The O'Jays - "I Swear, I Love No One But You" (mp3)
Mary J. Blige - "No One Will Do" (mp3)
Ne-Yo - "Get Down Like That" (mp3)
In one of those instances of sampling synchronicity that's become increasingly frequent in the hip hop era, two R&B albums that recently topped the charts both sampled the same O'Jays jam from 1976, and not even a particularly well known album cut, either. The Ne-Yo one was the first I heard, and it completely blew me away on the first listen, to the point that I haven't really gotten into the rest of In My Own Words. I mean, I'm happy that the dude stomped out Hawthorne Heights on the Billboard charts, but when one track is so much better than everything else on the album it's really hard to pay attention to the other stuff. The album ends with a hidden track that's a remix of "Get Down Like That" with Ghostface, but if you ask me it doesn't really add anything to the Ne-Yo solo version (besides a mild "yeah, it makes sense that this is the track Ghost would get on" reaction), and I like the way Ne-Yo sounds on the verses better. Plus the title is way too close to their other collabo, "Back Like That." I have no problem with them putting it on the album twice, though, since I already listen to it way more than twice as often as the other tracks. So I was definitely intrigued enough to want to check out the O'Jays original, and when someone on ILM mentioned that the first track on Mary J.'s last album sampled the same song, I decided to go and complete the trifecta. Mary's version takes the more typical sped-up chipmunk approach to the sample, but all three songs do pretty much the same thing with the chorus, singing the title right over that big melodic hook, with the Mary version not really even changing the words much. The O'Jays one is great in and of itself and has a brilliant tempo change at the end, but to my ears it works best as a piece of the perfection that is "Get Down Like That," maybe my favorite song of the year so far.
Mary J. Blige - "No One Will Do" (mp3)
Ne-Yo - "Get Down Like That" (mp3)
In one of those instances of sampling synchronicity that's become increasingly frequent in the hip hop era, two R&B albums that recently topped the charts both sampled the same O'Jays jam from 1976, and not even a particularly well known album cut, either. The Ne-Yo one was the first I heard, and it completely blew me away on the first listen, to the point that I haven't really gotten into the rest of In My Own Words. I mean, I'm happy that the dude stomped out Hawthorne Heights on the Billboard charts, but when one track is so much better than everything else on the album it's really hard to pay attention to the other stuff. The album ends with a hidden track that's a remix of "Get Down Like That" with Ghostface, but if you ask me it doesn't really add anything to the Ne-Yo solo version (besides a mild "yeah, it makes sense that this is the track Ghost would get on" reaction), and I like the way Ne-Yo sounds on the verses better. Plus the title is way too close to their other collabo, "Back Like That." I have no problem with them putting it on the album twice, though, since I already listen to it way more than twice as often as the other tracks. So I was definitely intrigued enough to want to check out the O'Jays original, and when someone on ILM mentioned that the first track on Mary J.'s last album sampled the same song, I decided to go and complete the trifecta. Mary's version takes the more typical sped-up chipmunk approach to the sample, but all three songs do pretty much the same thing with the chorus, singing the title right over that big melodic hook, with the Mary version not really even changing the words much. The O'Jays one is great in and of itself and has a brilliant tempo change at the end, but to my ears it works best as a piece of the perfection that is "Get Down Like That," maybe my favorite song of the year so far.
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on Friday, March 10, 2006 at 10:56 PM.
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Anonymous : 8:36 PM