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Today marks the sixth anniversary of Kanye West’s “Power.” On this day exactly six years ago (May 28, 2010), Mr. West released the lead single “POWER” from his critically acclaimed “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” album.
This single is one of my personal favorites. Kanye West ingeniously interpolates two different songs from the late sixties and early seventies in creating this masterpiece.
The first (and more obvious) sample is the part that occurs at the end of the hook. It’s from the song “21st Century Schizoid Man” by the progressive rock band, King Crimson, off their debut studio album “In the Court of the Crimson King.” More specifically, it can be found at the 30-second mark in the link below (don’t worry, I already jumped ahead to the start of it):
Now, some of you may have already caught on when you first listened to the track, but I’ll bet you didn’t catch the second, and more subtle sample that really makes this such a catchy song… it’s the chopping and looping together of the late 1970’s disco hit “Afromerica” by Continent Number 6.
Genius. Just pure genius.
For more info on the song, check out the lyrics complete with annotations on Genius.com.
