Bring That Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop

Sampling—incorporating found sound and manipulating it into another form entirely—has done more than any musical movement in the twentieth century to maintain a continuum of popular music as a living document and, in the process, has become one of the most successful (and commercial) strains of postmodern art. Bring That Beat Back traces the development of this transformative pop—cultural practice from its origins in the turntable—manning, record—spinning hip—hop DJs of 1970s New York through forty years of musical innovation and reinvention.

Nate Patrin tells the story of how sampling built hip—hop through the lens of four pivotal artists: Grandmaster Flash as the popular face of the music’s DJ—born beginnings; Prince Paul as an early champion of sampling’s potential to elaborate on and rewrite music history; Dr. Dre as the superstar who personified the rise of a stylistically distinct regional sound while blurring the lines between sampling and composition; and Madlib as the underground experimentalist and record—collector antiquarian who constantly broke the rules of what the mainstream expected from hip—hop. From these four artists’ histories, and the stories of the people who collaborated, competed, and evolved with them, Patrin crafts a deeply informed, eminently readable account of a facet of pop music as complex as it is commonly underestimated: the aesthetic and reconstructive power of one of the most revelatory forms of popular culture to emerge from postwar twentieth—century America. And you can nod your head to it.