David Byrne and Open Mike Eagle are legends in their own right and they came together to discuss a range of topics on an episode of FUSE: A BOMB Podcast. One of those topics was sampling:
David Byrne: I’m aware that there are people working on music who have very wide musical tastes. I’ve heard Missy Elliott beats where I go, “Wait a minute, that’s like a Japanese record that he just sampled.”
Open Mike Eagle: I’m always fascinated by that, because I know that people who aren’t in hip-hop sometimes have really pointed sort of … just in the way that they think about hip-hop. They don’t think of it as quote unquote real music because of the sampling, and because it’s not a lot of people playing chords and keys and guitars. It’s a lot of using other people’s records. And like I said, just you being a part of that new way of seeing that, I know kind of coincided with the beginning of hip-hop … I just bet that you had a unique take on it because your proximity to it was different than a lot of people’s.
David Byrne: A little bit. There were a few years there where there was a kind of mixing and cross fertilization with different scenes of folks in the Bronx mixing with graffiti kids downtown. And then art rock kids like myself, sometimes all in the same clubs or hanging out in the same places. That’s a really nice moment.
Stream the episode below.