511 Songs Sampled The 'Skull Snaps' Drum Break
The story of how one 1989 rap single kick-started an epic sampling frenzy.
Welcome to Micro-Chop, a newsletter dissecting beatmaking, DJing, music production, rapping, and sampling — written by me, Gino Sorcinelli.
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(The back cover art for Skull Snaps’ Skull Snaps album.)
After putting out a slew of singles to modest success between 1963 and 1970, the funk and soul group The Diplomats switched their name to Skull Snaps and released a self-titled album on the GSF label in 1973. Though Skulls Snaps likely found an audience with die-hard fans of the genres they catered to, the album was largely unknown to the general public despite the group’s tremendous musicianship.
Despite the risk of falling into forgotten obscurity, a lukewarm initial reception couldn’t keep the project from expanding its sphere of influence. Someone eventually rediscovered Skull Snaps many years later, igniting a drum sampling frenzy that lead to one of album’s songs being sampled 511 times.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s when Skull Snaps finally found its chance to re-enter the public view. According to an Elemental Magazine article titled “Dirty Diggin’” by Austin Wheeler, rapper/producers Chris Lowe and Dooley-O unearthed the very first copy of Skulls Snaps that somebody sampled while they were digging in their neighbor’s New Haven, Connecticut basement.
Lowe and Dooley-O sampled the drum break at the beginning of the song “It’s A New Day” and mixed it with an Ike and Tina Turner sample for a pause-tape beat, with Lowe eventually using “It’s A New Day” to produce the instrumental to Dooley-O’s “Watch My Moves.”
Unfortunately, despite being the first person to record a song with “It’s A New Day,” Dooley-O experienced several record label headaches that prevented his album from ever dropping—something he talks about in greater detail during an interview with Sleediz Records.
As a result “Watch My Moves” wouldn’t receive a proper release until Stones Throw put it out in 2002.
Around the same time Chris Lowe composed “Watch My Moves,” Dooley-O’s cousin Stezo entered the Skull Snaps story. After starting his career in the music industry as a dancer with the famous rap duo EPMD, he later inked a deal with Sleeping Bag records through A & R Virgil Simms. Once he signed on the dotted line, Stezo was directed to 1212 Studio in Jamaica, Queens to seek the engineering services of the late influential engineer and producer Paul C. McKasty for his 1989 debut Crazy Noize.
Already an avid crate digger since the young age of 14, Stezo had several years of experience making his own Casio SK-1 and Ensoniq EPS instrumentals with Chris Lowe and Dooley-O. With their combined extensive history of digging and sampling setting the beats on Crazy Noize apart from many artists of the day, Lowe and Stezo forged an almost instant bond with Paul C, who quickly became enamored with their sound.
Of all the tracks Stezo brought him, Paul was most impressed by the opening drums on “It’s My Turn,” which also made use of “It’s A New Day.”
“When Paul heard it he said, ‘Oh my god. This beat is so thick. I don’t even have to do nothing to it. But I gotta touch it, I gotta touch it,’” Stezo said in a 2017 Micro-Chop interview.
Amazed by the drum break’s ability to sync up with any other sample they paired with it, Paul used his skills behind to boards to beef up the percussion while also convincing Lowe and Stezo to leave bare drums during the opening of “It’s My Turn.” Paul’s magic touch and the decision to leave the break open set off a sampling craze, with many other artists re-sampling directly from Stezo’s song.
The popular website WhoSampled now lists 511 songs that have sampled the legendary Skull Snaps drum break since 1989, but Stezo’s track was the first official release to do it. “People were sampling it off my album because they said, ‘Nah, we got the original, but yours is even thicker Steve,’” Stezo said. “We didn’t even know it was going to be a popular beat like it is today.”
Though other group’s may have been excited to take the beefed up drums from Stezo’s track for their own creations, Dooley-O was less than thrilled. In IMIj Films’ and Flashback Fever Radio’s documentary Birth Beats of Hip Hop–Legend of Skull Snaps, a film Stezo was heavily involved in making, Dooley-O talks candidly of the tension surrounding he and Stezo’s use of the same drum break in such short order. Though he acknowledges there was some bad blood at the time, he was more frustrated with the decision to leave the drums open at the beginning of “It’s My Turn”—as he felt it gave other producers undeserved and easy access to a break he and Chris Lowe discovered.
Whatever your feelings regarding the sampling ethics behind “It’s My Turn,” the song’s story took an unexpected, tragic turn when Paul C was murdered about a month after the release of Stezo’s single, a murder that remains unsolved today despite several strong opinions about the guilty parties.
The psychological aftermath of losing a close friend derailed the careers of Chris Lowe and Stezo for several years. And although Lowe, Dooley-O, and Stezo have all been involved in rap music to varying degrees in the time since Paul’s murder, it’s difficult not to look at their respective careers and wonder what might have been.
Hopefully the work of Paul C, Chris Lowe, Dooley-O, and Stezo will be rediscovered by a broader audience and get its proper recognition in due time—much in the same way they helped people rediscover Skull Snaps 30 years ago.
(This article is a modified and updated version of a story that was originally published on Micro-Chop.)
Thanks for reading, see you on Monday!