Hip-Hop & Film: Art of the Sample

Throughout the years, feature film scores have provided rich sources of cross-genre experimentation for hip-hop artists.

David Liu | 27 December 2011

Song: “Blueprint²” by Jay-Z 
Sample: “The Ecstasy of Gold” by Ennio Morricone
Film: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)

Producer Charlemagne preserves the grandeur of Morricone’s iconic opening piano riff and ensuing operatic sweep. (See also: samples by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony on their 2007 track “We Workin’” and by David Fincher for an NFL commercial starring LaDainian Tomlinson and Troy Polamalu.)

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Runaway (Kanye West/Hype Williams, 2010)

If there was ever a career in hip-hop to rival the highs and lows of auteurs like Federico Fellini and Stanley Kubrick, Kanye West just might fit the bill. Rapturous and self-aggrandizing, Yeezy’s latest 35-minute opus is one of the wildest indulgences a musical artist has ever granted himself. Wooden dialogue and nonsensical plotting merge with hypnotic images and a cornucopia of pop culture references.

Playing a character named Griffin, West encounters and falls in love with a phoenix (Selita Ebanks) who has crashed down to Earth from another world. The film unfolds in five parts, each respectively synchronized to songs from West’s upcoming album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Among the orgy of visual tropes are deers in a primitive forest, ballerinas lighting up a minimalist banquet room and a marching band hoisting a papier-mâché effigy of Michael Jackson.

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142 plays

Kissing in the Rain - Patrick Doyle


Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuarón, 1998)

We Were Once a Fairytale (Spike Jonze, 2009)