I'm no spokesman for the hip hop tradition, but it seems to me it's
all about lucky collisions and the search for that magic 'chocolate
in the peanut butter' combination. Sometimes chance encounter is
your friend. I started working with DJ's when they needed a guitar
slinger. Some days all they asked me for was two bars of a swampy
Tony Joe White-inspired riff. Out of these jams strange gifts came
along.

In one form or another, sampling has been around forever. There's a
blues tradition that's been doing it for hundreds of years. I've
always believed it's not what you throw in the pot but what floats to
the top after you bring it to a boil. In the past I might have thrown
out the bone that sank to the bottom. That bone was the sample, and
it stayed in.

There's something in OC's (the singer sampled) voice that tells me
he's been there, seen it, and brought back the news about a
generation on the front lines of a lot of needless bloodshed. There
are very few bad seeds. People aren't born monsters, they get turned
into them. Lot of kids never get one chance. Hell, I had too many to
mention.

You learn something everyday if you're half awake. I never knew I
would get such an education in sampling and litigation and all that
other fun stuff, but that's another story.