Welcome to The Breakdown! Coming your way is a sensational adventure through some of the most iconic and delectable samples the music world has ever produced. To explore these earworms, I’ve made you a whimsical little quiz. If you don’t care for quizzes (boo!) then you can skip to the end of the post for a playlist consolidating all the samples in the quiz (plus ones that didn’t make the cut). If instead you’re cool and daring, step right up and test your music knowledge with The Breakdown!
The Breakdown is divided into genres (Hip-Hop/Rap/RnB, Electronic/Dance and Pop/Rock/Other) and decades (90s, 00s, 10s and 2020s). If you feel especially versed in any particular category feel free to skip to that section.
The instructions are simple!
1. Open a new tab on your browser
2. Login into your Spotify account
3. Return to this tab
4. Choose your genre: Hip-Hop/Rap/RnB, Electronic/Dance and Pop/Rock/Other
5. Choose your decade: 90s, 00s, 10s
6. In each category you will find songs containing the samples you are trying to place. Listen to the original sample by pressing play and try to guess the song that contains that sample! It’s that easy! If the song isn’t loading, don’t fret, just reload your browser and return to the section (after a certain number of plays Spotify freaks out). You don’t need to stop a song that’s playing before playing another as well, I prefer jumping immediately into another one so that the sample really connects! An example of what you will see is shown below. In this case I went to Hip-Hop/Rap/RnB from the 00s and clicked on Easy and found the following:
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger – Daft Punk (2001)
If I am getting stuck I can click on the hint revealing the sample location and type.
If I am still stuck I can click on the hint revealing the artist and year of the song I am trying to guess.
Hint – Artist & Year
Kanye West – 2007
After listening to the source of the sample and confident in my guess, I can click on Answer to reveal the answer and give it a listen. If I were correct I would get awarded the points! Wow!
Answer
Stronger – Kanye West (2007)
Hint – Sample Location & Type
Vocals (starting at 1:00)
Points!? It’s not a whimsical quiz if there aren’t stakes involved!
Depending on what genre you choose to explore there will be an allocated amount of points available for each sample you correctly place.
Hip-Hop/Rap/RnB: Divided into difficulties (Easy, Medium, Hard, Extreme, Impossible) with more points available for increasing difficulties
Electronic/Dance: Each sample is given a difficulty rating (1, 2, 3)
Pop/Other: TBD
Generally, for each song, you will be awarded the full points available if you can guess the song title, wow! If you can only guess the artist, you will be awarded half the points available, still okay! If you complete the entire category (e.g. all difficulties of Rap/Rnb from the 90s) you’ll be able to record a composite score and compare that score to other’s so share with friends!
That’s it! Remember to log your score and have fun! Enjoy!
Genre – Hip-Hop/Rap/Rnb:
90s: Da 90s
00s: The Naughts
10s: The Obama Years
Genre – Electronic/Dance
Under construction!
Samples Galore Playlist:
Ryan and Garrett 