Sampling a song is always a risky proposition: do you leave the sample untouched, as if sacrosanct, or do you get it a little dirty? Chiddy Bang’s recent song “Kids”, based on the skeleton of the riff from MGMT’s blowup song, tackles the latter challenge. Though MGMT’s “Kids” enjoys massive popularity, it’s yet to demand the kind of delicacy that more time-honored songs might, and accordingly, this rap cover (remix? remake? sampling? collaboration? who knows these days…) chops up the intensely hummable hook from the original, and serves it back as something sparer, different, but recognizable. The four guys of Chiddy Bang, college students in Pennsylvania, flow over the beat with clever and energetic lyrics– ungenerous listeners might describe them as not particularly memorable, but they’re well-delivered and catchy. This song won’t change your life, but it might kickstart your morning.
Yet to release an album, Chiddy has also released songs sampling Kid Cudi and Radiohead. It remains to be seen whether they can make good songs that don’t revolve around borrowing from the modern indie canon, but they’re well worth keeping an eye on.
Listen to “Kids” on their Myspace.
In semi-related news, Jason DeRulo’s song, “Whatcha Say”, which heavily samples Imogen Heap’s vocodertastic “Hide and Seek” is quickly making room for itself on the iTunes and radio charts. The song is actually pretty good, with some nice T.I.-esque synth brass and the predictably killer sample-chorus. It’s interesting, I think, to see our evolving notions of the roles of sampler and samplee (can I use that as a word?): when Eminem’s “Stan” came out nearly ten years ago (!), it was billed as featuring Dido. As for “Whatcha Say”, you’d be unlikely to figure out it was sampled from Imogen Heap unless you already were familiar with her song (which you doubtless were, but that’s not the point).
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