Nas' "NY State of Mind"

The smooth criminal on beat breaks. Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes. Let's talk about don't put me in your boom box if it eats cassettes. There was a time when you put a cassette in a boom box, and if you push the wrong button, it would spit out all the cassette tapes. It would eat that tape. So actually today we're talking about a song from one of the greatest rappers of all time, and easily one of the most masterful storytellers hip-hop has ever seen. His poetic realism and philosophical rhymes paint a vibrant portrait of the community And it kind of is unparalleled anywhere else in hip-hop And the beat on this track is by one of hip-hop's greatest all-time producers, DJ Premier Not the first time we've talked about him on the show, probably won't be the last And the sample itself is hypnotic for reasons we're going to delve into But in part, it's because it contains a note that you rarely heard in music In popular music, I should say, at the time this song came out Also, this song is a large part why the album got five mics in a magazine called The Source. For those of you who don't know, you're going to find out a little bit about The Source. And even for those who do know, you're going to find out the story behind him getting five mics in The Source. We've got so much to unpack. We're talking one song, and that song is New York State of Mind by Nas. Hey, OneSong listeners, if you love our show, you should check out Trapital, the podcast where technology meets culture. Each episode, Trapital host and founder, Dan Runcie, digs into the strategy behind the media and technology that drives our attention. You'll hear Trapital explore topics like YouTube's growing influence in music and entertainment, the never-ending saga about TikTok's future, and how AI is shaping the future. Media is one of the first industries to get disrupted by new tech. It's Trapital's job to keep you ahead of the latest trends. You can listen to Trapital wherever you get your podcasts. That's Trapital, T-R-A-P-I-T-A-L. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation. And this is One Song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres telling you why they deserve one more listen. You'll hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And you can watch One Song on YouTube. While you're there, please like and subscribe. All right. Now, I want to set up this episode a little bit differently here. We've been doing this show for a couple of years. And for those of you who've been watching, you might remember this. But for newcomers, check this out. This is a clip from one of our earlier shows where we were discussing a certain song. Our favorite songs that we discovered in 2023. What you got for us? This is an old song. These are old songs, but I discovered them this year. I'm going to sort of, again, reveal something somewhat vulnerably. These are a couple songs that a lot of people will know and be like, you didn't know these songs, but I'm OK with that. Is that your impression of me? I'm so afraid to say it. Say it. Here it comes. Just play it. Oh, God. And await your judgment. I'm leaving this show. I mean, come on, man. I forgot to quit the show. You forgot to quit the show. Who are those guys, by the way? We look so different already. I can't know all the songs. Listen, I stand by the message, which is that you can't know all the music. And to be vulnerable about it is to be open to learning. So here I am. A couple years later, I now know the song for a couple of years. At least I can say. It's not new to me this year. But yeah, it was new at the time. It was under my radar. How do you feel watching that clip? Do you feel as though you were fair to me? I just can't believe that I wore that shirt. So, Luxury, how did you first come across New York State of Mind? Honestly, when we were preparing to launch the show, I was reading some really great books to kind of color in gaps in my knowledge. And one of them was Can't Stop, Won't Stop. Great book about the early days of hip hop by Jeff Chang. I just really wanted to get there was all sorts of names and artists who I'd been aware of in culture, but I didn't know where to place them in my mind chronologically. I hadn't heard all the records. So in the book, they talk about Nas, they talk about this record. I went out and listened to it and I was like, oh, my God, this is an incredible song. Now I understand the sort of mythos behind, you know, Illmatic is the greatest of all time. And maybe this song is the greatest song on Illmatic. So that was the moment. That was the year. That was two years ago, three years ago now. technically I've known the song for three whole years. You've known it a little bit longer. Is that right, Diallo? Maybe 30 years. When did you first hear the song? Man, I bought this album the day it came out. I'd heard all the buzz about Nas. I was familiar with a song that we're going to talk about a little bit live at the barbecue. And so this was like, this was a big debut album that was coming out. I'd even heard the song Halftime on the Zebrahead soundtrack. I had no idea how much I was going to love it, how long this album was going to stay with me. I was just literally driving down Southside Boulevard not too long ago, blasting it like it was brand new, just because it aged so well, the rhymes, the production, we're going to get all that. But I just do remember that when I pressed play on the CD, I heard what would quickly become one of my favorite intros of all time. Illmatic's got an Illmatic intro. Let's hear a bit of that intro. This is The Genesis. There ain't nothing out here for you. I'm on some pretty tone shit. Verbal assassin. Yes, there is. This. Man, that track is so my jam. That is so everything. There's so much going on there. First off, in the background, while you hear the snippet from Wild Style. Yeah. You know, you hear the trains. I think I like songs that just start with trains. Like, you know, I want to be adored by the Stone Rose. It starts with trains. Get some geography in the sound. Yeah, yeah. You know, and then you also hear in the background a young Nas rapper. his infamous verse, infamous verse from Live at the Barbecue, before it then segues into Nas and AZ and some of his crew talking over a subway theme from the movie Wild Style, which we're going to get into. I mean, for those of you who don't know, Wild Style is a film from 1982 that captures the essence of those early days of hip-hop in the Bronx. So many classic lines you probably associate with rap albums you've heard are literally just music samples. I should say movie samples. taken from that movie and uh naz talks about how his dad took him to see this movie when he was a kid and it just had a big influence on him yeah well i saw a great movie uh about like hip-hop culture like literally like the four pillars of hip-hop with the graffiti the break dancing everything and the stick-up kids stick-up kids beastie boys famously uh grabbed one of the lines that you're referring to he played three of those murals with some of that ass and i saw your female with them too. What's up with her? I've been hearing that she's been giving that stuff out to all them graffiti guys. Shut the fuck up, Chico, man. Who paint three of those meals for some of that ass? Professor, what's another word for pirate treasure? One of my favorite lines is by some guys who they said were actual stick-up kids who wanted to be in the film. And then they just said some, they basically made up some slang on the spot. You heard it on the radio, you seen it on a TV show. A to the K. A to the motherfucking C. They know that it would be spread widely throughout the culture and become a thing. And also, part of that track, what's so cool about it is the music you hear in it. It's sort of this almost a wonky funk beat. There's something kind of post-punk about it. And what I love about this is that these are kind of iconic, early hip-hop breaks, but they're not like breakbeats in the traditional sense that are famously known to be like, yeah, that's a bar from the incredible bongo band, Apache, etc. These were breaks that were created. They were actual they were a drummer was playing the beats. So a guy called Lenny Ferraro, who is part of the New York no wave scene. He was just a drummer in a bunch of like underground bands. Yeah. Fab Five Freddy and DJ Grand Wizard Theater gave a bunch of break beats or a bunch of songs that they like the beats of. Set them up with a microphone and recorded him playing drums empty, like to nothing at all. That's great. He just came up with beats that were inspired by these other songs. And then they recorded the rest of the music on top. Chris Stein from Blondie. Chris Stein from Blondie. What a cool cameo. So cool. And David Harper on bass. All the music in this iconic, seminal, wild-style soundtrack came out of those three dudes just kind of jamming. I always wonder who does the finger snaps because those finger snaps are so delayed. In a weird way, it drives me nuts, but it's also like a precursor to Dilla. Yeah, they're super wonky and off. Yeah, the claps are a little wonky and off. dude i'm telling you those snaps like it's like wow and chris stein from blondie he's he's not playing the synthesizer he's playing his guitar yeah through a synth like basically like pre-mitted midi-ed is to a synth sound so he's playing guitar but you're hearing synth sounds about 20 years ago i saw chris talking in some interview about how excited he was that he got to be a part of this hip-hop history. They didn't know how huge it would be. These are now iconic tunes. I mean, nobody knew how big hip-hop was going to be. They so thought it was going to be a fan. What do you think the significance of calling the song the genesis is? I think they're kind of saying it's the genesis of hip-hop, but it's also the genesis of Nas as the rapper, and I think it's just perfect. That's so important to point out, too, because with sampling and hip-hop, a lot of times the choices, and we're going to hear that a lot in this song when we get into the stems, the choices of what the samples are are coming from something that's very personal and has a message and meaning and a connection for the rapper the hip-hopper the producer there's a connection between what they're using and what it means to them its significance to them is very meaningful so there's like a lineage that is connecting the dots between what's sampled and the new music and by the way you mentioned lineage i think that's exactly the effect that illmatic this album had on everybody because if you think about it notorious big's album ready to die kind of starts a very similar way it talks about like oh this is when i was born this is when i was a stick up kid and this is when I decided to get, you know, with this record label and produce my album. Very similar to Nas's Genesis. This is my story and here we go. I'm going to tell you my story. Sit back and listen. Speaking of the Genesis of Nas, Nas's recording debut was on the Main Source's song Live at the Barbecue, 1991. He was only 18 at the time and got on the track through his connection with Large Professor, who is sort of like this, you know, great producer and also the leader of a group called Main Source. And Large Professor produced the track. Large professor was one of naz's early champions but after this feature he wouldn't be the only one everyone would be asking about the kid who went by nasty naz let's hear a little bit of naz's verse from live at the barbecue that verse so big when it came out i remember cats trying to break down every single line like this at a time i feel like maybe it was the howard stern effect in radio but like the idea of shock jocks and like being shocking and just trying to like you know shock people was like really big i know it sounds weird to say but like that was like a thing and the idea that he would say when i was 12 i went to hell for snuff and jesus like it scared people off like you know like people were like yo can you believe he said that like i remember as a person who would rap rhymes. I was even scared to rap that stuff. I would be like, when I was 12, I went to Hilfurt's. I didn't say that shit. Explain to me why at the time in 1991, why did it jump out of the speakers? What about it was so different from what you'd heard before? To be blunt, it's the black community, man. Good portion of us consider themselves Christian. I told my friends one time I was agnostic. You would think I said I was a satanist you know i mean like that's how that'd be like okay it's understood that jesus is your friend and i think that in his effort to be shocking when he said i'm stuffing jesus like i'm telling you people heard that line in fact i think i read blasphemous oh by far sacrilege by far okay okay i mean in some ways like you know hip-hop is a rebellious form of music we always thought oh those those those white kids they listen to rock music yeah they're satan worshipers You know, like that was the way to be rebellious in the white community. Being rebellious against Jesus and God was not necessarily a thing in the black community the same way. It was enough to just be like, yeah, forget these, you know, forget the government, forget the cops, forget the, you know, like that was the rebellion. The rebellion wasn't in the church. That is such a helpful answer because in 1991, I'm hearing nothing but Satan. I'm hearing nothing but Metallica. So it was true. The rumors were true. You know, the Aussie stuff. We knew those white kids were worshipers. It's so interesting that a line like that did not jump out of the speakers to me for being so transgressive, like you're saying. It wasn't subversive transgressive. It was something that was pedestrian to my heavy metal rattled ears at this point. Yeah, that's interesting. By the way, I don't think DJ Premier, the person who ends up working with Nas famously for the last 30 years, reacted any differently than the rest of us. I think I saw some where he's from Houston originally. And he was just like, we couldn't believe he said that. You know, so the mission was accomplished. Nas wanted to, you know, let everybody know he had arrived on the scene by saying, I mean, like, if you go back and listen to this song, there's a lot he says in this verse that is quite edgy. There's also, like, a weird dichotomy at work here. On one line, he says, kidnap the president's wife without a plan. So, like, he's clearly, like, anti-the government and establishment. Very next line, he says, and hang more, you know, black guys than the Ku Klux Klan. which like whose side are you on here you know what i mean like you know you got to realize in 1991 public enemy and karis one and all the like the very pro-black you know rappers are still very much in vogue and yet here he seems to be jumping all across the you know but but what it almost heralds is this future this sort of 90s thing where like there's going to be a lot of championing of street culture where there is a lot of black on black crime and he doesn't turn a blind eye to that. But he's also not like pro Bush administration. So he's carving out a lane that's like a little bit of what came before, but a little bit rebelling against him? I don't even know if he's carving out a lane. I'd actually say he's turning a mirror to the sort of mentality, the sort of street mentality that is a part of where he's being raised. He's being raised in Queensbridge, New York, and he's seeing things every day that are by their nature contradictory. You see the people who wear the African medallions and are speaking about black empowerment alongside, for the lack of a better term, the stick-up kids who are you know selling drugs at night on the same bitches in front of his apartment so he's sort of like trying to show all of it okay and i think only nas could ever be able to say how did i at that time justify the line about the president and also the line about the ku klux klan it might be something that you know he can address on a future episode of this show so after this an a by the name of faith newman took notice and really wanted to sign nas literally based on this one verse off of the main source album. She spent a year looking for him I mean this is before the internet That would never happen today She spent 10 minutes looking for him She has to drive around She has to go like hey do you know Nasty Nas She has to go places and ask questions Yes, a whole year goes by. Finally, MC Search. I'll say it. One of the best white guys in hip-hop history, MC Search of the group Third Base, was able to actually introduce her to Nas. So she meets him in 1991, beginning of 92 maybe. and Elmatic did not come out until April 1994. To me, this is what makes this a uniquely 90s story because the record labels aren't waiting for artists to produce their debut masterpiece. They give them time. There's this idea that we're going to find talent and we're going to nurture it, and then once it's ready, when the incubation period is over, then we're going to release it. So I will give it to Faith. She's definitely an unsung hero for having the patience to let Nas grow before releasing him onto them. And what was Nas doing during this time? Was he recording a bunch of tracks? He's recording other songs. He released the song Halftime on the Zebrahead soundtrack. And I think part of the delay is in the fact that Nas really wanted to work with Large Professor, one of my favorite producers of all time. I try to bring him up every episode somehow. But, you know, Large Professor at the time was getting more into production. And also at the same time, the main source was in the process of breaking up. So he didn't really have the time to devote to Nas's album. But what's interesting about this, and I think we both read an article by No ID this week, which says that like, oh, this is one of the first albums with multiple producers. It may not have worked out that way if Large Professor just sat down and done what the Bomb Squad did with Public Enemy or what Pete Rock did with CL Smooth and just produced the whole album. No, Large Professor was kind of tied up. So Nas ends up essentially compiling like an album of all the best producers in hip hop. And this is exceedingly rare at the time. I think you and I did some research and some talking. We could only really find the comeback album from Run DMC, Down With The King, as being an example of an album with A-list, pedigree producers all throwing their best one or two pets. It was more standard prior to this moment that you do a producer with either group of producers, like the Bomb Squad, or with just a single producer. But it was sort of an auteur vision. It was sort of across the record, there'd be a uniformity or rather a consistency of style that came from the fact that the same team was doing all of it. And I don't know if that was ever a conscious thing that people didn't go against. But the idea of actually expanding your colors and your options and the palette of what the oven sounded like, and by the way, doing it more quickly because you're working in parallel, was kind of a relatively new idea at the time. And by the way, I just want to say I don't know how conscious it actually was because if you think about it, usually the producer, whether it's MC Search or it's Dr. Dre or it's DJ Premier. They'll want to have the whole album, yeah. That's usually a member of your group. So it would have seemed almost disloyal to be like, hey, Dr. Dre, we think you're great, but we really want to go get this beat from this other guy over here. The producer was usually a member of the group. So that was almost like – The separation of the functions was starting to happen now that we take for granted. that producers work with lots of artists and artists work with lots of producers was relatively new in this moment. Absolutely. Even at the time I remember in the hip hop community, it was always understood that like rappers would occasionally have a cypher, get in a circle and everybody would spit their best freestyle. Well, this always felt like a producer cypher. And I remember people were calling it at that time. They were saying like, yo, he's got a beat from DJ Premier. He's got a large professor beat. He's got L.E.S. who I definitely love. L.E.S. produced one of my favorite songs on this entire album. But also Pete Rock and Q-Tip all giving some of their best material to this artist who they're not technically in the group with. It definitely set off a new thing in hip-hop. One of the tracks that Lars Professor produced for Nas is It Ain't Hard to Tell. It was actually the first single off of the album, and it dropped in 1994. It samples Michael Jackson's Human Nature. Check this out. It Ain't Hard to Tell. can i just say one of my favorite elements in that song yeah is the sample the guy going hi and it's been in so many hip-hop i mean like literally i think it's in thousands of hip-hop songs for those who know what i'm talking about it's this part that is taken from a group called mountain and the name of the song is long red and here's where it comes in. It's been sampled so many times. Yeah, it's one of the classic hip hop breakbeats. And what I love is when when you're chopping a beat, you know, it's not always going to fit exactly within the bar. Boom, two, three, four. And sometimes you get something that's coming in early on the other side. But when that loops, it becomes this hypnotic kind of unexpected happy accident and that's a big part of sampling what sampling does that quote unquote regular musicianship or pre-hip-hop era or pre-sampling musicianship wouldn't have chosen to do is to put something that was accidentally there and leave it and then it becomes this hypnotic again i keep saying happy accident but that's part of what makes sampling so cool is when you have these artifacts that weren't intentional they weren't part of what you were needing you were needing the kick and the snare and the hi-hat, but you have this that sound, and then it makes it super hypnotic, ultra hypnotic. I also love the fact that guy said that thing one time and yet now it's been said millions of times. It's been heard millions of times. Leslie West, I'll bet that was, from Mountain, the guitar player. There you go. Also, there is an early demo of It Ain't Hard to Tell that's out there. It still contains the Michael Jackson sample. Let's hear it. My God. Wow, so many different choices there. Different lyrics. The horn saxophone is doing a lot, as opposed to in the version that we love. Holy smokes, it's a very different song. And just to build on what we were just talking about with the mountain sample, at the end of the drum loop, which is what was required, there was a little thing that they wanted to not use, probably, but they kept it in. They're like, oh, wait, that's dope. Keep that in. It's in that bar that we're looping. Let's just leave it there. Yeah. So, too, with this combination of samples in there, like I actually would want to sit with that to break down how the sounds relate to each other, like what scales and what notes are being used. Because in theory, like literally in music theory theory, you'd probably find some cacophonous moments. But as a listener, you're experiencing something that sounds really interesting and it sounds really different and it sounds unusual. And that's what really matters is that you connect with a listener, not get bogged down on. am I allowed to use this note? And if so, must it comport with the harmony in this next section? It's that listening to that just now, both of those samples, I was like, man, that horn doesn't really fit with the baseline. And yet it sounds so cool. It does sound cool. I will say that I think there's something about sampling, whether it's, you know, compromising musically, like, hey, we're going to leave in that little musical artifact, right? Or compromising with the artist. As the story goes, Michael Jackson was only, he only cleared the sample because nas promised not to curse we're going to continue to to try and find the source of this you know story that's been going around for years but yeah i mean it's very believable because you know michael jackson being a devoutly religious jehovah's witness i believe yeah he was probably like hey you can use the sample but just keep it clean i want to play one more track from this album before we get to our star attraction uh this is the song the world is yours this one it was produced by pete rock and it's actually the first beat pete ever played for nas right there on the spot nas comes up with the hook whose world is this and tells pete i want you to sing it and man i think we all benefited from that pete was hesitant at first but nas was so confident about it that he finally said all right let's hear a snippet of one of my favorite nas the song is The World is Yours. Whose world is this? The world is yours. The world is yours. It's mine, it's mine, it's mine. Whose world is this? Can I just say, Pete has a way of both producing and rapping and singing off the beat. So the fact that he's a little bit slow on the whose world is this, he's like, whose world is this? Like, it just makes it that much cooler. Also, singing on a hip-hop track just still wasn't that common. You know what I mean? Like we're still dealing with the fallout from MC Hammer. And people say that like what he was making was pop and it wasn't hip hop. When is Bone Thugs? When are they around? They come out the actually they dropped their first single in 94. OK, so it's right around now. And by the way, they're not New Yorkers. I mean, again, this kind of goes to the fact that like the East Coast felt like they had a really high bar for what hip hop was being the home of hip hop. and some could say that they were exclusionary a little bit but it was not a thing to necessarily come onto a track and sing so it kind of worked for pete rock that he sounds like yeah i guess i'll say whose world is this you know like he's not like anxious he's not like trying to sell you on the idea but it's also a little bit biz marquee like you know if you go further in that direction yeah biz could sing because biz was he was in on the joke yeah one of the reasons why this is my one of my favorite non-sons of all times it's literally my favorite jazz sample of the 90s like you know you always get on these lists and you always see people you know debating music like it's sports which is stupid but if you have to rank and put on the spot i always say that this is just by far one of my most mind-blowing samples of the 90s this is a let's play a little bit of the song and samples this is the imajimal trios i love music i mean genius yeah it's not a pure loop like who hears that song and thinks oh yeah i'm gonna take this and i'm gonna take that it's just so smart can i just say whoever whoever mixed uh this record i just love how that piano sounds like there's something so pure in how those notes come off the keys that's why i was like well don't cut it off yet don't cut it off yet if you don't know this song just go out today and find it imajimol trios i love music all right we're gonna take a quick break but when we get back we're gonna get into nazis tree poetry it's peak hip-hop it's peak production and peak sampling This is peak. This is a peak episode. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Hey, guys. Luxury here. You know, for most people, the start of the year means doing some big picture thinking, like planning your finances, paying off debt, building an emergency fund, or saving for major milestones like buying a home or your kid's education or your retirement. With that in mind, are you done just tracking past spending? Do you want a tool that actually helps you plan, project, and proactively achieve that goal? Well, set yourself up for financial success this year. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, future planning, all of that stuff together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. So feel aware and in control of your finances this year and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with code 1SONG. That's O-N-E-S-O-N-G. Personally speaking, this is a really big year for me. I'm trying to get my savings situation sorted a little more. And Monarch has been super helpful as I get my money ducks in a row, so to speak. Monarch shows me exactly where my money is going. It helps me redirect it toward what matters most so I can see myself actually hitting that savings milestone instead of just hoping it happens. So set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use code 1song at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com with code 1SONG, O-N-E-S-O-N-G. All right, welcome back to 1SONG. Let's get into the stims, Luxury. Let's do it. I think one of the best things about this song is the beat, and you've got the drums. All right, what I love about the song is that it's super simple. There's a two-bar loop of the drums. Let's listen to it. that's it back to the a b just a little variation in the syncopation syncopated snares a couple syncopated kicks yeah but cat like that to me feels like so 90s boom bap yeah 85 bpm it's it's all you need you don't need more complexity than that yeah it's beautiful stuff so let's talk a little bit about where that beat comes from. So the sample source is this song from Cool and the Gang's first live record, their second record. They did a regular record, like a studio record, then two live records in a row. This is the first one live at PJ's 1971, and the song is called NT. Great beat. Now listen right here. You just heard it. Yeah. I love that sample. It's been used in so many samples I immediately heard Gangsta Gangsta by N.W.A. Helping you sophisticated motherfuckers Hear what I have to see When me and my posse steps in the house Just like we were saying That becomes part of what makes it special We just wanted the beat Oh no, should we take that ooh out? No, leave it, it's cool Especially when it gets repeated It becomes this mantra For those really paying attention Here's another song that uses that sample Breathe and stop, for real And give it what you got And just fall Breathe and stop So that breakbeat, we're going to talk about it in a second, how DJ Premier used it differently from all the songs he just named. But first, let's give the drummer some. This guy's a sample phantom. We're hearing him throughout this entire song. He's not in the credits. Is he one of the gang? He is one of the founding members of Cool and the Gang. It's George Funky Brown. There you go. George Funky Brown. Salute, sir. That's right. But the songwriters on the Cool and the Gang song, he's not listed as a published songwriter of the song. but that is who you're hearing in the beat and in the recording itself so george funky brown unsung hero sample phantom all in one now let's talk a little bit about how the transformation went down so here's the section once again i'll play for you so you can get your ears ready to listen for just the kick and the snare i'll start a little early and then i'll point it out kick snare and listen for the hi-hats as i play that section one more time Okay so the chops he made were to take that kick slow it down from 100 to about 85 BPM and to reduce it in pitch about two whole steps, four half steps. And that sounds like this. So here's before, and here's after. Did the same thing with the snare, again, 100 to 85, and pitched it down two whole steps. so here's the original version in cool and the gang and here's the snare it gives it this heaviness right and kind of elongates it so i'm pretty sure that he used his mpc to play but in his own words quote this is dj premier explaining that sometimes he plays it and sometimes he programs it i tend to program my drums but a lot of the time i'll turn off the quantization and play it live so it sounds like live drumming. To my ears, throughout the song, this beat is so exact all the way through. Pretty sure he programmed this, but in any case, he definitely changed the pattern of the beat, and it sounds like this. And if he did actually perform it, which he may have done, I'm not saying he didn't do it, he might have done it like this. and i'm doing it imperfectly so you can tell like that i'm you know i'm definitely making the sticks on purpose and to appreciate what dj premiere did that much more there's so much expert layering and sampling in this song i'm always in awe of how premiere is able to like put these collages yeah these audio collages together tell us about the donald bird sample you're absolutely right. It's a Donald Byrd sample. The song is called Flight Time from 1973. And let's listen to a little bit before and a little bit after the part that got used. And then again, I'll show you the transformation. That is so like 70s cop show coded, right? It almost sounds like Broadway by George Benson. It is George Benson. Little Papa was a Rolling Stone in there. I can hear that too. Definitely, it feels very 1973, which it was. What you're hearing, I'm pretty sure, is Freddie Perrin on synthesizer. I'm pretty sure that's what that high-pitched, very urgent-sounding, insistent single note stab. It could be a guitar played by Dean Parks or David Walker. Pretty sure it's a synth, though. Freddie Perrin would be the sample phantom here. So some of the artifacts of the sample are the sound of that kind of airplane noise, that sort of big white noise. Totally. so listen to that in the beeps yeah you may not have noticed that before but that remains in naz's song it's one of my favorite parts of the song but now do you hear that white noise the jet engine noise i thought it was a train yeah i thought they had taken that train that we heard in the you know the genesis subway theme part totally and they just brought it over into this i thought it was brilliant this song segues right into that one right that train that that ain't no train that's a plane all right planes and trains maybe automobiles coming we get the whole thing Every mode of transportation is in the Illmatic if you just know where to listen. Here's that loop again, and then I'll show you how it was transformed. This is the Donald Byrd flight time, 1973. So just those first few beeps. And again, this is my speculation. I'm not sure how many of the beeps he used because there's a few ways you can do this. You can take that loop four in a row wholesale and lay it out as it were in his MPC. He might have done that as a loop. or he might have done what I did a moment ago, which is to chop just one of them. Can I pitch that it's definitely a chop? Because what I hear is a four on the floor. Beep, beep, beep, beep. And then on the song, it's got a... That's exactly right. In the song, it's a clave rhythm. It's virtually a clave. It's close to being a clave. But you're right, there's syncopation in that fourth note. Da, da, da, da, da. I think the clave is like a freaking... People don't know they love the clave, but they'd be loving the clave. It's one of the most important rhythms. You'll find it across the board once you listen to it. It's such an important syncopated rhythm. Yeah, we've talked. The word clave has come up in like 30 of these episodes, not for no reason. We haven't even done a Calvin Harris episode. I feel like he uses the clave all the time. EDM dance music is all the clave rhythm. Yeah, totally. Or tracios, if you will. All this to say that that was transformed because in the original, it's just dee, dee, dee, dee. Four on the floor. It's like Morse code or something like that. Yeah. it's literally quarter notes one two three four okay so that gets transformed into this that's definitely a clave totally definitely clave and i think he might have played it except he took more time to have it not end like mine did he time stretched it and did more processing to it apologies that the recreation's imperfect but that's the basic idea so you get yo black is time i can't even hear that sound without thinking about the lyrics coming in hey yo black is time word it's time man hi man i am not gonna try and do a non-stick Street out the fucking dungeon's a wrap We're both, I'm trying to be a premiere You're trying to be a mess Hopefully it's coming across as charming They're ashamed of themselves right now They're like, oh man, they figured this out He's a better primo, Diallo's a better nas Sweet, they think they are And they're not quite getting it We missed it Faith Newman, you need to find us in 1993 Alright I didn't touch that on you Nailed it Okay, I'm really good at this. One of my favorite details about New York State of Mind is how it even came together. Nas said he and Premier didn't start out with a plan. They just got together one afternoon. They dug through some records, vibing together, waiting for something to hit. And in that pile of records, they came across a song by Joe Chambers called Mind Rain. I just want to say, in a time before YouTube being a source of music, so to speak, I searched for years for this song. This is not an easy record to find. But it's Joe Chambers' Mind Rain. Let's hear a little bit of that. Right here. That's it. You know what I love? This kind of goes back to Pete Rock's work on The World is Yours. This isn't the beginning of the song. I'm not saying that that's wrong when your sample is at the very beginning of the song. But there's always just something so impressive. of like when you're like you know a couple of you're like into the song a little yeah yeah yeah and then there's just this little sneaky part kind of comes out and then somebody hears that they're like i can build a whole nother thing around that i mean that gave me chills yeah that's like i love hearing the sample when the sample comes in sort of like a person through the door you didn't expect that was very cinematic this song and that part of the song in particular and to your point like there's as many ways to sample records and to dig through the crates as there are producers. But to your point, it is relatively common. Just if you've got a whole stack of records and you're listening through it, you might do some random needle drops. You might start from the beginning. But the fact that they found that portion of the song with that particular little splash of a piano, right, because that's part of the loop. Whether or not that's an artifact may be lost to time. I think to give them credit, I think that that is absolutely intentional. And they're like, that's the loop. That's the sweet spot. I got to say, this is one of those times where the sample sounds largely untouched to my untrained ears. It sounds largely untouched to my ears as well. So what you're hearing is literally the piano, I'm calling it a splash because it feels a little bit like a little bit of a bring. And then you add the beat to that. I just want to say one more thing about that last note on the piano it doesn't sound like evil in the original jazz sample but in the nas version maybe it's just because i know what he's rapping about it sounds dark it sounds like totally evil is not really the word i'm looking for but it sounds like you're watching a movie and like there's like some bad stuff no it's a dark sounding note let's talk about this this is an important note this might be one of the most important notes in the entire song okay so let's talk about it why does this note why does this baseline first of all sound like you said dark maybe exotic sinister sinister is the word i'm looking 100 it's a great word for it this is a flat two i'll play it for you this is the baseline and it contains a flat two which is a note you don't hear very often in popular music in this moment in 1994 in particular you hear that sometimes, but not that often. I would say maybe 95% of Western popular music would be using either the major or the minor scales, maybe one of the varieties like a Mixolydian or a Dorian. But for the most part, outside of classical music and metal, it's really, it's relatively uncommon. The flat second I'm referring to is this note, which you're hearing here. And when I say flat second, I mean that we are playing what's basically a mode called the phrygian mode which means that the second scale degree is a half step up from the first scale degree so the scale would sound like this here's a major scale and a minor scale would be but this is phrygian which is which we don't hear very often in the canon of popular music the phrygian mode contains the flat two it's the scale i just played for you and it contains a tritone and that's important because what I just played for you with the riff. That's a tritone. No, no, no. Right? We've heard tritones on this show several times since last year. From Lady Gaga to Don Penn, Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze episode. So it's been coming up a lot. It's also in this song because it's part of the scale. So that top part of the riff, we hear a tritone basically throughout this song. So we're getting this devil's interval throughout the entirety of the song. because that loop is going through the entire song. Some other examples of songs that are Phrygian, just so you'll start to hear like, oh, that's what that is. Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit. Okay. Khalees, Milkshake. But I have to charge my milk. Montel Jordan's This Is How We Do It. That's a half step up. That's going from F to F sharp. That's right. So it's F phrygian. Because you have that flat half step, that first, that flat second. Is the root. Flat second, back to the root. And it really, your ear is like, please take me back home to the root. This is uncomfortable. it's tense for a moment when you go dun dun dun like that's home base and we're cool we can chill here for a while yeah dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun that's so funny that you bring up this is how we do it because it famously samples Slick Rick's A Children's Story yeah and one of the things I always liked about New York State of Mind was that it told a story kind of similar you know in terms of what happens in the story to a children's story except the slick rick's version tells a very sort of like funny silly version right of the of what happens to the kid and nas is like the 1990s david fincher version of what happened you know like it's much darker much more dark not played for any kind of laughs and so let's talk about the lyrics of this song because i think that nas is one of the great storytellers of hip-hop a lot of rappers have had great moments in storytelling. Obviously, Notorious B.I.G. with I Got a Story to Tell, Ice Cube, My Summer Vacation. You know, there's some that always stuck out to me, but this is definitely one where he painted so much imagery and he's so descriptive. Nas said that he wrote this song wanting to give listeners the feeling of New York at nighttime. I actually wore today's sweatshirt. It's Giancarlo Esposito's character from Do the Right Thing, because New York was coming out of a dark time. You had the crack epidemic that had ravaged their communities there was so much violence you see it in movies like new jack city and some of the other films that come out at this time and this is the new york that i feel like naz describes so well even though he uses the first person it says i and me and all this kind of stuff you never got the sense that it was actually him selling drugs or shooting people in the back like you always got the sense that he is a street poet describing what he has seen and you really get a sense of that right from the get-go let's hear a little bit of his first verse so now i'm jetting to the building lobby and it was full of children probably couldn't see as high as i see what you're saying like the game ain't the same got young and pulling the triggers bringing fame to their name like there's so much just going on there you know like so i'll never forget the first time we all heard so i'm jetting through the building lobby and it was full of children probably couldn't see as high as obby you know like you have to have a new york accent at first you know first of all to even pull off that line but is the line high as obby as high as ivy as high as ivy yeah but to make it rhyme with lobby he doesn't have to go very far because new yorkers just do that with their with their vowels but like you can just sort of see like how committed he was to telling this story about him on the run you know being chased let's get to the chorus because i will say as a person who was absolutely into this like from day one the chorus didn't do what i expected the chorus to do There's no like the world is yours as a chorus. This song doesn't have a traditional course. Yeah, you're right. There's only two verses in the whole song. Verse one is a minute 52. Yeah. Verse two is a minute 30. Two long verses, no features. You got you got you got AZ and like, you know, so what you're saying, like you got people joining and things, but like just him painting these long pictures and yet you're never bored. It's like an amazing movie. But you come to this chorus and there's not a traditional chorus. can you play us a little bit of the chorus I want to call your attention to the knocking in the sample, do you notice that? no, I didn't notice that there's a little bit of the horn sound at the end hear that? right here no, I had never noticed all I heard was Rakim saying, you're a state of mind but what is that? This is the sample artifact episode. Let's listen to the original song that it is being sampled from, which itself has an embedded sample, which is what you're hearing. So that's a third layer. Here Mahogany from Eric B and Rakim 1990 This is where the New York State of Mind comes from But as they were grabbing this sample they grabbed what was also in the sample So listen to in that New York State of Mind moment there's two side sticks, like snare side sticks, but there's also a horn at the end. Listen again. don't smile i said everything's fine but i'm in a new york state of mind right those are embedded in the sample now what i can take out of the sample with eq is all the bass stuff so you hear it like this everything's fine but i'm in a new york state of mind but all that high-end stuff you can't eq out right and in 1994 the technology was relatively limited how deeply you could clean up a sample yep so now listen back to new york state of mind the nas song and you'll hear that knocking thing and a little bit of the horn right here here's the horn you hear that it's really buried deep yeah but definitely those knocks i i would not have noticed those knocks isn't that cool and here's where it comes from this is embedded from the al green sample i'm glad you're mine 1972 drums by howard grimes or charles hodges and now you'll hear them that's the beat right there and by the way this is another one of those classic samples that you've heard in so many hip-hop songs from the notorious big mc light yeah massive attack uses that beat yeah yeah and now you're gonna notice that side stick that little snare tick that they couldn't get out from EQing it in New York State of Mind by Nas. Like I said, such a unique song. Two verses painting pictures of life in Queensbridge at this time. Let's play the second verse because this is probably, I think, Nas is descriptive best. It also shows how he uses words and the actual vowel sounds to play off one another. Let's start about halfway through verse two. The smooth criminal on beat breaks. never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes the city never sleeps full of villains and creeps that's where i learned to do my hustle had to scuffle with freaks he's sampling rakam thereby tying a direct link from you know probably the most revered mc you know before him in addition to like a chuck d or krs1 but on top of that like there's so many lines in here that give me chills he says don't put me in your box if the shit eats tapes he's talking about don't put me in your boom box if you're if it eats cassettes there was a time when you put a cassette in a boom box yeah and if you push the wrong button it would spit out all the it would spit out all the yeah it would eat that tape yeah you know there's so much he's got references to beepers he's an addict for sneakers like he's encompassing so much of what hip-hop culture was in 94 but he's like flipping it in words i remember the line my ramen is a vitamin hell without a capsule like he's flipping it in such a unique way yeah and such a good way that like we knew from that start that like he was going to be a force in hip-hop and everybody wanted to do music with nas well i don't sleep on and sleep is the i don't sleep because sleep is the cousin of death he says twice in this song so it's kind of a refrain it's almost like a pre-chorus yeah yeah it's something consistent or a refrain and uh it's such a great line and it's like i think it comes from something i mean it certainly goes back to like greek mythology or something like that but i think in the popular parlance like nas kind of owns that line like i think people think of that as being a nas line and it kind of is the cousin of death yeah i heard that nas did this in one take and he was like a little bit shy about i was like was that good primo was like bruh no notes by the way at the very end of the song after the rakim sample yeah we come to what a lot of hip-hop heads at the time thought should have been the chorus for the whole song it was like oh wait you say that to the end i think you know what i'm talking about can you play a little bit about a i guess we'd have to call it the coda of the song i love it when you know the exact record inside elements you knew exactly the motions that matched to the sound of the dj wrong that's nasty naz on one of his previous songs it's from live at the barbecue it's from live at the bar let's listen to the origin what the hell for snuffing jesus nasty nives is a rebel to america yeah man it's just uh it's just an amazing song he had the record he record scratched it i don't know if premier did that he probably did oh yeah on our last episode we had that quote from him where he's like i actually like being a dj more than a producer that's why he's dj premier yeah he certainly would have scratched that himself premier is one of the great scratch scratching producers like he doesn't you know like he's got the mpc and he's got his turntables no diss to manny fresh but it's always funny when people like do like your girl is my baby mama like it's like it doesn't sound the same as actual scratch and by the way it should be we're talking about lineages in in hip-hop it's not just samples right it's also references and uses of the phrase such as the title of the song itself which of course is a billy dole song right new york state of mind from 1976 and then it goes on to be i think alluded to in the chain when jay-z and alicia keys to empire state of mind which always confuses me a little bit it's a little well first of all new york state of mind is spelled out but this song is ny state of mind and then we have empire state of mind and i definitely conflate the three constantly absolutely all right lecture now that we've heard the song tell us how the splits break down well the splits are pretty interesting because we have nasir jones at 50 there you go chris e martin aka dj premier gets 25 do you care to hazard to guess, knowing as you know now all of the different sample sources in the song, who gets the last 25% or how it's allocated? Joe Chambers? Final answer? Final answer. 25% is Eric Barrier and William Griffin aka Eric B and Rakim. Wow, just for the New York State of Mind. Just for the New York State of Mind, which again, as we just mentioned is a Billy Joel lyric, right? But it's sampled, so it's their vocals. It's from that recording. But 25% of the publishing to that and none of the other samples we believe were all certainly paid just on you know as a one-time fee as was pretty common at the time so there's no kind of effort to obfuscate anything but nothing in the publishing you know what's funny is that they agreed that it was important enough to have rakim virtually co-sign yeah on nas as like the next you know the next great rapper that they were like okay it's worth that i think it's very intentional as we were saying before it can be very intentional the use of samples and interpolations and references for the for the artist it's a connection to what they're using yeah it's a an effort to say hey this is something that meant something to me i want to be a part of the lineage and sort of carry it on and bring it to the attention by the way of people that may not have known about it one last thing i want to say about the publishing splits it does occur to me that in 1994 eric b and rakim would have been pretty hip to how sampling works with regards to publishing it was still new enough in hip-hop that sampling rates and percentages were pretty wild west we're only a few years out from the biz marquee decision and it's quite possible that the jazz cats were happy with the you know one-time payout of maybe a few grand which frankly i think ought to be how things go in general i think the world would be a better place if sampling were less expensive and more along those lines yeah but i think eric b and rakim had obviously had situations where they were forced to pay out yeah so now they sort of create the situation of like well look i've had to pay out so you're gonna pay me too yeah listen when this album came out it got a rare five mic rating in the source i always thought the source was always like a a panel of guys in hip-hop who were like you know sitting around a table and they were like gentlemen we were about to give this album five mics the star chamber yeah like i don't come to find out that sometimes those ratings were a single person on staff and sometimes not even an editor i never knew this the reviewer of illmatic for the source uh the person who gave it five mics and said hip-hop on a new trajectory uh was a korean-american intern at the famed magazine and not just any intern it was korean-american now journalist then intern minya oh aka miss info yeah she was an intern at the source they thought that she had who's great by the way she and by the way she and hosted an incredibly good podcast a number of years ago i binge listened to every single episode it was called the bridge and it's interviews with like seminal hip-hop like yeah they were there but it does blow my mind i mean like she's from chicago okay so by this point she's actually a student at columbia but i mean like the the anonymity of who gave that album five mics i think kind of helped because like hip-hop was overwhelmingly male and she was female overwhelmingly i would say the gatekeepers that at that time were overwhelmingly black she's korean american and she was she wasn't even an editor she was an intern so it just it kind of blew my mind to know that she was savvy enough to know that this is special and it's going to get the the you know the five mites that that that blew my mind surprised to miss info but i guess it's also surprising to me because this is not like some you know low-level album coming out like oh let's just get to the entrance see what she thinks we know she's got good taste no this was illmatic this was like a huge album that everybody was waiting for and the fact that they entrusted it with her kind of i kind of want to ask them why i'm glad that they did i bet you she had like passion and maybe the fact of her being younger these the the rest of the board at the source might have been like man maybe we're getting out of touch here because we're not necessarily hearing what's coming up on the street. It's like me with my 14 going on 15-year-olds. If he likes something that I'm like, I'm not sure what this is, I'm going to listen a little more carefully because he's hearing something that I'm not hearing. By the way, my 16-year-old, one of his favorite rap songs of all time, New York State of Mind. So Diallo, what do you think the legacy of NY State of Mind is? Like we said, Rakim had been the ultimate MC Gold Standard up to the end along with KRS-One, Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, so many others that I just don't have the time to name right now and to a degree nasa's flow represented the best of all of them you know he he had some of the politics of chuck d he obviously had the rakim in his street poetry you know they're just they're elements of everything that came before nas that nas presented in a very 90s kind of way and i feel like the history of 90s hip-hop can't be written without mentioning nas it's just he's he's so important i think to where where hip-hop went after 1994 people. What about you, Luxury? What do you think the legacy is? I think it's interesting contextually in 1994 to consider that in this moment to do a whole record with multiple producers, that being a new phenomenon, really kind of, I'd forgotten about that. That was like a new choice. And now we take it for granted. Not only do we take it for granted, it is the norm. When you hear Olivia Rodrigo and Dan Nigro work together on the whole record, you're like, wow, that's unusual. Or like when Kanye did a whole album with Pusha T. It is reversed what it used to be. It used to be unusual for there to be multiple players that's the news the producers that's the same it's interesting to think about that and how and then getting down to the song level just specifically new york state of mind like we had two greats working together like the production not only is the vocal and the lyrical and the delivery not only is everything nas on the top line incredible and legendary and still 32 years later has resonance but the production is next level and 32 years later this is not only peak emceeing but it's also peak sampling and producing and all of it coming together in this one song what a magic moment throwing back and forth because i you know now that we know that it was you know nas was there when they chose that song yeah you can sort of see why he he actually is the cohesive part of the album and let's not forget last but not least the flat two that that note that we that at the time was so strange and jumped out of the record that they chose to sample in that moment between, you know, perhaps gin and juice at the same time. But the Phrygian mode becoming kind of common in popular music in the next 30 years, a little bit begins around this time. Now, there are examples that people will find of the flat second in the Phrygian, but not as prominently as it is in this song. And I think it starts to change the listener's ear when it's used this bigly, right? You start to get used to a new mode, a new note. And just for like the really deep music theory musicology nerds out there there's a great paper by aaron smith at oberlin it's actually a video it's called quote the flat two as hotness in post millennial pop when you hear it used in a song it's often correlating to lyrics and videos for that matter that are about confidence sexuality or the intersection of those two things and so as bunch of examples justin timberlake sexy back which i think might be the uber example of that I'm bringing sexy back. So you hear how it keeps on going that half step up. Yeah. And I think this doesn't resolve. It doesn't resolve. It does temporarily. And then you write back to it in the next part of the loop. But Beyonce, Rihanna, Shakira, Miley Cyrus. If You Seek Amy by Britney Spears. There's a whole bunch of songs that starting around in the early 2000s start to use this previously unusual interval. I think it's in no small part because hip hop had started to do it a little earlier with this song with Nas New York State of Mind. But also don't forget Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice from also from 1984 is an Ephrighian. And then it starts to become really kind of normalized in hip hop. Get Your Freak On, Tyler, New Magic Wand, Kendrick's Humble, Kendrick's DNA. These are all songs in Phrygian. It's part of the hip hop vernacular now, 30 years later, to have a flat second and or for it to be in Phrygian. This album blazes a lot of trails. As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo Riddle. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at LuxuryXX. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at OneSongPodcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of OneSong on YouTube. Just search for OneSongPodcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. Also, be sure to check out the OneSong Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, you're officially a part of the OneSong Nation. Show us some love Give us five stars Leave a review And send this episode To a fellow music fan It really helps Keep the show thriving Luxury helped me In this thing I'm producer DJ Songwriter Musicologist And every Friday night From 10pm till midnight KCRW DJ Luxury I'm actor Writer Director And sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle And this is one song We will see you next time This episode was produced By Melissa Duenas Our video editor Is Casey Simonson Mixing and engineering By Michael Hardman this show is executive produced by Kevin Hart Mike Stein, Brian Smiley and Eric Weil