(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID MCCALLUM’S “THE EDGE”)
EMILY FENG, HOST:
Hip-hop music samples songs from almost every corner of the Earth. You may have heard Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s sample of “The Edge,” originally released in 1967 as a jazz instrumental by David Mccallum and produced by David Axelrod.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID MCCALLUM’S “THE EDGE”)
FENG: That spy thriller sound of the ’60s and ’70s shaped the musician and composer Adrian Younge. And the music he’s produced for artists like Kendrick Lamar, the Wu-Tang Clan and Jay-Z often has a cinematic feel. And now Adrian Younge has a new album out called “Younge.” And we asked him what it’s like now to be a composer who is sampled himself, and why movies and music go so well together.
ADRIAN YOUNGE: People have to realize that great music is cinematic.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “RESPOND TO SOUND”)
YOUNGE: As somebody that loves very dark, cinematic music but somebody who also equally loves beautiful, romantic cinematic music, I wanted to create music that is as dark as it is beautiful.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “RESPOND TO SOUND”)
YOUNGE: “Respond To Sound,” man, this is the kind of song that I wanted somebody like David Axelrod and Charles Stepney to create, hooking up with, like, a Cannonball Adderley in ’72 – something funky, jazzy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “RESPOND TO SOUND”)
YOUNGE: This kind of music that I like to refer to as, like, psych or cinematic soul – it is based on, for me, what my golden era of music is, which is from ’68 to ’73. And in that period, there were not many Black composers that got the budget and the opportunity to do music like this. So I take pride to be able to create music like this and follow in the steps of great Black composers using our soul, jazz and blues core to mix with this classical sentiment to find something new.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “CLOCKWISE”)
YOUNGE: When you listen to one of the songs, such as “Clockwise,” you can hear me as a DJ, as a collector of records. You could hear me as a producer. You could hear me as a composer that is trying to create a lot of psychological tension in order to let you know it’s OK at the end.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “CLOCKWISE”)
YOUNGE: This is my eponymously named album because I feel like I worked all my life to make this album. It’s something where I talk about me going from the sampler to the symphony. So essentially, in ’96, I got a sampler, and I soon realized that the records I was sampling inspired me much more than the derivative music I was making.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “GALT”)
YOUNGE: This is “Galt,” and I actually named it “Galt” as a dedication to Galt MacDermot because he used that kind of electric harpsichord sound to create some funky, nasty breaks that was sampled by so many cats in hip-hop. So this is my dedication to Galt MacDermot.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “GALT”)
YOUNGE: Me being a child of hip-hop, hip-hop is the bricolage of vinyl culture. Hip-hop samples everything from jazz to country, but hip-hop used a microscope to say this part’s dope. That part’s dope. It exposed later generations to music they would have never heard.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “GALT”)
YOUNGE: I love sample-based music. I love when people sample my music. But there’s a whole other side that I feel like a lot of hip-hop producers are missing. Because, yes, you can find yourself in the sample, but when you are creating the sample, and when you are orchestrating the music and when you’re also playing, it’s a different kind of expression, man.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “GALT”)
FENG: That was Adrian Younge talking about his new album, “Younge.”
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE’S “GALT”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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