Steely samples

I'll confess to not being well versed in rap. I have nothing against it, and have liked a lot of what I've heard - it's just not my particular bag, so I don't hear a lot of it. In fact, about the only exposure I get comes from mixes from my friend John in LA.

This year, he sent me a mix that included Kanye West's song "Champion." This was the first time I heard it, and I think John put it on in part because he knows I'm a Steely Dan fan, and this is based around a sample from their song "Kid Charlemagne."



Before this, the only Dan sample I knew of was in De La Soul's "Eye Know," which along with a loop or two from "Peg" also has Otis Redding and the Mad Lads featured therein.



But it turns out they've been sampled a lot. A little research revealed two samples from "Black Cow," off Aja. One was in Tatyana Ali's "Daydreamin'"...



The other: Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, in "Deja Vu."



Unfortunately, Tariq and Gunz didn't clear the sample before release, so they wound up being sued and having to pay the Dan around a hundred thousand dollars. But judging by this clip, I don't think Becker and Fagen had any hard feelings.