Tracklib Presents State of Sampling

Looking back on 2018, 20% of the top 100 tracks contained samples. It's been fairly consistent the last few years: usually between 20-25%. Looking back 10 years, the number was 14%. The increasing popularity of Hip-Hop has probably also had an impact on the number of samples. In 2018, Hip-Hop surpassed Rock to become the most popular music genre in the U.S.

A majority of the top 50 albums last year contained samples. A total of 204 samples appeared on those albums, making it four samples per album on average. Drake’s album ”Scorpion” was the album containing the most samples (21) in Billboards top 100 albums 2018. That's the same amount of samples as the Billboard's top 50 for Pop, Dance/Electro and Latin contain combined. That’s 13 Drake-songs versus 150 top-hits!

y looking at the songs a handful of top producers sampled in the last 3 years, it becomes clear that their birth year affects what songs they choose to sample. It obviously differs from song to song, but on average, we can see that the release year for the songs a producer samples tend to be around when they were between the age of 5 and 10.

A common belief is that music from the 70s is the best suited to sample. In a survey, Tracklib’s users also said they prefer to sample 70s music to other decades. Because of this, it's a little surprising that not even one song on the Billboard Top 100 last year sampled 70s music. It's of course still very popular, but the most common decade to sample right now is actually the 2010s.

Hip-hop is not only the biggest genre on the charts, it’s also by far the most common genre to sample, with around 50% of all samples coming from Hip-Hop. Sampling online video (YouTube, Instagram, etc.) is also becoming increasingly more popular.

Deborah Mannis-Gardner is one of the world’s most renowned sample clearance experts. Last year her team cleared over 1.500 samples. She's worked with artists like Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Lady Gaga, to name a few. We asked her if she saw any sample trends during 2018.

"Some artists always deny sample requests, and Prince used to be one of them. But sampling his music definitely got easier this year. I’ve secured the rights to Prince for a client, for an interpolation, which never happened when he was alive.”

“Many producers tend to do their crate-digging online nowadays, which helps them find a lot more obscure music to sample. This, of course, makes my job a lot harder since it can be very hard to figure out who the original rights owners are. The biggest problem I’ve had is Russian stuff. And Cuban. As a US citizen, I can’t even call Cuba."

"Most top artists are not taking any chances and are clearing everything. Marshall (Eminem) is like that: he used a couple of words just one time, but because it was a nod to another artist he thought it was very important to clear it. And then you have artists on the other side of the spectrum where the mentality is more like 'Release first, clear second'. I've seen more of those, this year. Nothing I would recommend, obviously."

Who would’ve thought: Sting in a Hip-Hop beef. Producer Nick Mira called out the “Shape of my Heart” singer for threatening a lawsuit over Juice WRLD's "Lucid Dreams". Despite Sting calling the track a "beautiful interpretation" of his track, Mira went off on Twitter: "Fuck Sting and his WHOLE team..."

In a series of now-deleted tweets, Nicki Minaj desperately tried to get in touch with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman about a sample of Chapman’s “Baby Can I Hold You”. It got messy: Chapman “repeatedly denied” the clearance request, Funkmaster Flex premiered Minaj's "Sorry" on Hot 97 and the song got out there, resulting in a lawsuit for copyright infringement.

Dreamville’s and Spillage Village’s J.I.D. got frustrated about a producer slacking with his sampling. His tweet was a note to self and a reminder for all producers to always keep track of where your samples come from.

Danny Brown tweeted “Never spend 70K on samples for an album that no one buys cause you will be in debt lol”, referring to the samples for his intricate ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ album from 2016. The album debuted at number 77 on the Billboard 200.

Lauryn Hill is known for declining sample requests for her music. But she made an exception for Drake’s “Nice For What”, one of the year’s biggest tracks. That sample became a part of a long sampling chain: Lauryn’s ”Ex-Factor” heavily samples Wu-Tang Clan’s ”Can It All Be So Simple” from 1993, which samples a Gladys Knight & The Pips’ song from 1974, which is a mashup of Barbara Streisand’s ”The Way We Were” from 1974 and Jerry Orbach’s ”Try to Remember” from 1960.

Both JuiceWRLD’s “Lucid Dreams” and Tory Lanez & 50 Cent's “Pieces” sampled the same Sting song only a few months apart.The 1993 hit “Shape Of My Heart”.

The sample of a BMW I8’s belt alarm had an essential part in XXXTentacion’s hit ”SAD!”, produced by John Cunningham. With over 1,5 billion streams (around 7896 years in total streaming time), BMW I8’s belt alarm is surely the most streamed alarm ever and probably a first.

For his “4th Dimension” track with Kid Cudi, Kanye West went all the way back to 1936 for a Christmas song sample: "What Will Santa Claus Say (When He Finds Everybody Swingin')" by Louis Prima. Definitely one of the oldest and most unexpected samples of the year.