Sometimes the finest samples from hip hop history aren’t born in the smoky rooms of soul but crafted by the raucous side of rock and roll. In those instances, it can be even more impressive to see how our favourite producers and rappers can manipulate those beats into something entirely different. Below, we’re looking back at how Tom Tom Club would soundtrack some of your favourite 1990s hits from Tupac, Mariah Carey, Busta Rhymes and more.
Of course, it’s not the only time that rock and roll has crossed over to the hip hop world. Blondie were, officially, the first act to grab a number one song with rap, for their track ‘Rapture’. Led Zeppelin were also heavily included in the forging of Beastie Boys with the help of Rick Rubin. And, equally, Tom Tom club can be seen as one of the most widely used samples from the rock world.
In truth, samples are the foundation on which hip hop was born. Ever since MCs began to rhyme over records, DJs have been searching for drum breaks with which they can loop for rappers. The search for old soul records has led to a competition to find the most obscure samples, but oftentimes, the classics are classics for a reason. It helps to embolden the tracks at hand and give us all an earworm to follow. however, it can’t help but feel a little strange when hip hop producers put their efforts into picking out rock songs.
Looking to break away from the oppressive control of Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, the rest of the band, Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth started a pop band in the 1980s that incorporated more explicit hip hop elements than were being used at their day jobs with the Talking Heads. They scored their biggest hit with the bubbly and earworm-heavy ‘Genius of Love’, peaking at #31 on the Billboard Hot 100.
During a conversation with Songfacts, Frantz explained the track’s conception: “In the studio, I’d play the drum part. It’s played by hand, but it’s a loop part. It doesn’t have any fills or anything, but it does have some tom-toms, so I would record a groove with bass drums, snare, and hi-hat. Then Tina would put down her bass. Then I would add a little tom-tom here and there. And then we added the keyboard part, which was actually two keyboard parts combined. Then Tina worked out the vocals with her two sisters, Laura and Lani, and a little bit of screaming by myself. Then we added Adrian Belew on guitar. We also had a Bahamian guitarist named Monty Brown playing a simple rhythm part. He had recently left T-Connection, a Bahamian funk band that had had a few hits.
“Lyrically, things would get changed as it went along,” continued Frantz, clearly welcoming the absence of Byrne’s abstract artistry. “But Tina had a good idea of what she wanted it to be about. We also wanted to pay tribute to all these great soul artists that we really enjoyed and appreciated, like Smokey Robinson, James Brown, and Sly and Robbie. ‘There’s no beginning and there is no end/time isn’t present in the dimension.’ I didn’t hear that line coming. Tina came up with that. That stuff in the middle, that’s Tina’s sister, Lani, who invented this language when she was a little kid. It’s gibberish, but it sounds like it might be Hindu or something. People at the time were asking, ‘What kind of language is that?’ Well, it’s this language that Tina’s sister Lani invented as a child.”
The warm and fuzzy feelings of ‘Genius of Love’ were almost immediately sampled, appearing perhaps most notably in Mariah Carey’s number one song ‘Fantasy’. Other notable uses include Mark Morrison’s ‘Return of the Mack’, Busta Rhymes’ ‘One’, Tupac Shakur’s ‘High Speed’, and Redman’s ‘Brick City Mashin’.
In fact, the song has become such a mainstay in the hip hop world that when today’s audience discovers their audience they are truly baffle dit wasn’t Mariah Carey’s original beat.
