Some hiphop beats kill the song they’ve sampled. An example of this is Us3’s “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia),” which in 1993 stamped/sampled Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” into a lifeless stupor.

So brutal was Us3 looping, and so lame their rapping, that whenever I listened to Empyrean Isles, I’d quickly skip “Cantaloupe Island,” which is between the eternally joyful “Oliloqui Valley” (Tony WIlliam’s drumming is the happiness of happy architecture) and the theatrical “The Egg” (theatrical in the Greek sense). Today, for the time in years, I let “Cantaloupe Island” run from start to end, and was pleased to rediscover Lee Morgan’s solo. Like a beam of bold light, it transcends the weakness of the composition and ultimately rewards the pain of baring the lifted riff.

An example of a hiphop beat improving its sample is, of course, Brand Nubian’s “Slow Down.” Without “Slow Down” Edie Brickell’s “What I Am” would be nothing.