Bring That Beat Back

"Bring That Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop is a proposed history of how sampling, as a wholly new form of creating and commenting on music, became a vital part of hip-hop's DNA, from the NY DJs in the late 1970s to today. The story will arc across four DJs who pushed this technology and approach into new territory: Grandmaster Flash, the pioneer; Prince Paul, the innovator; Dr. Dre, the mogul; and Madlib, the left-field curator. Alongside that arc, Patrin will do a deep dive into songs that were heavily sampled and represent/illuminate the power, complexity, and rich history of how sampling has helped build and evolve hip-hop. Throughout, these sections will be far from insular, and instead, reach and pull in the many DJs, producers, and moments that tell this wide-ranging story. Utilizing a wealth of extant interviews and archival material alongside new interviews with people who were there, other critics, and Patrin's own narrative of this history, Bring That Beat Back would be both a geeky dive for music fans and hip-hop heads but also a highly accessible introduction to a form of music that turned power dynamics upside down, made back-row session musicians more iconic to creators than the mega-watt stars at the front of the stage, and how this continual boundary breaking in production and its reshaping of the musical "canon" is very much an extended riff from the history of pop music itself"--

Nate Patrin is a longtime music critic whose writing has appeared in dozens of publications including Pitchfork, Stereogum, Spin, Bandcamp Daily, Red Bull Music Academy, and his hometown Twin Cities’ alt-weekly City Pages. This is his first book.