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Be real: your parents probably made love to the S.O.S. Band. Don’t be ashamed. They had enough taste to breed someone like you, and you read The Boombox, so it’s not all bad.
You can’t really go wrong with the Atlanta R&B/funk-electro band that birthed fantastic songs like ‘The Finest,’ ‘Take Your Time,’ and ‘Weekend Girl.’ You can probably put on their “Best Of” collection and float to somewhere much nicer than earth. S.O.S. Band didn’t have a ton of chart-topping singles, but their influence continues to echo throughout hip-hop today – just look at the song that put A$AP Rocky over the top.
A$AP Ty was the architect behind Rocky’s first big song, ‘Purple Swag,’ which brought Harlem to the masses in a purple haze of smoke and syrup. It was a little slow, though, and perhaps too smoked out for most, so Rocky had to come with something a bit more radio friendly. Ty claims he often lifts samples from his dad’s music collection, and this sounds like no exception. The glimmering intro to ‘No One’s Gonna Love You’ sets the tone for ‘Peso’ as Rocky gets the listener lifted with his patented “pretty mother—ker” flow. Without this sample, there is no ‘Peso.’ With “Peso,” there might not be the A$AP Rocky we know today.
Spice 1 cuts out the meat of the sample instead of the intro for ‘Welcome To The Ghetto,’ using the percussion to lay the foundation of the beat. It’s hard to tell, but it sounds like he might have even chopped up the individual strings that you hear over the verses, but those sound original. If they’re sampled, he did one hell of a job extracting those.
It’s tough to choose just who freaked the sample better. Ty threads the ethereal sound effect throughout the beat to narcotic effect, while Spice’s use of the tumbling drums creates a darker tone that supports the direction of the song. This is one of Spice 1’s biggest songs as well, but we have to give it to A$AP Ty for picking an unorthodox part of the S.O.S. Band song. While other artists like Lil’ Boosie and Foxy Brown have used the same elements that Spice 1 sampled, Ty took the road less travelled and it helped spawn an entire career for Rocky.
