Is Sample Drill a Dumb Trend or the Future of New York Rap?

Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.

The good, the bad, and the completely shameless of sample drill, New York’s most popping rap trend

For years, from Chicago to London to Brooklyn, drill music production has been characterized by its blunt force—sputtering drums and gliding 808s and not much else. But in New York, all that is changing, and a style that’s been lazily branded “sample drill” is the sound of the moment. Over the last several months, an overwhelming amount of New York drill singles have featured easily detectable samples, including B Lovee’s “IYKYK” (which flips Wayne Wonder’s “No Letting Go”) and Kay Flock’s “Being Honest” (XXXTenatacion’s “Changes”). Yes, it’s a silly trend, but it’s also a Hail Mary for a scene that was running on fumes.

Following the murder of Pop Smoke in early 2020, Brooklyn’s drill scene went into a rut: The UK drill-influenced beats popularized by Pop and his producer 808 Melo were played out, and the scene was so desperate for Pop’s rumbling voice that people started looking to imitators like Quelly Woo and Dusty Locane. Around the same time, Sleepy Hallow’s “Deep End Freestyle” went viral on TikTok, where the subgenre is incredibly present. Produced by Sleepy’s in-house beatmaker Great John, the beat loops a vocal snippet of the singer Foushée that the producer found on a pack of free samples on the music platform Splice. The song’s appeal on TikTok had less to do with Sleepy’s raps than the way the feathery sample lingered before a thunderous drop. It became one of Brooklyn drill’s biggest rap songs before it even had an official release, and it set a blueprint in the process.

In the summer of 2020 a pair of catchy A Lau-produced Brooklyn drill records that incorporated manipulated vocal samples hit the web in Tazzo B’s “Bang Bang” and Bizzy Banks’ “Extra Sturdy.” Then Staten Island rapper CJ almost killed the trend before it really got started with the embarrassingly bad “Whoopty,” which rode a sample of Arijit Singh and Mithoon’s Bollywood track “Sanam Re” into the Top 10.

Meanwhile over in Queens, Shawny Binladen, YTB, and their producers—most importantly the Bronx’s Cash Cobain—twisted the trend by using samples that were immediately recognizable, copyright be damned. Shawny’s 2020 mixtape Merry Wickmas features instrumentals that smoothly rework JAY-Z’s “Can I Live,” Snoop Dogg’s “Gin & Juice,” Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day,” and more. The deluxe edition is even better, as Shawny and company tap into their New York roots by slicing up soul samples and reimagining songs from the past in a way that fits into their drill-leaning sound (check the Barbra Streisand-sampling “Memories”). It began as a gimmick, but in the process Shawny figured out a balance that made his best-executed tracks more than a novelty: The song had to have appeal beyond the sample, and they often did because of his punishing delivery, slick punchlines, and replayably short runtimes.

Shawny, Cash, and crew would establish a foundation that led to the South Bronx’s drill explosion this past summer. Leading the charge are B Lovee and Kay Flock, who have been laying down ruthless diss tracks on flips of reggae, R&B, and pop hits for months. It’s been hit-and-miss. On tracks like “IYKYK” and “Being Honest,” B Lovee and Kay Flock have the energy and personality to give the song punch beyond the sample. Others haven’t been as successful: C Blu’s “Irreplaceable” (sample: Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable”) and Dthang’s “Talk Facts” (Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know”) are lazy, not looped as cleanly as Great John’s “Deep End Freestyle” and without the vision of the beats Cash often gives to Shawny.

The worst examples of the trend rely exclusively on cheap nostalgia. There’s one with an eye-rolling sample of the ice cream truck theme, another which spins Simple Plan’s version of the Scooby Doo theme song, and even one that thought people would care about a flip of Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” (and for some reason they actually did!). The only appeal of these sample drill tracks seems to be: Oh, isn’t it so ironic that they are rapping about violence, struggle, jail, and death over this bright and bubbly rehash of a song I used to hear when I was a kid.

Yet even with its extremely low lows, the trend has led to a handful of creative breakthroughs outside of the Bronx and Queens. In Harlem, a clique of rappers laid their macho shit talk on a batshit rework of Dick Dale’s “Miserlou,” aka the surf-rock song from Pulp Fiction. Over in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Polo Perks and Surf Gang’s squad of producers put out Punk Goes Drill, a mixtape that slices up pop-punk hits and weaves them together with drill percussion. Across the Hudson in Newark, New Jersey, Bandmanrill pounced on the sample-heavy Jersey Club beats of producer Mcvertt with a no-frills, drill-inspired delivery. Shawny Binladen continues to excel in this style, and his most recent mixtapes Wickipedia and its deluxe edition are probably the best records to come from the sample drill wave. Sooner rather than later things will likely get stale, but for now, at least, sample drill is injecting the overall scene with excitement again.

Deetranada: “Don Dada”

Baltimore MC Deetranada’s no-holds-barred performance on “Don Dada” could have earned her a place in one of French Montana’s Cocaine City DVDs in the 2000s: It’s easy to imagine her talking shit on the block while everyone around her is like, “You need to get into a studio right now.” She has a cocky swagger that she backs up with scoffing lines that might start an argument: “How you don’t like me?/You act just like me.” But Deetranada is unbothered by any potential ill will. In the video, her smile beams as she drifts through a carnival, like she’s boosting her spirits by making a hater’s day just a little bit worse.

If you told 5-year-old me that there would be a point in my life where my love for The Rock would fade, I probably would have knocked you to the ground, bounced off the imaginary ropes, and finished you off with a vicious People’s Elbow. In the early 2000s, The Rock looked like the coolest wrestler to ever step into a ring, and while his transition into acting was considerably less cool, he still became one of the better action stars of his generation. (Yes, I will defend The Rundown with my life! Yes, Fast Five is the sickest action movie of the 2010s!) Then the last five years or so happened.

Now Dwayne is shamelessly trying to brainwash the country into handing him a political position. Fine, I’ll say it: The Rock really wants to be the goddamn President of the United States. And like so many past, current, and future politicians, he is desperate for approval, even though nobody had a problem with him before he started trying to indoctrinate middle America into a lifestyle of creatine, sleeveless graphic tees, and jokes corny enough for Jimmy Fallon’s writers’ room.

Perhaps it’s this pitiful desire to please that has led him down the bleakest path: A rap song with Tech N9ne. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Tech N9ne hater—he exists in his Midwest bubble and mostly leaves us alone, which is fine in my book. But every now and then I’ll remember he’s still chugging along, and this time it’s because of “Face Off,” his nightmarish team up with The Rock. The beat sounds like what I imagine comes pre-programmed in Ram trucks, and Tech N9ne and a few rappers I don’t care about enough to Google do some ear-bleeding fast rapping. At the end comes The Rock, all riled up on protein powder and screaming phrases he probably picked up listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast in traffic: “It’s about drive, it’s about power/We stay hungry, we devour.” It’s not particularly fun or funny, which in a way aligns with everything The Rock has become.

Well, at least now we know what The Rock would have sounded like on Donda

Goldenboy Countup: “Airplane Mode”

Goldenboy Countup is from the Florida city of DeLand, just north of Orlando, but the piano-driven instrumentals on his recent mixtape Chicken Man bring to mind Detroit street rap. It makes sense; like Michigan, Florida contains several disconnected rap scenes and countless shit-stirring personalities. Yet this may be where the similarities end. While Michigan rappers tend to blur the line between fact and fiction, Goldenboy brings a realism to his rhymes that is distinct to Florida rap. On “Airplane Mode,” he casually takes us into a world of dope sales and fast money. “Before I touched a rap I was a five brick nigga/I switched over to Ps nigga still six figures,” he raps, almost in a whisper. He may be influenced by Detroit, but his approach to storytelling is his own.

About 20 seconds into Chief Keef’s 2014 track “War,” the Chicago drill forefather begins to cough. Hard. If someone hacked like this next to you, it would be fair to move far away from them and tell them to get it checked out. Though it seemed like an accidental moment of genius in Keef’s case, Yeat’s “Sick” is built entirely around his cough.

The song opens with the Portland rapper damn near regurgitating his last meal as he croons, “Bitch I’m sick and I’m still making hits in the stu” through showers of Auto-Tune. At first, it sounds gross, especially in the middle of a pandemic, yet it slowly becomes compelling as it goes on. It hits a chaotic peak when Yeat casually mutters, “Bitch, I have a COVID and I don’t give a fuck, bitch, I’m still gon’ sip on this wock.” I’m no doctor, but that attitude sounds negligent. Keef would be proud though, and I guess that’s what matters.