As all my friends know I am a music geek at heart and I love discovering new music and sharing it (by “new” I mean new to me).

One of my favorite past-times is digging up the sampled original tracks from old school hip hop tunes to uncover interesting jams. And one of my favorite recent discoveries was from a sample used in De La Soul’s “Change in Speak” by Cymande (from their 70s funk/soul tune “Bra”):

Below is the original tune that De La sampled.

Starting at minute 0:09, you can hear two key Cymande samples used throughout the De La tune, the first using bass, drums and guitar and the second making use of the full horn arrangement. When I first heard this original tune, it immediately triggered a memory of hearing “Change in Speak” way back in the early 90s (notably, De La’s 3 Feet High and Rising was one of my first CD purchases ever, along with A Tribe Called Quest’s first album, People’s Instinctive Paths of Funk and Rhythm…yeah, I really lucked out with those 1st two CD picks!).

At first, this just comes across as a great old-school horn-based groove with some soulful vocals. But, as you listen it’s just gets even better. One of the best parts to my ears is the instrumental break/drop-out at ~2:50 when the horns and vocals stop and the band just grooves for a while on drums and percussion (and plenty of hits to the cowbell!).

I have dug into the rest of Cymande’s catalog and while nothing hits quite like “Bra” there are definitely some other gems including “Brothers on the Slide” and “Dove.”

If you dig this type of musical discovery, you should check out a playlist I made for this kind of thing I called “hip hop who sampled” which I often update with new tracks. Also, as the title of the playlist suggests, I often use the awesome who sampled website to dig up the original tracks and artists.

If you find other gems, definitely let me know!