Nov 2, 2026 · Crate digging · 10 min read

Ahmad Jamal Samples: The Awakening and the Hip Hop Songs That Used It

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Two days in a New York studio in February 1970. One piano trio. In 1989 DJ Premier looped its opening bar, and five years later Pete Rock turned a few seconds of it into “The World Is Yours”. This is the record behind those beats, and everybody else who dug it up.

Short answer: what did hip hop sample from Ahmad Jamal?

The biggest source is The Awakening, the Ahmad Jamal Trio’s 1970 album on Impulse!. Pete Rock took “I Love Music” for Nas’ “The World Is Yours”, DJ Premier used the same song for Jeru the Damaja’s “Me or the Papes” and the title track for Gang Starr, and No I.D. flipped “Dolphin Dance” for Common’s “Resurrection”. Madlib, Large Professor, J Dilla, Exile and Joey Bada$$’ producer Lee Bannon all came back to the same record.

How this was made: written by GUIO, a hip hop producer who makes beats on an MPC Live III. The samples in this article were checked on WhoSampled on November 2, 2026; a producer marked “Not listed” was not shown on the WhoSampled page we read. The history comes from the album credits and the articles listed in the sources.

Who was Ahmad Jamal?

Ahmad Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh on July 2, 1930, and started playing piano at three. By the late 1950s he was a star: his live album At the Pershing: But Not for Me (1958) made his trio famous. Miles Davis wrote about his influence at length in his 1989 autobiography. Jamal was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1994, the same year “The World Is Yours” and “Resurrection” came out, and he died at home in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts, on April 16, 2023, at 92.

His trademark was space. Where other pianists filled every bar, Jamal let the bass and drums carry the groove and dropped short, clear phrases over the top. For a producer looking for a loop, that is a gift: a few bars of piano with air around them.

The story of The Awakening

Jamal recorded The Awakening over two days in February 1970 at Plaza Sound Studios in New York, with bassist Jamil Nasser and drummer Frank Gant. Albumism describes it as his first studio LP for Impulse!. Only two of the seven tracks are his own, the title track and “Patterns”. The others are covers: Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance”, Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments”, Jobim’s “Wave”, the standard “You’re My Everything” and “I Love Music”, by Emil Boyd and Hale Smith.

It holds up without any hip hop help. AllMusic gives it four stars out of five, Pitchfork rated it 8.0 and The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gave it three and a half.

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Ahmad Jamal – The Awakening (official audio)

Which tracks on The Awakening get sampled?

Four of the seven tracks have well-documented hip hop lives. Here is the album with the number of songs WhoSampled listed for each one we checked. Times are from the Apple Music edition.

Look at the numbers: the two most sampled songs are not Jamal’s own compositions. What producers wanted was the way this trio played them.

Songs that sample Ahmad Jamal’s The Awakening: the essential list

These are the hip hop songs that matter most from the WhoSampled pages for the album, with the part of the Jamal record each one used. The times are where WhoSampled marks the sample in the original.

Source: WhoSampled, checked November 2, 2026, except the credits for DJ Premier on the Gang Starr track (The Vinyl Factory) and DJ Celory on the O.C. remix (Albumism). Years follow WhoSampled.

How the classics flipped it

Nas – “The World Is Yours” (1994): the sample everybody knows

“I Love Music” runs over seven minutes, and the part that changed hip hop sits around the five-minute mark. As we told in our Illmatic producers and samples article, Pete Rock looped a five-second piece on his E-mu SP-1200 and sped it up. He has said he made the beat in under ten minutes. That is the lesson: he did not need the whole song, only the few seconds nobody else had heard the right way.

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Nas – The World Is Yours (official video)

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Ahmad Jamal – I Love Music (official audio)

Gang Starr and Jeru the Damaja: DJ Premier, twice

DJ Premier got there first. On Gang Starr’s No More Mr. Nice Guy (1989), “DJ Premier in Deep Concentration” pitches and loops the opening bar of “The Awakening”, five years before Illmatic. In 1996 he returned for Jeru the Damaja’s “Me or the Papes”, this time with a more complex loop from “I Love Music”, about 40 seconds later in the song than Pete Rock’s moment. Same record, same song as Nas, and a completely different mood.

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Jeru the Damaja – Me or the Papes (official audio)

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Gang Starr – DJ Premier in Deep Concentration (official audio)

Common – “Resurrection” (1994): No I.D. and “Dolphin Dance”

The same year as Illmatic, No I.D. went to a different track. “Resurrection”, the title song of Common’s second album, is built on a piano riff from the trio’s “Dolphin Dance”, around 2:43. It is a Herbie Hancock composition, but this is Jamal’s version that got sampled. Compare it with Hancock’s own 1965 recording and you will hear why producers wanted the trio.

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Common – Resurrection (official video)

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Ahmad Jamal – Dolphin Dance (official audio)

The mid-90s: Shadez of Brooklyn, O.C. and J Dilla

By 1996 the record was a known crate secret. Shadez of Brooklyn’s “Change”, credited on WhoSampled to Mr. Walt of Da Beatminerz, used the simple chord sections of the title track. DJ Celory took “Stolen Moments” for the remix of O.C.’s “Word...Life”. And J Dilla left an open tribute: an instrumental called “Ahmad Impresses Me”, built from the title track. If you want more Dilla, read our Donuts review.

The new diggers: Madlib, Exile, Lee Bannon and JID

The album never left the crates. Large Professor, one of the producers of Illmatic, used “Dolphin Dance” on “Big Willie” (2009), and Madlib did the same on “Episode XXIII” (2010). Exile went past Pete Rock’s and Premier’s passages to the six-minute mark of “I Love Music” for Blu & Exile’s “She Said It’s Ok” (2011). Lee Bannon opened Joey Bada$$’ “Greenbax (Introlude)” (2015) with “Dolphin Dance”, and JID, Method Man and Joey Bada$$ rapped over “I Love Music” on “Hot Box” (2018).

Why is The Awakening so sampled?

• Clean piano. Jamal plays with a lot of air, so there are moments you can lift without too much in the way.
• Long songs that keep changing. The same seven-minute track gave Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Exile and Godfather Don different loops, from 4:42 to 6:18.
• A warm, sad-happy mood. It suits both a hopeful song like “The World Is Yours” and a bitter one like “Me or the Papes”.
• A rhythm section that stays out of the way. Nasser and Gant keep it light, which leaves room for hard hip hop drums on top. That is my reading as a producer, not a documented quote from any of these beatmakers.

Producer’s corner: how to flip The Awakening today

Treat this album the way the people above did: as long tracks with a few magic seconds inside.

• Listen to the whole song first. “I Love Music” does not give up its best parts in the first minute. Most of the famous flips of it come from after 4:40.
• Sample from the source. A vinyl rip or a good file, never a YouTube rip. Our guide on how to sample vinyl covers the turntable side, and the best turntable for sampling guide helps you choose a deck.
• Try it faster. Pete Rock sped his loop up on the SP-1200. Pitch changes the color of a piano more than any effect.
• Chop, then rearrange. On an MPC, cut the phrase into regions, map them to pads and play them in a new order. That is how I work on my MPC Live III; our guide on how to chop samples on an MPC shows it step by step.
• Leave room for the drums. Filter the low end of the sample so your kick and bass have space. Then follow how to make boom bap beats on an MPC to build the rest.
• Clear it before you release it. You need permission for both the recording and the composition, and the writers change from song to song on this album.

Other Ahmad Jamal songs hip hop sampled

The Awakening is not the only one. The best-known sample outside it is “Swahililand”, from Jamal Plays Jamal (1974), which J Dilla used for De La Soul’s “Stakes Is High” (1996). If you like this kind of digging, go on to Bob James’ “Nautilus” samples, and see our list of the best hip hop vinyl records to own for the records on the other side of these samples.

Listen to The Awakening

Spotify · The Ahmad Jamal Trio – The Awakening

Apple Music · I Love Music

Verdict

The Awakening is the rare sample source that is also a great album from start to finish. Buy it for “I Love Music”, stay for how three musicians leave so much space. Then listen again with the timestamps above, and notice how many great producers heard something different in the same seven minutes. There is still room for one more.