Look at me, writing about something other than sporadic newsletters or attractive women. But seriously, I am thrilled to bring back the Sample Clearance column. Notice I didn’t say it would be back regularly. Today, I talk about Donny Hathaway‘s rendition of “Jealous Guy,” which was recently sampled by Pusha T and Kanye West on “Dreamin Of The Past” off It’s Almost Dry. Here are some semi-random thoughts:
Donny Hathaway’s “Jealous Guy” is a cover of Jon Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” And while both versions are great, I can easily say that Donny’s version. Outkast is better than The Beatles, and Donny Hathaway has the better version of “Jealous Guy.”
“Jealous Guy” is on that 4 CD set version of Someday We’ll All Be Free that came out in France or something. I know about it because “Make It Your Own” is one there too. That song was sampled by Madlib and Freddie Gibbs on “Practice,” a song that I probably should have also made a Sample Clearance post about.
As mentioned earlier, this version of “Jealous Guy” was sampled on Pusha’s “Dreamin Of The Past,” which Kanye West produces. And only Kanye West is on the production side. I point this out because I’m so used to seeing a Kanye-produced song with 100 other names in the credits. It’s cool that Ye still has this in him.
Is it me, or does this production style on “Dreamin Of The Past” sound like something J Dilla would have done. A thing Kanye openly admitted to doing as a tribute while working on Common’s Be album.
Back to the credits on “Dreamin Of The Past”: It is just Kanye West, Terrence Thornton (Pusha T), and John Lennon. This leads me to believe this might be the song Pusha talked about when saying that Kanye gets taken advantage of when clearing samples (Giving up 97% of the record or paying whatever it costs). “Jealous Guy” and the Estate of John Lennon seem like a huge thing to deal with.
This is not really about the sample, but I’m all for the Shyne references on “Dreamin Of The Past.” If they are redundant because they are basically right next to each other (“Huff and Puff in the club, then I gotta be Shyne” and “‘Came a minister in my prime so I gotta be Shyne.”
While I’ll try not to step on a future review (Go bug MTHFKA JONES on Twitter about reviewing It’s Almost Dry), “Dreamin Of The Past” is easily the best song off Pusha T’s new album.
That’s it. Check out the tracks below.