Ahmad Jamal has been involved despite him in Hip-Hop activity.

Many of his works had been sampled throughout years and are still a source of inspiration for producers nowadays.

Let’s go on with this demonstration of the use of Ahmad Jamal’s songs.

You might have noticed “De La Soul’ is often quoted on this blog. This is no accident.

In 1996, the three rappers from Long Island decided to produce themselves for their fourth album, “Stakes is High”. And the first single to be released is the eponym song “Stakes is High”. It samples “Swahililand” by, of course, Ahmad Jamal aka The Architect. Sample appears at 7:29.

Swahililand

Still in 1996, a future Hip-Hop legend is crushing on the rap scene with his first album, “Reasonable Doubt”. Any guesses ? Shawn Carter aka Jay-Z came out with jazz tinted tracks. Twenty two years before that, Mr Jamal had brought “Pastures” in everyone’s ears. Sample appears at 1:10.

Pastures

There’s an other band who seems to had fall in love with the pianist from Pittsburgh. It’s a very jazzy French Hip-Hop band. So jazzy that they chose “Jazz Liberatorz” as a group name.

They sampled Ahmad Jamal twice in their masterpiece “Clin d’oeil” in 2008. “Pastures” for “Dirty Sauce” and “Introduction” for their own album intro.

Introduction

You might find many legendary Hip-Hop compositions in this 7 minutes long introduction. “They reminisce over you”‘ from Pete Rock for instance.

Clin d’oeil

It is interesting to see the use of samples in this intro. It’s a big mix of vocal samples, scratches, Hip-Hop samples played on synth. And it definitely works well.

Last one for the road. Gramatik, a Slovenian DJ known for the diversity of his productions, used the octogenarian jazzman’s creation as well. He kept the piano notes’ power pushing them in the foreground in his early single, “Skylight”. Sample appears at 1:24 in “MASH”.

Almost every kind of workers in Hip-Hop “industry” went on digging in Ahmad Jamal’s discography. MC’s, beatmakers, DJ’s. All respected his talent and honoured him in a way by incorporating jazz samples.

As we can observe, Jazz and Hip-Hop mixed up scores almost every times.