Production Breakdown: Your Favorite Rapper Loves Hall & Oates

The official video for soft-rock icons Hall & Oates' hit single “She's Gone” is one of the most fascinating, utterly bizarre things I've ever seen:



So, Daryl Hall and John Oates are depressed that a girl walked out on them – so depressed that they're willing to throw Monopoly money at the devil to get her back. Every so often, a woman strolls by. At the video's climax, Oates dons a jacket with penguin flippers, plays a short guitar solo (may I emphasize: with penguin flippers), the two walk slowly in a circle, the devil sits in a chair, and the damn thing ends. What the hell?!

I realize I may as well be writing about what I had for breakfast this morning (chicken, weirdly enough), for the level of relevance this all has to hip-hop production thus far, but I just felt like the video was worth sharing. The real reason I'm talking about Hall & Oates' “She's Gone”, however, has to do with the DJBooth.net debut of an up-and-coming emcee named Capeech, which bears the same title and, as you may have guessed, is centered around a sample from the soft-rock smash

A trip to whosampled.com revealed to me, that, not only had the feathery-haired twosome been sampled before, but they'd been sampled a whopping 32 times (and probably more). Thus, I thought I'd take a little look back on how the duo became unlikely hip-hop mainstays.

The earliest listed sampling of Hall and Oates in a rap record (as opposed to dance or, in Weird Al Yancovic's case, polka) was 2 Live Crew's usage of “I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)” in a 1988 cut appropriately titled “I Can't Go for That” – which I can't show you, because Uncle Luke & co. (or the label, or someone), aren't allowing their tracks to be put on YouTube (Booo!) I can show you, however, De La Soul's use of a snippet from the same track, one year later, in their 1989 record “Say No Go”

The original:



De La's track:

An ever cooler example (though not a sampling per se) of Daryl Hall and John Oates' unwitting contributions to the hip-hop world lies in this '85 cut, “Method of Modern Love.” You'll know what I'm talking about when you hear it (I hope so, anyway):



Perhaps the most eminently sample-able song in the Hall & Oates repertoire, “Rich Girl,”



was given a hip-hop makeover on LL Cool J's 2002 record, “Fa Ha.” (Sorry about the annoying intro)



Fast-forwarding a little, a subtler but still notable example is Cool & Dre's use of their '84 single “Out of Touch”

in the background of “Streets on Lock,” a track off Young Jeezy's “ The Inspiration LP.



Once wasn't enough, however, for Jeezy – in '08 the veteran coke-slinger/rap heavyweight and the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League flipped Hall & Oates “Melody for a Memory” (which I couldn't find on YouTube, but you can listen to here) into Recession bonus track “Done It All.”



Since an exhaustive rundown would take the whole damn day, I'll leave you guys to delve further into the duo's discography. The moral of this column, of course is.... um... even the most meticulously-coiffured and '70s-moustachioed rock icons can dream of receiving the coveted “hood pass” (no John Mayer). And... I guess my Dad has hipper tastes in music than I originally gave him credit for. Yeah, that works. Until next time, RefinedHypesters!