Hottest Flips: Afrobeat, Miami Bass, Gritty Gangsta Rap & 70s Soul

"When I first heard the sample I was amazed by how perfect it was for the song. It was actually the second or third time I had tried a house sample at the beginning of the record and it perfectly fit my concept for the video. I found it by searching for house acapellas.

The production process started with a guitar that Ty Dolla $ign played, then I added house drums and cut up the sample. I used it as an intro and in between lines of the verse. I used Ableton's warp markers to chop it the way I did."

"I was looking for a sample with a gritty 90s feel with rhythmic rapping on it. When I heard 'I Know Where You Sleep' I thought it fit perfectly. I think I found it by narrowing down my search to dates (90s) and genre (Hip-Hop/Rap).

I found a few seconds of vocals I thought would work and then chopped that up, making a rhythmic loop. I pitched it down and filtered it as well. It plays throughout the song and adds a nice bounce and feeling to the track."

"I was browsing Tracklib in search of something exotic and unusual. After adding some samples to my collection, I revisited them. I came across the Recommended Tracks section, and at the top was Parbleu's 'Soweto.' I downloaded the vocal stem only and began chopping it without any music in the background. I already had the rhythm that I wanted in my head.

After I finished arranging the vocals, I started jamming around with various melodies and moods. Once I created that dark and funky bassline riff, I knew it was what I should stick with. I time-stretched the tempo from 122 BPM to 130 BPM to give the track a groovier feel. Additionally, I pitch-shifted it up by +2 semitones, as it was the optimal key for the fat bassline."

"Initially, the idea was a house song at 128 BPM. My friend FETISH came over and we finished that one, which was fun but it was missing energy. So we scrapped the initial idea after a few sessions, sped it up to 135 BPM, and went a more techno-inspired route. We really let it breathe on the second drop—it's more ravey.

A lot of the production was actually on the vocals, since we had to extract them. There's a lot of dry/wet parallel processing, EQ, reverb, delays, and compression. We also had to have the male vocals re-sang, and then my girlfriend even re-sang the female ad-libs 'at the club' and made sure those were wide and hitting well, too. The kick and bass are pretty simple; just good sound selection so most of the production is based around the vocal."

"I started with the drums before time stretching, EQing, and placing the sample as a loop over it. I recorded the chords and the bassline before starting with the arrangement. That was done pretty quickly—sometimes I find it so hard, but with this track it was obvious to me.

I took a couple of weeks of not working on the track, and then I finished it up in one session putting in sound effects and soundscapes—seagulls [Laughs]—to give some texture and atmosphere. Not too much manipulation was done—the sample was too perfect. Just some time-stretching, EQ, delay, and use of Cable Guys' HalfTime plugin.

"The Philly soul instrument palette, dark progression, and super soulful vocals struck us immediately as something we wanted to have a go at flipping into a more disco house kinda vibe.

We used side chain compression to get that pumping feel with the sample, as well as just basic sample chopping and looping of all the little parts we wanted to use that sounded catchy to us, and felt ready to receive some housey drums. The techniques we used were quite simple and the song happened pretty quickly."

"I love endlessly scrolling on Tracklib looking for gold. 'Humble Pie' just caught my ear cause it sounded so dusty and classic... kind of like it was coming off a vinyl record. I started by taking a small portion of the sample and smashing it together with a random vocal I had on my hard drive. I was excited that these two random elements came together to form something cohesive and new. One thing I did that affected the sound, was simply sped up the sample using Beats Warp Mode in Ableton. This gave it a skippy warped quality that I liked."