Afrika Bambaataa’s most famous track ‘Planet Rock’ (1982) is a prime example of one of hip hop’s characteristic trademarks: sampling. In simplistic terms, the practice of sampling is the borrowing of music or sound byte in which a section of a recording is incorporated into another.
In ‘Planet Rock’, Bambaataa combined a variety of samples ranging from music by the German band Kraftwerk, music from film, to cuts from British band Babe Ruth over a Roland TR808 drum machine. Sampling has been widespread in hip hop circles since the 1980s and offers a way of acknowledging history and influences through the collage of black musical traditions such as jazz and gospel but also voices and beats from various popular and obscure sources (Dyson, 2004).
Potter argues sampling is an essential feature of hip hop: “the fundamental practice of hip hop is one of citation, of the relentless sampling of sonic and verbal archives” (1995: 53). Huq (2003: 150) explains the bricolage aesthetic of sampling as “participatory collective consumption” because of the shared recognisable fragments reassembled to compose the hybridized music.
Sampling serves as the epitome of remix culture in the age of digital media as sounds can be moved around, appropriated, overlapped or transfigured to create new sounds. Although something of the original sound is maintained, its meaning changes in every new context.
Beats, Rhymes and Life 