10 Hit Songs You Had No Idea Used Samples
4. All Falls Down - Kanye West
Kanye West is arguably the most divisive figure in hip-hop, if not music in general. It is too easy for people to dismiss his incredible musical achievements by holding them up to his bizarre public antics. After all, it takes a genius to produce The College Dropout, but it does not take a genius to hold a presidential rally without a microphone and dismiss Harriet Tubman (while having already missed the deadline to run for president).
Sadly, when you take West's well-documented bipolar disorder into account, these "antics" seem a lot less laughable and a lot more concerning.
There has always been a similar concern for Ms. Lauryn Hill. After leaving Fugees in 1997, she dropped The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time... and then promptly fell off the face of the Earth. Despite the critical acclaim of Miseducation, Hill never produced another studio record. Her dissatisfaction with the industry and the pressures of fame proved to stifle her creativity, and she removed herself from the public eye.
The closest we have to a second Lauryn Hill album is her MTV Unplugged Session, a collection of unfinished acoustic demos that Hill played for an audience in 2002. Unfortunately, it was almost universally disliked upon release... except by Kanye.
Although technically an interpolation rather than a sample, West's All Falls Down borrows its hook from Hill's Mystery of Iniquity.
The success of All Falls Down actually helped to give Hill's Unplugged album some retrospective respect. Although it is nowhere near Miseducation levels, the album has now found its own loyal fans.