After hearing so much of Clams’ work with the track, however, it’s impossible for modern ears to hear in and not be unsatisfied by the total lack of massive boom-bap drums. “Just for Now,” Imogen Heap, 2005: A lighter-than-air slice of synth-pop, Imogen Heap’s “Just for Now” is second only to “ Hide and Seek” (also by Heap, and prominently sampled) as the absolute pinnacle of the post-Enya new-age Starbucks/Garden State music explosion of the mid-’00s. Fittingly, we’ll be looking at a song each from both the (based) godfather of that internet rap scene and its most commercially successful beneficiary: Lil B and A$AP Rocky, both produced by Clams Casino himself. This week’s Sample Wars concerns a track that’s become a modern classic of sampling, entirely thanks to one producer: Clams Casino, one of the chief architects of the dreamy, blown-out sound that’s characterized much of the “underground” or internet-minded rap of the past few years.
Each week in Sample Wars, we’ll pit two songs which sample the same source material head-to-head against each other, to determine which one rocked the sample better.
