad
I guess it goes all the way back to my mom and dad
Two people, I never chanced to know
I wonder why, I miss them so
I never had a mothers touch
Or a fathers hand
A good woman's love
Why, I just don't understand
Maybe I'm the one who made myself blue
Won't you help me love, help me find happiness with you
Help me love, help me love
Help me love, find my way
Help me love, turn darkness into day
Help me love, you're my only chance
Help me love, make me once again a man
Help me love, I need you so bad
Help me love, give me the chance I never had
Please
Black Moses
Black Moses was the fifth album of Hayes' musical career. It was a double album, released in 1971, with very personal characteristics and a very sexy sound. The design of the album was made in a way that, when unfolded, it became a poster, and we discovered Hayes dressing a biblical outfit, making reference to the album's name.
Eventually controversy started, and was with Ike's Rap II, due some accusations of having plagiarized the string arrangement of "Daydream", of the Belgian band Wallace Collection, recorded and edited only two years before (song that in turn was also accused to have direct references to some melodies of the Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake). But since I am not a judge, and I do not pretend to be one, I share here both songs to let you draw your own conclusions:
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Starting is the Ike's Rap II reference. The inspiration of Tchaikovsky in the second 0:40 | The "stolen" part appears in the second 0:29. Listen and draw your own conclusions. |
I believe that in cases like this, it doesn't matter if there was any conscious or subconscious reference of the versions that I just showed you, since each one of the themes is amazing, and completely different from each other.
Ike's Rap II samples
Sometime later, in the late 80's, an interesting band from Bristol, UK, called The Wild Bunch, discovered, thank you to its producers Smith and Mighty, the discs of Bacharach & David, a duo that occasionally made covers of Hayes, and began to experiment with them, and the results were singles which eventually became hits, discovering little by little the sonority of the own Hayes. Shortly after Wil Bunches made metamorphosis and became nothing more and nothing less than Massive Attack!
Massive Attack enters the studio and records their first Album: Blue Lines. Among the staff that worked on the recording of this album, was a recording assistant called Geoff Barrow. All the musical influence that Barrow had been absorbing during these recordings sessions was incorporated into his own project, which he had with the singer Beth Gibbons, with whom he recorded a first demo in the same studio where they were recording Blue Lines, when the studio was free.
This new band, with the additional incorporation of Adrian Utley, and which was to become a reference for that new sound that some called Trip-Hop, was called Portishead.
During the recording of their first Album, Dummy, with all their musical influences, the sounds of Bristol that each day became more characteristic, and the references known during the recording of Massive Attack, they decided to dust off Black Moses from Hayes and use fragments of Ike's Rap II in which would be their third single: Glory Box:
From here, two different stories emerge from the following theme that used the same sample of Ike's Rap II. While it was still recording Blue Lines from Massive Attack, one of its members, who was not completely satisfied with his space and decision-making power within the band, was preparing his own solo project. That guy was Tricky.
Obviously the fact that two artists so close together used the same sample, each one in its own project, brought disputes that transcended the media. As expected, each one tells a different version of the facts:
Barrow's version
Posrtishead had managed to get the Massive Attack manager to handle them as well, and at a Christmas party from the Management company, Barrow played the Glory Box demo to Tricky, who one year after the release of Dummy, on his first solo album, " Maxinquaye ", he used the same sample and almost in the same way in his single "Hell Is' Round the Corner".
Tricky's version
While Tricky was beginning to record his first demos for "Maxinquaye", Borrow heard "Hell Is' Round the Corner" and ran to record a new last-minute single to a Dummy ready to be released, with the same hypnotic sample used by Tricky in a new song called "Glory Box".
There were demands, fights, press shows, but ultimately Tricky recorded and edited "Hell Is' Round the Corner", a somber song, intense, and completely different from the Noir sound that Portishead achieved with "Glory Box".
In my opinion it really not matter who recorded the first demo, both songs are impressive and unique, and both marked, for me, a new stage of musical tastes and influences.
Post Trip-Hop
After the success of the Portishead and Tricky singles with the Ike's Rap II sample, there were many new musical pieces from different artists from all over the world with the same sample, most of them were more influenced by Portishead and Tricky than by Hayes itself, and we can note it in the use they made of the sample in question:
Jorge da capadócia - Racionais Mcs -1997 (0:02) | Chyste Mc - Sentado en la arena - 2010 (0:30 - 1:01) | Salve - Racionais Mcs - 1997 (from the start) |
|---|---|---|
Maverick Sabre - Let Me Go - 2011 (0:16) | 3030 - Mundo de Ilusões - 2012 (0:14) | ÉSMaticx - Achtelfinale HR vs. EstA - 2013 ( 0:03) |
Looking to the present
As often happens with music, sounds are recycled from time to time, with stages of revision and reinterpretation of old albums and styles, and new artists appear on the music scene with all this musical history background.
In 2015 appeared Alessia Cara, a young and talented Canadian girl, with a first single called "Here". Will you be able to imagine what sample was used in this song?
But the story of Ike's Rap II doesn't stop there, since then new artists have wanted to take advantage of the seventies sounds of Hayes, and it is something that will continue to happen over the years, I'm pretty sure about it. These are some more recent examples:
Granite State!!! - Last Breath / Wake Up !!!! - 2016 | Snoh Aalegra - Nothing Burns Like the Cold - 2017 | |
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The End?
Sadly Hayes did not get to listen to these last "tributes" to his music through the samples; he died in Memphis on August 10, 2008.
What we have left is to enjoy his legacy, his performances, his music, and his music through the creativity of new musicians.
Thank you for joining me in this new musical deconstruction.
Sources:
Odd Fellows Rest / Have you seen this man? / Rock: The reluctant dbutante / All images are clickable to the sources.
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