At the gym this afternoon, I hear a rap record that sampled "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" -- no idea who it was, but it seems to me I've never heard a Beatle song sampled by a rapper before... am I wrong?
Oh, re: samples. This is a great resource:
http://www.whosampled.com/artist/The%20Beatles/Alas, their definition of sampling, also apparently includes somebody else singing a snippet, which is why I just had to hear Biz Markie butcher (in the cute way he butchers everybody) "Can't Buy Me Love". :-}
On the other hand I also got to hear a bit of Bowie's "Young Americans" which I had forgotten had "sampled" the line, "I heard the news today oh boy" in the final vamp (or whatever it's called.)
Oh yeah, the Beasties's sample of "The End" is pretty hard to dispute here:
http://www.whosampled.com/sample/view/5030/Beastie%20Boys-The%20Sounds%20of%20Science_The%20Beatles-The%20End/Although that was from Paul's Boutique, which I believe was a watershed in sampling as we knew it, where music was sampled pretty freely, *without* getting clearances beforehand. Moving forward, to avoid litigation (and probably to save some cash), I think other rap and hip-hop producers found it was easier and cheaper to simply hire studio musicians to recreate a particular hook or sample that they wanted to use, thereby only having to pay composer royalties instead of performance royalties?
I think. I once read about this somewhere -- will try to find a link.