Enoch Light has been sampled several times, especially by The Beatnuts. What made him so dope? He used a lot of state-of-the-art recording techniques in the 60′s that were never used before. This made his music sound very “large” and also had a lot of cool effects. Aside from recording a ton of albums he also dabbled in every genre – classical, pop, jazz, rock, and more. The Nuts flipped his cut “A Little Fugue For You and Me” for their hit single “No Escapin’ This“.

The Beatnuts were known for their hard boom bap beats in the early 90′s. In the later half of the 90′s, they somehow became known for their cartoon-ish rap beats – the first being “Off the Books“. After that, it was pretty much assumed their singles would sound similar including “Watch Out Now” and “No Escapin’ This“. The Enoch-sampled track used the chorus from the original and a vinyl backspin to complete the beat. The sample kicks in at about 1:05 into the song. Check it out.

Rachel Sweet was only 16 when she released her debut album Fool Around in 1978. She had some minor success as a child singer and recorded several commercials. She dabbled in Country music but eventually moved to soft Rock/pop. Aside for a minor hit, her career never really took off – musically. She ended up moving to the TV world which includes writing/producing credits for sitcoms Dharma & Greg and George Lopez!? The Beatnuts flipped her song “It’s So Different Here” for the track “We Got the Funk“.

“We Got the Funk” was released as a bonus track on The Beatnuts Greatest Hits album. The album was actually fulfilling a contract obligation with Loud Records. Towards the late 90′s/early 2000′s, Hip-Hop was changing drastically and the once indestructible Loud Records roster was falling to ruin, being replaced with Southern Rap and underground hip-hop (Rawkus). It’s no secret Loud was trying to change the sound of the Nuts, causing them to want to leave and go independent. Check out the sample source of one of the last good tracks from Loud.

Despite being Colombian and Dominican, The Beatnuts haven’t sampled too many Latin records. Danny Rivera is a Puerto Rican singer who had a very long career and “Gracias Mi Amor Por Toda Lo Vivido” is actually one of his bigger hits. The Beatnuts used this one for “Look Around” featuring Dead Prez.