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The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990-2023)

Oh man this is so great: electronic music sample breakdowns from 1990 until the present day. The visualizations on these are fantastic — just watch a bit of the first one (Groove Is In The Heart) and you’ll see what I mean. They’re not all that great (some of these producers are out here working harder than others, is what I’m saying), but these are some of my favorites:

  • Groove Is In The Heart by Dee-Lite (Eva Gabor Green Acres sample!)
  • Firestarter by The Prodigy (sample from The Breeders?)
  • Praise You by Fatboy Slim (It’s a Small World from Mickey Mouse Disco? Fat Albert Theme?!)
  • One More Time by Daft Punk
  • Robot Rock by Daft Punk
  • Archangel by Burial
  • First of the Year by Skrillex
  • Girl by Jamie xx
  • Pick Up by DJ Koze
  • leavemealone by Fred again

Is DJ Shadow electronic? I would have liked to have seen something from Endtroducing… but maybe they couldn’t even locate the samples. 😂

I could have also gone for more Daft Punk, but I guess you need to let others have a shot. Luckily the same channel has breakdowns of a few more Daft Punk tunes from Discovery and an extended breakdown of One More Time.

Also from the same channel (and even better IMO): The Most Iconic Hip-Hop Sample of Every Year (1973-2023).

See also The Making of Burial’s Untrue.

Discussion  4 comments

Pete Ashton

I love how I go into these thinking, yeah, here we go, same old, and then I discover something like Firestarter sampled the fricking Breeders? You what now? I mean, it tracks...

Matt Clements

I saw this YouTube video a while ago about DJ Shadow samples:

https://youtu.be/FpbWz7QvJAo?si=T2rlB9k2pI9R8brA

Leon Barnard

The Song Exploder episode with DJ Shadow is pretty cool. “Mutual Slump” features a prominent Bjork sample.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/song-exploder/id788236947?i=1000378727239

Max Elman

A little extra work, but I'd love timestamps on your few featured ones above. For example, Praise You starts at 7:25 and is particularly impressive: https://youtu.be/FpaoCUEhZJM?t=445

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