Dartmouth Soundoff: The Obligatory "I Discovered Something Cool Over Spring Break" Post
Of course, WhoSampled has things that pretty much everybody knows, or could have figured out by reading the song’s Wikipedia page. For example, Jason DeRulo’s “Whatcha Say” sampled Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek." Kanye West used a clip from Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” in his track “Stronger." No secrets there.
Further up the ladder on WhoSampled are things that make for nice trivia questions if you’re a music geek. For instance, Chiddy Bang’s “Mind Your Manners” sampledwho? The answer is Icona Pop, who I don’t think crossed the mainstream’s radar until a few weeks ago when “I Love It” blew up.
The site allows you to easily observe chains of sampling. For example, Nas’ “The World Is Yours” sampledjazz pianists Ahmad Jamal’s “I Love Music.” And then Mac Miller sampled “The World is Yours” in “Nike’s On My Feet.” It’s, like, so meta.
Lastly, there are things on WhoSampled that you will wish you never stumbled upon. Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” rips a riff from the melody of “Ba Ba Black Sheep.” I’ve purposely omitted the link here, for I care about and want to protect my readers. Seriously, who would figure out that connection and post it on the internet anyway?
The site has remixes and covers in its database, allowing you to, for example, locate sixteen different covers of Oasis’s “Wonderwall.” Anyway, I thought it would be kindest to introduce now what will be this term’s biggest time waster for me, so you can both explore it before classes ramp up, and still have all term to utilize it. Stay tuned: once I figure out who the Kevin Bacon (a la that “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game) of music is, I’ll have to make it the subject of another column.