Kanye Couldn't Clear the Sample, so he did THIS

the 2004 Kanye song All Falls Down is an incredible cocktail of complex social issues vulnerability materialism systemic racism and more all over a classic incredible Kanye beat Kanye says he wrote it in 15 minutes but today we'll pick apart the entire process and see how with sample clearance issues it's a little more complicated than that I'm gonna break down the story behind this song the original sample used how it had to be re-recorded talk to one of the musicians involved we already mixed the song we don't need this and I'm like you gotta recall the song and put guitars in dude so they did and in the process we'll see just how incredible this cocktail really is the key to understanding the whole thing is a quote from this New York Times interview from 2013 where Kanye describes the mix of his sound and lyrics in his early days he said I used to have tracks that sounded like Timberland I used to have tracks that sounded like DJ Premiere but Jay-Z was an amazing Communicator that made the soul sound extreme popular and because that could make the soul sound in my sleep it finally gave me a platform to put the message that my parents put inside of me and that Dead Prez helped to get out of me and most deaf and Talib kwali they helped get out of me I was able to put it sloppily wrap it on top of the platform that Jay-Z had created for me and here's the really crucial part and it wasn't until I hung out with Dead Prez and understood how to make you know raps with a message sound cool that I was able to write all falls down in 15 minutes 15 minutes is crazy for any song and All Falls Down especially but as we're going to see there's a bit more to the story that took longer for instance let's take a listen to the demo of this song from The Freshman adjustment mixtape from 2003. [Music] [Music] she's so self-conscious she has no idea what she doing the sample used here is the Lauren Hill song mystery of iniquity from her MTV Unplugged performance from 2002 and while the sample is pitched up from the original song it's very slight this is different from Kanye's early chipmunk Soul sound he used that technique a lot on The College Dropout but on this all falls down demo he's sampling in a different way of course that all goes out the window when you can't get the sample clear Kanye had to figure out another production technique but more on that in a second around the same time as the mixtape before The College Dropout was released Kanye used portions of this song in his appearance at the deaf poetry Jam after being introduced by most deaf as the future of hip-hop Kanye recites a poem called self-conscious what that's why you always see me with at least one of my watches so far we've been talking about production Styles sampling all the musical stuff in this song but this performance is stripped of the music entirely it's so incredible to see this version of it because his delivery is completely different Rollies and passage then drove me crazy I I can't even pronounce nothing past that for Stacy he's taking more time on the lines then I spent 400 bucks because there's no music he's pausing for laughter you ain't up on this [Applause] and this isn't the complete lyrics of the final song So presumably he's still working on it but more than any of that the words hit differently without a beat behind it since it's just the words and no music it forces you to lean in a little more and listen to what he's saying all right it's metaphor time it's that time in the video when I bring in some other seemingly unrelated idea and use it to explain what I'm trying to say in a deeper way I see the artistic process as being three distinct levels the top level is the big abstract thing that the artist wants to say but if you were to just talk about it it would take hours and you still wouldn't cover everything so the artist distills this down into some form of art this could be visual it could be musical it could be a story a movie a song or a painting whatever medium the artist wants to work in and then the last level when it's really good art that's when the viewer The Listener reader or whoever takes this distilled thing and expands it back out for themselves then and only then you're able to understand that top layer the abstract thing in a way that you otherwise and here's the metaphor that middle layer the distilled thing it could be different a movie or TV show uses people facial expressions words all the normal everyday life stuff so this artistic distilling process results in a beer it's like five percent alcohol it'll get you to feel the feeling and it's consumed by a lot of people music might be something like wine it's like 12 alcohol so maybe a little more potent but also a little more abstract and therefore a little less accessible like not Everyone likes Jazz but if you do when you hear an incredible improvised solo played with not just technique but feeling behind it man it's hard to describe how incredible that is to people who don't like jazz but with a glass of wine once you unpack it and understand it and understand the various tasting notes pun intended it's incredible so then something like poetry poetry is like a hard liquor it's not for everybody for me even though I like it I can't just wake up and take a shot of whiskey first thing in the morning I gotta be really ready to unpack everything happening in the poem because this small thing has the potential to knock me on my ass so hearing Kanye perform sections of All Fall Down at this deaf poetry Jam setting stripped of Music performing it as a poem he's distilling down his message even further his Rhymes wordplay double meaning and delivery make all falls down like a shot of whiskey but as we know he's also got a demo cooking this isn't just a poem it's also a song a song that uses a Lauren Hill sample this is the version of the song that he played in the Rockefeller offices when he was trying to get signed as shown in the Netflix documentary look at her face Kanye knows he has a hit on his hands and he does but right now he's just some dude rapping his demo in her office while she's trying to work I love it Kanye does get the deal and gets working on what would become 2004's The College Dropout but the only hiccup on this song is that he has to clear that Lauren Hill sample sample clearance is an issue as old as hip-hop itself in 1979 the Sugar Hill Gang released Rapper's Delight which was the first big hip-hop radio hit this song sounds like it samples Good Times by Chic but it doesn't it's an interpolation which means it was re-recorded by a separate group of musicians with a specific intent of sounding like the original but why would you want to do that well there just isn't a good system for sampling you have to clear each sample with each label or artist directly and they can ask for whatever percentage they want or straight up decline your request to sample it but if you re-record it it's technically a cover and there's a system in place for that called mechanical licensing which makes the whole thing much easier and if you don't clear the sample and get caught well then you have lawsuits like the turtles suing De La Soul for transmitting life from Mars or delay's first six albums being kept Off streaming for years it's not a good system but it's what we've got and you guessed it Lauren Hill wouldn't clear the sample so with a looming deadline from the label Kanye set out to re-record the sample Kanye Enlisted the help of Ken Lewis to re-record the acoustic guitar Sim well I've been working with Kanye since about 2001 or 2002 uh since long before he was an artist or anybody really knew he wanted to be an artist snap forward to The College Dropout I think I worked on five or six songs on The College Dropout most of what I did was Sample Recreations um and a little bit of songwriting and production like you gotta understand during The College Dropout the end of it we were awake for about two weeks straight and I'm not slightly exaggerating it was probably the worst thing I've ever done to my body all falls down he had this uh Lauren Hill sample that had this nylon string guitar one night I just turned in one big piece of work that uh Kanye had me working on and uh he that was like one o'clock in the morning there he loved it and then out of the blue I get this call like uh 7 A.M from Kanye dude I got Selena Johnson in the studio right now I need you to cut this guitar part and send it right back to me immediately I'm like send it so so he sent it it was like seven in the morning maybe six in the morning three three o'clock in the morning by then in LA and I was in New York so I grabbed I just had an acoustic guitar and I grabbed the acoustic and I listened to the part and I recreated the part put it down and you know fine-tuned it and sent it over but I knew it wasn't right it was it really should have been a nylon string guitar not a steel string but when Kanye wants something he wants it right and then and they're they're not so after I turned that in at like nine o'clock in the morning I drove straight to uh Guitar Center and sat there in the parking lot till 10 a.m until they opened and then I went straight back to the nylon string section and pulled every single one down off the wall played until I found a beautiful one that was really in tune and well intonated and I took that one back and I re-cut the part cleaned it all up and resent it I sent it to plain Pat um who was the a r on it pat calls me up and he's like ah dude yeah we already mixed the song we don't need this and I'm like Pat you've got to recall the song and put these guitars in trust me on this he's like no no we're good and I'm like Pat recall the song and put the guitars in dude so they did and he calls me later he's like bro you were so right oh those are so great all thank you so so were you then in the nylon like playing nylon strings in Guitar Center I'm assuming because you're doing a sample Recreation you're playing the actual part uh in Guitar Center yeah yeah that's crazy I can just imagine like if there's a Guitar Center employee within earshot that's hearing you play that and then you know a couple months later whenever the song comes out they're like wait a minute that sounds familiar why do I know that Ken re-recorded the acoustic guitar and while it sounds like the original Lauren sample the guitar run All Falls Down is clearer Fuller more present in the mix and better sounding than the original sample could be but then there's the issue of Lauren's vocals now Kanye didn't have to look far to find someone who could cover it in fact he was already in the studio with common and Selena Johnson working on her album and as she tells it so then um he was like Selena you know I was wondering if I could try something with you you know if you could try some for me it's like six in the morning and I'm like okay cool you know whatever so we go next door he plays the record for me he's like yeah I need somebody on this hook he didn't tell me any of the logistics he just said I need some money on his hook I've been trying to find somebody to recently know he didn't tell me why he didn't tell me nothing I didn't know that she didn't clear it until afterwards I go into the booth and uh they play the it was the mystery of iniquity sample that's how it goes like it's slow I'm telling you all it all falls down and so he was like all right so I just kept trying to do it exactly just like her trying to do it exactly because to my understanding he was trying to get the sample he's trying to get my scene to sample so that he wouldn't have to pay for the sample but but then he was like all right now switch it up do some some things you want to do so then that's when I started stacking it I'm telling you know you know all those different voices like 10 o'clock in the morning next morning mind you it's seven so when I'm getting home so they call it like 10 11. yeah so uh the video is next week we about to do this and we're gonna do this this next thing was coming out this day and this and the third and this then the third we're going on the tour and it like all this in one day so I was like oh okay okay that's a good idea oh that's sharp okay cool thanks and just like with the guitar Selena's vocal performance stands on its own she's an incredible singer who did more than just recreate the sample she made it her own made a new version of the song that now people associate with all falls down from there Kanye added some drums and a few other things to it re-recorded his vocals and finished the song just in time for it to be released and take off this song Hit number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 has been certified double platinum and was nominated for a Grammy but remember the quote from the beginning Kanye said it wasn't until he hung out with Dead Prez that he understood how to make raps with a message sound cool and that he wrote this song in 15 minutes the initial demo may have taken only 15 minutes but the final version took a bit longer to complete but let's focus on Dead Prez and making a song with a message take the dead press song hip-hop this song has a partial YouTube block on it so I can't play it and I'm so mad because the beat alone is incredible this was the opening of every episode of Chappelle's Show the song is so good Spotify link in the description go listen to it not only is the beat amazing the lyrics are too Dead Prez criticizes the music industry and its exploitation of black people and encourages the use of hip-hop as a way to make social change for instance stick closes the song out with the lines these record labels slang our tapes like dope you can be next in line signed and still be written Rhymes and broke you would rather have Alexis or Justice a dream or some substance a beamer a necklace or free they're taking this larger idea that would take a long time to talk about distilling it down and delivering it as a potent mix of lyrics and music we can see the same thing happening in all falls down for example in the first verse Kanye is describing a woman who is self-conscious and she's in college because that's what she's supposed to do and he delivers lines like she's so precious with the peer pressure couldn't afford a car so she named her daughter Alexis precious peer pressure Alexis peer pressure sounds like Precious and Alexis and precious complete the rhyme not to mention a Lexus this is a very funny line Kanye is distilling a lot in here in the second verse he talks about himself in his own self-consciousness before turning it around on Society at large continuing into the third verse breaking down systemic issues and then we get to what I think is the most potent line of the whole song cause they made us hate ourself and love their wealth that's why Shorty's Holland where the ball is at drug dealer by Jordan crack here by crack and the white man get paid off for all of that I mean remember how I said Kanye's death poetry Jam version of this was like a shot of whiskey the final version of All Falls Down feels like some sort of whiskey cocktail it's got some other stuff mixed in there but damn still got a pretty potent kick he finishes the song by saying he's prone to the same issues as everybody else we're all self-conscious I'm just the first to admit it Kanye's taking this big idea distilled it all the way down to a potent poem this shot of whiskey then made it a song so a whiskey cocktail let's call it a whiskey sour but what's that oh Lauryn Hill won't let you have the sour mix but just make your own Selena Johnson's got the lemon juice Ken Lewis has the sugar now it's more delicious and mixes better anyway man I love it when a good metaphor comes together while All Falls Down uses an interpolation of a song his first single Through the Wire is a classic example of the Chipmunk Soul technique that he loved in his earlier production the insane thing about that song is the reason why it's called Through the Wire is because he was rapping with his jaw wired shut after a near fatal car accident but for that whole story you gotta watch this video thank you

Channel: Digging The Greats

Views: 798,414

Keywords: brandon shaw, b shaw, music history, digging the greats, kanye, ye, all falls down, college dropout

Id: zH5srIgWLZk

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023