Production Breakdown: The Sample History of David Axelrod’s “Holy Thursday” Posted by Richard on 03/11/11 | Filed under Features, Production Breakdown

Production Breakdown inspiration works in mysterious ways, my friends, and today's installment is a case in point. Earlier this week, when T-Dot emcee JD Era stepped into the Booth with mixtape cut “The Foundation,” producer Savillion's use of a snippet from David Axelrod's '79 LP Earth Rot inspired me to look into the prolific composer's sample history, soon after which a lightbulb went off in my head: hey, this is the “Holy Thursday” guy! And since the Holy Thursday is this week, I reasoned, now would be the perfect time to break down the 1968 jazz classic's use in hip-hop.

Well, all that Sunday School I attended as a kid must not have stuck, because I had it completely twisted: Holy Thursday doesn't follow Ash Wednesday. In fact, it's not until the 21st of April. But, since I'll probably be too busy chowing down on Cadbury Creme Eggs to remember to return to this topic when the time comes, I'm not about to let primo breakdown material go to waste.

Without further ado, here's “Holy Thursday.” Off Axelrod's debut album, Song of Innocence, the song is one you may already know by heart, even if you don't know you know it:



Songs of Innocence and Axelrod's follow-up, 1969's Songs of Experience, took their titles from Songs of Innocence and Experience, a 1789 collection by English poet William Blake. “Holy Thursday” was one of the few tracks on either LP to actually correspond to one of the poems in the book. In case there are any literature buffs in the house, here's the poem in question. Personally, I find the song a little too swingin' to evoke images of cherubic youngsters walking to church, but perhaps you'll be able to suss out the connection

Now, back to the topic at hand. As anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last several years may have realized, this song is the source material for Lil Wayne's The Carter III cut “Dr. Carter," a joint which had unwary listeners (and a quite a few critics) wondering when Swizz Beatz had metamorphosed into a jazz musician.



This may be one of the most blatant, effortless rips of a sample (freestyles over other people's songs not included) that I've ever heard – but can you really blame Swizzy when the result was one of the best instrumentals on an album full of absolutely golden beats? I, for one, think the man deserved every penny of his “finder's fee.”

Weezy's record, though, is only one of the most recent (and by far the most obvious) of a long chain of cuts to sample the record. How long? Well, the first instances of it being flipped (that I could track down) date all the way back to 1992.

The earliest of the bunch – and by far the weirdest – comes courtesy of Apache, an East Coast emcee best known for hit single “Gangster B*tch.” “Tonto,” a track from freshman effort Apache Ain't Sh*t, the emcee blesses us an exhaustive (and I do mean exhaustive) description of his dick, flowing over a bass/percussion loop from Axelrod's joint.



NYC trio The Beatnuts were next to the table, grabbing the bells from around 1:50 on “Hit Me With That,” a cut off off their '93 Street Level LP.



They achieved the (extremely dope) effect by layering 'Holy Thursday's bells over a snippet of “Love & Happiness,” a soul-funk instrumental by Monty Alexander (the impatient can skip to 4:06)



This Buckwild-produced remix of the Artifacts' “C'mon Wit Da Git Down,” originally featured on the Jersey duo's Between a Rock & a Hard Place LP, drew from the same section of “Holy Thursday.” It also features a vintage, non-washed-up Busta Rhymes verse.



One of the main sections flipped in Weezy's record also made it into “Lawnges's Mix” of “Without a Doubt,” a single off Queens duo Black Sheep's sophomore album, Non-Fiction.



Producers continued to get considerable mileage out of Axelrod's cut in 1995 - starting with Joe Fatal, who sampled another instantly-recognizable portion of “Thursday” on “Bronx Keeps Creating It,” off Fat Joe's sophomore set, Jealous Ones Envy.



Pete Rock actually flipped it twice in '95. Those bells a(along with about a dozen other popular samples) made it into Deda's “Nasty Scene“



and a piano snippet from 2:43 in “Thursday” took a more central role in Rock and INI's “Think Twice.”



Producer Diamond D attempted to put a more party-appropriate spin on 'Thursday's smooth grooves on Red Hot Lover Tone's “Do the Maneuva”... and, though the sample choice is a little incongruous, the resulting cut is a fun listen.



Red Hot Lover Tone, by the way, would go on to do his most renowned work as a beatsmith himself, producing for a veritable 'who's-who” of East Coast greats as one-half of Poke & Tone/Trackmasters.

The interest in “Holy Thursday” seemed to largely evaporate following those golden years, though it did pop up in a nearly unrecognizable form in '98's “Rabbit in the Headlights” a DJ Shadow-produced cut which saw trip-hop group UNKLE teaming up with Radiohead's Thom Yorke (that's it 3:30 minutes in... I think)



And underground emcee Mr. Complex kept the flame alive with 2000's “C.O.R.E. Mix.”



From then till '08, the silence (at least in the hip-hop realm) is deafening – or have I missed something? As always, feel free to drop some knowledge on me if there's anything I've passed over. Otherwise, I'll catch you on the flip side!