Production Breakdown: The Fascinating Sample History of “Show Me What You Got”

Oftentimes, the truest strokes of brilliance are the subtlest, and thus the easiest to pass over without noticing. Well, OK – I have no idea how accurate that statement is. I just sorta felt like beginning with a sweeping generalization.

At second glance, though, I just might have been onto something, at least when it comes to sampled hip-hop production. Flipping an instantly-recognizable riff is one thing, but actually working diverse musical elements into a coherent whole is another – and when the results come together too well, few people notice just how impressive a feat you accomplished.

What got me thinking about this was (if you haven't deduced from the headline) “Show Me Change,” the latest Booth feature from ArtOfficial (off their acclaimed, RefinedHype/DJBooth-sponsored mixtape The Payback.) The cut found the Miami natives borrowing a snippet of “Show Me What You Got,” a Just Blaze-produced standout off Jay-Z's generally-panned Kingdom Come LP.



While the title of Hov's record (and by extension ArtOfficial's) is clearly an homage to “Show Em Whatcha Got,” off Public Enemy's ultra-classic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the relationship between the records is actually a little more complicated than you might assume. For those who haven't dusted off their copies of the seminal LP lately, here's PE.'s cut:



Clearly, there's less going on here – while the saxophone riff is iconic in its own right, all that Just Blaze took directly from this record was the brief Flavor Flav sample on the chorus. Said saxophone sample, along with the breakbeat used in P.E.'s track, was lifted from “Darkest Light,” a record by a French '70s funk group called the Lafayette Afro Rock Band.



The same sample, by the way, was also used as the basis for “Rumpshaker,” the hit single from Wreckx-N-Effect



Anyway, back to Hov and Just Blaze. Where did the restof “Show Me What You Got” – the breathless brass-percussion loop with the ever-so-slightly out-of-whack rhythm – come from? The answer lies about 20 seconds into this record, the theme from blaxploitation flick Shaft in Africa:



There you have it: the missing piece of Blaze's unforgettable instrumental. Did he dream the idea to put these two samples together? Did it come to him while he was sitting on the can? Did he happen to play the records one after the other while listening to a funk playlist on shuffle? Beats me – but after hearing him combine the two, they just don't sound right to me when played separately. And if that isn't a stroke of genius, I don't know what is.