Identify This Sample

April 30, 2005 8:16 PM

Help Identify a Hip-Hop Sample. The artist is MF Doom, the album is MM...Food?, the track is "Kookies" (Amazon link; listen to track 15). I'm fairly sure it's from Sesame Street (or some other children's show, circa 1970s) -- if not the main theme, than an outro or something else.

There are actually lots of samples on the track, but it's the horns/bells/wah-wah guitar loop I'm talking about. I'd love to get my hands on the original, but nothing I'm finding sounds remotely close.

And in general, is there an internet source for hip-hop sample identification? (Or would that just lead to more risk of trouble for the artists?)

posted by kmel to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

Familiar sound, might the liner notes help?
posted by efalk at 8:38 PM on April 30, 2005

Response by poster: Nope, nothing in the liner notes.
posted by kmel at 8:39 PM on April 30, 2005

I think that's the music that played over the Sesame Street end credits.
posted by barkingpumpkin at 8:40 PM on April 30, 2005

Best answer: barkingpumpkin's correct, it is the funky music that played after the mellow acoustic version of the Sesame Street theme song that was the closing theme for that show.

The only copy I could find online is in cursed Real Audio format... As God is my witness I held out against downloading that piece of crap music player onto my newest mac for almost four years, resisting many's the BBC audio clip, and just broke down so I could make sure I was right.

I found it here
posted by nanojath at 8:46 PM on April 30, 2005

Best answer: While they don't have anything on that song, the-breaks.com is a pretty good source for hip-hop sample identification in general.
posted by zsazsa at 8:54 PM on April 30, 2005

Response by poster: Aieee! I found that link earlier, but bailed before it got to the good part. I wonder if it's the Children's Television Workshop theme or specifically Sesame Street.

Well, enjoy the BBC audio clips, nanojath ...

Just so this thread isn't a waste, can anyone answer the last part to my question re: a website for sample identification?
posted by kmel at 8:57 PM on April 30, 2005

http://www.the-breaks.com/

(sick of hacking HTML and the autolink creator doesn't fly in Safari - you can do a search in the tool at the top of the page - doesn't have the one you're looking for, tho, probably because it is not credited...)

I've heard The Breaks called the most comprehensive out there.
posted by nanojath at 9:07 PM on April 30, 2005

Oh, and I just converted the "good bit" into a decent, respectable MP3, email me if you want it, kmel. It's 684 KB. Now I can just ignore RA lurking in my applications folder and pretend it never happened.
posted by nanojath at 9:12 PM on April 30, 2005

And here's discussion of the music in question at great length. There are some people out there getting way deep into The Street.

http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=4962&page=2&pp=15
posted by nanojath at 9:15 PM on April 30, 2005

If we could have heard the whole song, we would have heard samples of the Cookie Monster munching away according to this review.
posted by extrabox at 9:33 PM on April 30, 2005

As far as I know, throughout the 70's Sesame Street used two different closing credit pieces: The ballad style with the reprise of the opening melody ("come and play...") on harmonica (featuring footage of a hide-and-seek game with the big Muppet dog), then the funky version featuring call (horns) and response (tubular bells) that you are hearing now.

So, yeah, you found the latter.
posted by sourwookie at 12:07 AM on May 1, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks everyone! I highly recommend the MF Doom album, by the way.
posted by kmel at 8:10 AM on May 1, 2005