There’s a commercial on TV right now featuring a bunch of CGI hamsters that reacquainted me with this Black Sheep classic. I knew the song better as the one that goes, “You can get with this or you can get with that.” Thank god for Google, otherwise I wouldn’t know anything about anything.
This is exactly the kind of golden age hip-hop song I love, a party-friendly beat and lyrics delivered with enough pissed off attitude to give it some bite. Dres and Mista Lawnge, I salute you.
The samples are particularly awesome. The upright bass loop comes from McCoy Tyner’s version of John Coltrane’s “Impressions” – it’s at 3:03 in the track.
It’s appropriate that Black Sheep should have wanted to sample “Impressions” because it too is based on samples, the analog kind. Coltrane borrowed his melody from a Morton Gould composition called “Pavane” and his chord progression from “So What” by Miles Davis.
The beat and accompanying guitar twang in “The Choice Is Yours” come from “Humpin'” by The Bar-Kays. The sample is right at the beginning.
“Big Sur Suite” by Johnny Hammond Smith supplies the organ lick, listen for it at the fifteen second mark.
(Tons of other people have sampled this track, including Dr Dre, Gang Starr, the Beastie Boys, DJ Krush, and, um, Insane Clown Posse.)
The most unexpected sample Black Sheep pulls out is the scratchy guitar hook. It comes from “Her Favorite Style” by Iron Butterfly, of all people. Iron Butterfly! Who knew they even had any songs aside from “In A Gadda Da Vida?” That’s some big-eared listening.
Finally, the James Brown-like grunt and “come on” is Sweet Linda Divine in her song “I’ll Say It Again” – listen at 1:52.
Talk about a track being greater than the sum of its parts. If handed all of these records, I’d enjoy some of them, be indifferent to others, and I very much doubt I’d come up with anything so devastatingly tight and seamless as “The Choice Is Yours.”
It seems like there would be a lot of songs that would sample this one, but I only turned a few from casual web searching:
- Fatman Scoop includes the “Engine engine number nine” part in his tune “Be Faithful.”
- Fatboy Slim quotes the chorus in “Weapon of Choice” ft Bootsy Collins.
- Dres does a verse over a sample of “The Choice Is Yours” on “Where Are They Now” by Nas.
There have to be others, right? Let me know in the comments. Doo-dah dipity.
Awesome article. Most of those video links are broken, however you can still find most of those songs on youtube at other url’s.
It’s a losing battle trying to keep up with Youtube links to copyrighted stuff. My hope is that stuff stays up, and if it doesn’t, people will feel motivated to chase down the track elsewhere.
“The choice is yours” was also sampled by a girl group in the early 90s. I’ve been trying for years to figure our who the group was and the name of the song. It seemed like it could have been around the time Jade and SWV came out. Any help would be appreciated!!!