10 Best Rock Samples In Hip Hop

7. Deep Gully - When The S**t Goes Down (Cypress Hill)

Owing to the powers that be, When The Sh*t Goes Down was re-marketed as When The Ship Goes Down, in order for it to receive more radio play. But, the mere censoring of the track wasn't enough to rob it of its edge.

Expertly deploying a number of samples - taken from a little known blues-rock song by The Outlaw Blues Band - gave this track a vibe worthy of B-Real's lyrical wordplay.

It's another incidence of how artists would deploy sampling in the golden age of hip-hop, samples were so integrated into the beats and melodies created, they seemed as though they were completely original compositions. Try listening to the original track, it just feels so empty without B-Real delivering that first bar "Livin' on phat pockets on flat wit tha gat".

Cypress Hill kind of built their whole vibe on these sorts of samples. It's what gave their second album, Black Sunday that uniform flow, sure, every track has its unique feel to it, but as a whole the album feels fluid.

Obscure blues-rock just seems to have been made for West Coast rappers to spit bars over...

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Before engrossing myself in the written word, I spent several years in the TV and film industry. During this time I became proficient at picking things up, moving things and putting things down again.