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15 Best Samples of Quincy Jones’ Music, From Kanye West to the Weeknd to Harry Styles


A list of the 15 best samples of Quincy Jones’ music, from Kanye West to The Weeknd to Harry Styles.

This Southern California quartet certainly wasn’t the first rap group to be vulnerable on wax, but this lead single from 1994’s “Bizarre Ryde II the Pharcyde” helped amplify the more introspective paths forged by Native Tongues predecessors like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest with four depressingly relatable chronicles of love lost. This breakthrough single co-written and produced by longtime collaborator Nellee Hooper is anchored by a chugging, syncopated beat borrowed from Ray Brown Orchestra’s “Go Down Dying,” from the soundtrack to Lewis Gilbert’s 1970 film “The Adventurers.” West Coast rap conglomerate Hieroglyphics would later sample it just as memorably for their 2003 song “Let It Roll.” Though Ludacris is preceded on this sample by Dream Warriors’ wildly underappreciated 1990 track “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style,” the Dirty South icon enlists DJ Green Lantern to chop up Jones’ “Soul Bossa Nova” for a song that, perhaps unsurprisingly, liberally references Austin Powers — it was instantly catapulted back in into popular culture thanks to its use over the opening credits of the first of Mike Myers’ series about the ‘60s superspy.

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Harry Styles

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