Samples

Clyde Stubblefield's drum break on James Brown's 1970 'Funky Drummer' is the most-sampled drum pattern in recorded history — a six-second pocket that defined boom-bap, golden-age hip hop, and house music. For '0 to 100 / The Catch Up' (2014), producers Boi-1da, Vinylz, and Frank Dukes interpolated the swung, ride-cymbal-heavy feel of the Stubblefield break and rebuilt it under Drake's bar-marathon flow, then beat-switched into a slower second half that interpolated JAY-Z's 'Lucky Me' cadence. The track was released as a non-album single in summer 2014 and earned two Grammy nominations including Best Rap Performance — a victory lap during the lull between Nothing Was the Same and If You're Reading This.

Timmy Thomas's 1972 Miami soul plea — recorded almost entirely solo on a Lowrey organ with an early rhythm-box preset (a forerunner of the Casio CZ-101 drum-machine aesthetic). The skeletal organ-and-drum-machine loop, with its Vietnam-era political weight, became one of the most distinctive minimalist arrangements in soul. For 'Hotline Bling' (2015), Nineteen85 lifted that exact rhythm-box pattern and pitched-up organ chord cycle wholesale, then layered Drake's croon and a marimba-style topline on top. Thomas received a co-writer credit. The sample is the song — the haunting, slightly off-grid organ pulse is what made 'Hotline Bling' immediately identifiable from one bar of audio and earned Drake his first Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Performance.

The Soul Superbs' 'Just Ask Me' is a rare 1974 sweet-soul/funk 45 — a tender, harmony-driven group vocal that languished in obscurity until the Numero Group reissued it decades later on its 'Rust Side Story' archival series. For 'Slime You Out' (2023, with SZA), Drake's production team (including 40, Bnyx, and Dalton Tennant) sampled the record directly, and the original's writers received songwriting credit on the track. The dusty, intimate vocal texture of the Soul Superbs cut grounds the song's hushed, accusatory ballad mood, threading a forgotten Midwest soul record into a modern Drake-and-SZA collaboration. 'Slime You Out' debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 2023.

A 1975 soft-rock number-one from the Los Angeles trio Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, defined by Dan Hamilton's airy lead vocal and a lilting major-key piano figure. The song's wistful melodic phrase informs the chord movement and emotional posture of 'Best I Ever Had' (2009) rather than appearing as a direct lifted loop — Boi-1da and Drake leaned on its romanticized AM-radio sentimentality and translated it into a slow, swung trap ballad. Hamilton's vocal palette also lined up with the era of Drake's 'So Far Gone' moodboard: sunbleached, slightly melancholy, suburban. The result was Drake's first top-three single and the song that defined the mixtape-to-mainstream pivot in 2009-10.

Right Said Fred's 1991 global novelty number one — a riff that lifts liberally from Rick James's 'Super Freak,' delivered with deadpan camp by Richard Fairbrass. For 'Way 2 Sexy' (2021, with Future and Young Thug), producers OZ and Tay Keith built the entire beat around an interpolated, slowed-down version of the song's central riff and chorus phrase. Right Said Fred received songwriting credit. The flip works because everyone already knows the source — Drake leveraged the meme-fluency of a 30-year-old earworm to land his ninth Billboard Hot 100 number one in 2021. It is the rare Drake hit whose joke is also the hook.

David Foster's 1992 power ballad from The Bodyguard soundtrack, written by Foster and Linda Thompson, and one of Whitney Houston's defining vocal performances — a climactic high-C belt across a sweeping orchestral arrangement. For 'Tuscan Leather' (2013), Boi-1da pitched up and chopped a fragment of Whitney's climactic vocal and detonated it as the third-act beat-switch in the song's nine-minute structure. The flip arrives without warning after two minutes of menacing 808s, transforming the track from a flex into something almost reverential. It's one of the most discussed beat switches in Drake's catalog and set the template for the multi-movement album openers that followed on Views and Scorpion.

RZA's 1993 production for the Wu-Tang Clan — built around a sped-up loop of The Charmels' 1967 Stax single 'As Long as I've Got You,' with Method Man's hook and verses from Raekwon and Inspectah Deck. The piano figure is one of the most recognizable in rap history. For 'Pound Cake / Paris Morton Music 2' (2013), Boi-1da chopped RZA's same loop into a slower, more cavernous flip, opening Nothing Was the Same with a direct quotation of Wu-Tang's piano motif before JAY-Z arrives for the song's second half. The Ellie Goulding 'Don't Say a Word' interpolation closes the track. It's a thesis statement: Drake placing himself in lineage with Wu-era New York rap on his most ambitious album opener.

Playa Fly is a Memphis underground legend who emerged from the city's Three 6 Mafia-adjacent scene before going solo. 'Just Awaken Shaken' (1995) is a grim, organ-driven cut from his debut album Just Gettin' It On, riding the slow, syrupy tempos and triplet hi-hats that would later define modern trap. For 'Jimmy Cooks' (2022, the 21 Savage-featuring closer of Honestly, Nevermind), producers Tay Keith, Vinylz, Cubeatz, and Tizzle looped Playa Fly's vocal and organ from the opening of the original into a beat that snapped Honestly, Nevermind out of its house-music detour and back into rap with one decisive track. The full-circle Memphis lineage was the whole point. The song debuted at number one — Drake's eleventh Hot 100 chart-topper — and became his most rap-coded hit of the early 2020s.

Magnolia Shorty was a foundational New Orleans bounce MC from the Magnolia Projects, signed to Cash Money in the late 1990s. Her tracks rode the city's signature Triggerman/Brown Beat drum patterns — the same DNA that powers every NOLA bounce record. For 'In My Feelings' (2018), producers TrapMoneyBenny and BlaqNmilD looped Shorty's call-and-response vocal cadence and stacked it under a chopped Lil Wayne 'Tha Block Is Hot' interpolation and a City Girls 'Pull Up N Wreck' refrain. The result is a layered NOLA tribute: three generations of the city's rap lineage colliding on one beat. The song spawned the Shiggy 'Kiki' challenge and became Drake's seventh number-one single in summer 2018.

The Notorious B.I.G.'s 1997 single from Life After Death, featuring Puff Daddy and Mase with an uncredited Kelly Price hook — a Bad Boy anthem produced by Puff Daddy and Stevie J around a sample of Diana Ross's 'I'm Coming Out,' which topped the Billboard Hot 100 posthumously. For 'Worst Behavior' (2013, Nothing Was the Same), producer DJ Dahi built a chopped, hook-less beat over which Drake delivers an extended quote of Mase's verse from the original, paying homage to the late-'90s Bad Boy era that shaped his pre-teen ear. The Director X-helmed video was shot in Memphis with cameos from Juicy J, Project Pat, and Drake's father, and the song's hometown-vendetta energy made it a swaggering centerpiece of the album.

Lauryn Hill's 1998 ballad from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill — a neo-soul touchstone built on a heartbreaking chord progression and her famously wounded vocal phrasing. For 'Nice for What' (2018), producers Murda Beatz and BlaqNmilD chopped the central vocal hook into a stuttered, pitched-up loop and bolted it onto a Big Freedia–driven New Orleans bounce skeleton. The original's slow-burn intimacy gets transposed into a roller-rink celebration: same emotional ache, doubled tempo, triplet drums underneath. The juxtaposition — Lauryn's grief floating over a triumphant bounce beat — is exactly why it works as a women's anthem rather than a breakup song. It became Drake's second number-one single and a Mother's Day weekend institution.

Daft Punk's 2000 Discovery opener — a euphoric French-house anthem built on a chopped Eddie Johns disco horn loop, sidechained filter sweeps, and Romanthony's Auto-Tuned vocal. On 'Circo Loco' (2022, Her Loss with 21 Savage), producers MIKE DEAN and Tay Keith interpolate the song's signature horn-stab melody and rework it into a tense, Vegas-after-hours instrumental — same harmonic skeleton, stripped of the four-on-the-floor pulse and replaced with a halftime trap pocket. The interpolation tags Drake's 'Honestly, Nevermind'-era house flirtation back onto a rap record: club nostalgia weaponized as menace. The song dominated streaming in late 2022 despite the unrelated Megan Thee Stallion controversy that surrounded it.

Kyla Reid's 2008 UK funky single — a Crazy Cousinz production riding a syncopated soca-leaning drum pattern and a bright, plaintive vocal hook. The song was a defining record of the brief UK funky moment that bridged grime, soca, and house in London circa 2008-09. For 'One Dance' (2016), Nineteen85 and 40 lifted Kyla's vocal hook intact (she's credited as a featured artist), built a new dancehall-inflected riddim underneath using Wizkid's Afrobeats sensibility, and gave Drake space to glide over the top. The result became Drake's first solo Billboard Hot 100 number one, the most-streamed song in Spotify history at the time, and the record that announced Drake's global Afro-Caribbean pivot.

A multi-generational lineage: Bobby Bland recorded 'I'll Take Care of You' in 1959, Gil Scott-Heron covered it on his 2010 farewell album I'm New Here, and Jamie xx then remixed Scott-Heron's vocal on 2011's We're New Here, draping it over a wandering UK-bass piano figure. For 'Take Care' (2011), Drake and Noah '40' Shebib licensed Jamie xx's edit wholesale and added Rihanna's lead vocal on top, slowing the tempo and rebalancing the low end. The sample doesn't just provide the hook — it provides the entire harmonic and rhythmic bed of the song, with Scott-Heron's weathered vocal still audible underneath the verses. It became the title track of Drake's defining 2011 album and Rihanna's seventh top-ten single.

Popcaan, the Jamaican dancehall artist signed to Vybz Kartel's Portmore Empire, was the original vocalist on the leaked early version of 'Controlla' from Views (2016). The final commercial version replaced his hook with a Drake-only vocal but retained Popcaan's melodic phrasing and the dancehall riddim built by Nineteen85 and 40 around a chopped horn motif and a one-drop drum pattern. Beenie Man also appears as a sampled vocal tag on the released cut. The track is the clearest example of Drake's 2015-16 dancehall absorption: Toronto producers building a Jamaican riddim, lifting Caribbean vocal cadences, then routing them through pop song structure. It hit number two on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.

Masego's 2017 track from his debut album Lady Lady — a warm, saxophone-laced 'TrapHouseJazz' cut whose melody itself interpolates The Beatles' 'Michelle.' For 'Champagne Poetry' (2021, the opening track of Certified Lover Boy), Masego's vocal is pitched up and chopped into a soaring, choral fragment that anchors the song's first movement over a jazzy bass before the beat switches into harder trap for the second half. (The track also interpolates Gabriel Hardeman Delegation's gospel record, but the Masego flip is the signature hook.) That pitched-up loop became the most-quoted moment of CLB's rollout, remixed by Lupe Fiasco, Freddie Gibbs, and others, and it mirrors the multi-movement opener tradition Drake established with 'Tuscan Leather.'