Zoë Blade's notebook

Change the Beat

Change the Beat is a song by Fab 5 Freddy, produced by Material, with a remix performed by Beside. It was released by Celluloid Records in 1982.

In the early 1980s, record label Elektra's boss Bruce Lundvall would listen to demos and declare "Ah, this stuff is really fresh!", completely oblivious to the word "fresh" being en vogue in hip hop culture at the time.

Band manager Roger Trilling then did an impression of him, which someone — presumably one of the producers, Bill Laswell or Michael Beinhorn, but the story's a little vague here — vocoded with white noise, and tagged onto the end of the latest song they were working on, "Change the Beat", as a makeshift outro.[1][2]

Turntables, and later samplers, let people quickly throw together tracks, Frankenstein style, out of other people's music. The trick was to find good isolated parts, chiefly breakbeats and a cappellas. And here was a completely unique sounding a cappella.

The first person to scratch with it was Herbie Hancock on Rockit. It wouldn't have been an especially deep cut, given that he was using the same producers. They were scratching with their own sound, as if showing people how to use it. Given Herbie Hancock's legendary status, it's safe to say the sound was no longer a secret.

That sound, whether sampled directly or indirectly (why bother scratching with it, when someone else has already done that for you?), ended up becoming a staple of hip hop culture. It's since been used by pretty much everyone, from Schoolly D to Eric B. & Rakim, from Nine Inch Nails to Beyoncé. It's now appeared on roughly three thousand records, several of which have in turn become legendary sample sources in their own right.

Sampled by

References

  1. How to Wreck a Nice Beach Dave Tompkins, 2010, ISBN 978-1-933633-88-6, p. 250-252
  2. "The Celluloid Records Story (part 1 of 2)" Strut Records, Mar 2013

A cappella: Change the Beat