During last night’s Grammy Awards, California rapper Kendrick Lamar took home two awards, for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance, for his single “I”. The single is based around the instrumental hook from classic Isley Brothers single “That Lady,” but does not actually feature a sample from that song. Instead, Lamar hired a band to re-record the song’s instrumental part in the studio–and one of the members of that band was RVA’s own Keith Askey, guitarist for Butcher Brown.
During last night’s Grammy Awards, California rapper Kendrick Lamar took home two awards, for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance, for his single “I”. The single is based around the instrumental hook from classic Isley Brothers single “That Lady,” but does not actually feature a sample from that song. Instead, Lamar hired a band to re-record the song’s instrumental part in the studio–and one of the members of that band was RVA’s own Keith Askey, guitarist for Butcher Brown. During the research for our recent Jellowstone Records cover story, we spoke to Askey about how he became involved with the production.
“[Former Butcher Brown bassist] Chris Smith’s brother lives out in Los Angeles and is a hip hop producer. He reached out and I looked at the email and thought, ‘This sounds crazy.’ I didn’t believe it at first,” said Askey of working on the single. However, he figured he had nothing to lose. “I looked at my calendar and was like, ‘I don’t really have anything going on, why don’t I just follow through with this?'”
Once Askey and the other players had assembled in the studio, Lamar explained the plan. “He sat us down and said, ‘I have this idea for a single, it’s going to be this Isley Brothers song’,” Askey explained. “So we just played the record verbatim, and they just chopped it up.”
Lamar had good reason to go with a live-band recreation, known as an interpolation, rather than a sample. Around the same time that “I” was being recorded, Lamar was hit with a lawsuit over his 2011 track “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” for failing to clear a sample from the song “Old and Wise” by the Alan Parsons Project. The lawsuit followed a similar dispute over Katy Perry’s single “Dark Horse”, filed by gospel rappers Flame and Lecrae for their track “Joyful Noise.”
Unlike samples, interpolations are considered cover versions, and do not require the permission of the original artist to be used, as cover versions are subject to compulsory licenses.
In both sampled and interpolated form, “That Lady” has quite a history of showing up in hip hop songs, in movie scenes, and other random places. You may recognize it as the main sample in “A Year And A Day” by the Beastie Boys, or from its memorable appearance in the movie Anchorman.
The backing track for “I” was not the only recording Askey participated in during the Kendrick Lamar sessions. “After that was done, we still had a couple days left, and we just kept coming up with more ideas. So there’s roughly 30-something ideas that we did for him specifically, that are just kind of floating around,” said Askey. “I just keep waiting, checking emails–that’s the name of the game.”
Therefore, it’s possible we may hear Askey’s guitar on future Kendrick Lamar tunes. For now, check out the official video for the Grammy-winning “I” below:
