For years, the two carried out one of hip-hop's most famous feuds before eventually reconciling. Making the allusion here more interesting is the history between Nas and Jay-Z. Most obviously, there's Nas' " NY State of Mind," one of the rapper's best-known songs, if not indeed the best-known song in his catalog. The phrase "Empire State of Mind" alludes to a couple of well-known earlier songs about New York. Because New York is the city that it is, with "eight million stories" to be told, how can Jay-Z even attempt a definitive New York anthem without reinventing and recontextualizing the stories, lyrics, and music of others? "Empire State of Mind" is a collage of sounds in this way, and appropriately so. What makes a piece of music interesting isn't really its authorship so much as the recombination of these unoriginal elements into something fresh and new, even if never wholly original. Most every piece of pop music copies something else. The whole idea of "pop music" is that the music is "popular." How can something be "popular" if it's entirely unfamiliar?
This is by no means necessarily a bad thing, however. In fact, thinking about rap as an art form of memory that necessarily alludes to other rappers and singers-as when Jay-Z quotes Sinatra's, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere" and Young Jeezy's song "24 & 23"-the source of most of the song's material isn't really the singer or the producer. It's not unfair to think of each core aspect of the song, then-the melody, the harmony, and the rhythm-as being somewhat unoriginal, or at least appropriated from earlier sources. Might we say that Alicia Keys is "sampling" her melody here? These streets will make you feel brand new Remember Coldplay's "The Scientist"? The vocal hook is practically identical to Keys' melody during these lines: Not to mention that the melody already has rendered itself immediately recognizable. Her vocals on the chorus have been praised as the emotive heart of this song, and the catchy melody has rendered it immediately recognizable. While Jay-Z's rap is more interesting lyrically than musically, there's still Alicia Keys' vocal track to think about, since she actually sings. It usually isn't interesting if a song samples something well-known, so getting these deep cuts gives producers a lot of cred. Like rap itself, sampling relies so much on memory. Part of the game in producing hip-hop is finding hidden gems like this. Isaac Hayes' "Breakthrough" is a more-or-less throwaway funk song. After the nice, but slow intro, "Love on a Two-Way Street" transforms into a pretty uninteresting ballad. To be honest, neither of these songs is especially great. Something similar is true for "Empire State of Mind." You've probably heard of Isaac Hayes, especially if you watch South Park, and maybe you've even heard of the Moments, but neither of these songs is likely to be familiar to you. And yet, a sped up version of the intro to their song "Someday in Athens" provides the heart of "Run This Town," the other mega-hit from The Blueprint 3.
Whoever heard of the 4 Levels of Existence? Probably not you. The idea is to take a small portion of the song, speed it up, slow it down, loop it, whatever, and incorporate it with new sounds, making it fresh and new. Sampling can occur as a shout-out to another artist, as something that listeners will recognize and latch on to-as when Eminem sampled the well-known Aerosmith song "Dream On" in his 2002 song " Sing for the Moment"-but more often, samples are taken from obscure sources. This leads us to an important understanding of the art of sampling. the chords, and the rhythm-aren't original at all.Īnd since Alicia Keys, who actually plays the "Love on a Two-Way Street" piano line in live performances of the song, is the featured artist on the track, the idea of sampling is even further obscured. If you don't happen to be a huge fan of the Moments or Isaac Hayes, you probably won't even realize that two of the three core aspects of a song-the melody, the harmony a.k.a. You probably wouldn't recognize that these are samples without being told so.
And, of course, they're taken out of context. Instead of being in the key of F major, as in the Moments' song, the "Empire State of Mind" is in F# major. The beat is taken from the intro of Isaac Hayes' "Breakthrough." Meanwhile, the piano loop is taken from the intro of The Moments' "Love on a Two-Way Street."Įach of these has been sped up, so the key is one half-step higher too. "Empire State of Mind" has two key samples.