Strong producers of this era instead wanted to chop things up, slow things down, layer them with other samples, add some different drum beats, or even make entire cut-and-paste collages, using several crates of records for just one song (all praises due to The Bomb Squad). In its humble beginnings, with Chic’s “Good Times” break working as the foundation for “Rapper’s Delight”, the Sugar Hill/Cold Crush era saw many easy lifts, but as hip-hop progressed, and the “rules” were established, the use of a terribly obvious sample to drive your single was frowned upon, such as MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” (from Rick James “Super Freak”) or Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” (from David Bowie & Queen’s “Under Pressure”).
Sure, it’s easy to see why clueless, uninformed, aging rock journalists would see it this way, because sampling in it’s cheapest and most uncreative form, is simply beat-jacking. Sampling – that is, taking a section of a song, and reusing for your own recording – has been harshly criticized over the years, as “stealing” or “not real music”, by the mainstream press.
