Theorizing at Rowan | Adams | Patina Realism

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Hip hop in the late 1980s and early- to mid-1990s is notable for its extensive use of sampling. Many have noted that hip hop producers from this period tended to sample tracks that were originally recorded twenty years before, around the time that these producers were themselves born. And many have argued that this use of sampling represents a kind of inter-generational homage. But few have discussed how, exactly, these sample-based hip hop tracks are able to bring the past and present together. In this essay, I introduce a framework for thinking about this aesthetic phenomenon. I do so by first introducing a visual analogy for thinking about sample-based musical works: pictures of pictures. I then use this analogy to explain some of the ways in which sample-based hip hop recordings represent the historicity of their sample sources.