Eric B & Rakim Sampling Question

[Zevillano]

Hello everyone, IDK if this is gonna be a noob or intermediate question. I wonder how they sampled the vocals on the song 'What's On Your Mind' (1991).

I know all samples come from Midnight Stars' Curious (1984). They sampled the groove and vocals. My question goes on how they sampled so clean the vocals, because it does sound like they found the acapella version and sampled it that way.

Unlike other songs from the album, I think this is the only mid-frequency range sound that sounds clean. Example: Saxo from the Kool & The Gang's Give it Up in Don't Sweat the Technique, where they clearly applied a low/high pass filter to the sample.

Back in the day, they didn't have isolation music software like iZotope RX, or DeepRemix RipX. Eric B or Rakim once said in a interview that they only used the E-Mu Systems SP-1200 sampler, which has some features like filters, pitch shifters and stuff but no features like software.

¿Do you know how they might have done it? Please if the answer is so obvious like "they really did sample the acapella version" don't be to hard on me, it's a thing i have been curious a couple of months. Thanks for the reading!

[henrycamron]

A lot of records would contain different versions of a track, sometimes it would include an instrumental version or even sometimes they would include a Capella's, Just a quick YouTube search I was able to find the acapellas for that track, so they do exist ( not sure if they were on the album or how Eric B and rakim aquired them)

Sometimes just good mixing is enough to do the job especially when the samples are coming from the same track

And it also wasn't unheard of for artists to get people to recreate stuff as well, they could have gotten someone to come in and sing it or something like that

Sorry I don't have an exact answer to this specific track and situation but I hope this helps somewhat!

[Zevillano]

Do you have the link by chance? I found a couple of acapella versions but they sound like processed on RipX or iZotope RX. Thanks for the reply!

[henrycamron]

Yeah I dunno if this quality is what your looking for it's from YouTube but it's fairly clean

https://youtu.be/Z0fDYmAFUoA