“I’m God,” Lil B, 2009, produced by Clams Casino: Still the greatest thing the Based God has ever recorded–judging by what I’ve heard, at least (there could always be some lost masterpiece floating in the YouTube ether, waiting to be discovered). After hearing so much of Clams’ work with the track, however, it’s impossible for modern ears to hear in and not be unsatisfied by the total lack of massive boom-bap drums.
“Just for Now,” Imogen Heap, 2005: A lighter-than-air slice of synth-pop, Imogen Heap’s “Just for Now” is second only to “ Hide and Seek” (also by Heap, and prominently sampled) as the absolute pinnacle of the post-Enya new-age Starbucks/Garden State music explosion of the mid-’00s. Fittingly, we’ll be looking at a song each from both the (based) godfather of that internet rap scene and its most commercially successful beneficiary: Lil B and A$AP Rocky, both produced by Clams Casino himself. This week’s Sample Wars concerns a track that’s become a modern classic of sampling, entirely thanks to one producer: Clams Casino, one of the chief architects of the dreamy, blown-out sound that’s characterized much of the “underground” or internet-minded rap of the past few years. Each week in Sample Wars, we’ll pit two songs which sample the same source material head-to-head against each other, to determine which one rocked the sample better.
