Nerd alert!

I love hearing a song for the first time that I know as a sample in some hip-hop track. A while ago I heard "Love, Love, Love" by Pugh Rogefeldt on the online station Technicolor Web of Sound and recognized it from DJ Shadow's "Mutual Slump." (The Web just played it again, which triggered this.) It's really a stupid thrill I get when I realize "Hey, that was sampled in (x)."

Funny story: I was a freshman in college when En Vogue's "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)" was a big hit (fantastic song). Sophomore year we were having a party one night when it came on the radio, and probably in some attempt to be cool I said "You know, that guitar riff's from a James Brown song." One girl didn't believe me so I played her "The Payback" and she was completely blown away. I mean, this was 1993, around the end of a very meaty era of hip-hop sampling, and she's reacting like she'd never heard of it before. Or possibly she'd never heard of James Brown before. Either way, I had to push her out the window.

On this topic, if you can find Mojo magazine's Roots of Hip-Hop compilation I really recommend it. A lot of great source material you'll instantly recognize, from Grandmaster Flash to Lee Dorsey to Parliament. Nothing from those asshole Turtles though, thankfully.