SAMPLED examines the skeletal production of a contemporary rap, R&B, hip-hop or pop song — Where did the loop, sample, or chopped up vocal providing the backbone originate? SAMPLED gives you the history, the context, and the insight.

This week, the sample in question is taken from 1970s-era Polish rock band Budka Suflera’s song “Noc Nad Norwidem”:

Budka Suflera formed in Lublin, Poland in 1969, originally conceived as a classic rock cover band, setting out to tackle the catalogues of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. After several member changes, the group found a solid lineup in 1974, and recorded their first major radio hit, a Polish-language of “Ain’t No Sunshine” called “Sen o dolinie.” Their first original hit came shortly after in “Cień wielkiej góry”, a rock ballad inspired by the death of two Polish mountaineers.

Though Budka Suflera is generally considered to be one of the most important Polish progressive rock bands (by generally, I mean according to the band’s Last.fm bio), there’s very little biographical information about the band floating around on the Internet. From what I can gather, they seem to the Polish equivalent of King Crimson, Yes, or maybe even Pink Floyd.

In case you’re curious (I was), Budka Suflera directly translates to “prompter box” in English, referring to the earliest form of what we now know as a teleprompter, used in early opera performances. So, that is neat.

“Noc Nad Norwidem” was recently sampled by hip-hop producer The Alchemist, on Sean Price’s “Bar-Barian”:

When I started this column, I didn’t expect to be talking about the historical context of a Polish classic rock band in relation to contemporary hip-hop, but with a crate-digging sample-based producer like The Alchemist cranking out beats at the rate he’s going, I’ve learned that anything is possible.

Sean Price came up in the mid-nineties as one half of the Brooklyn rap duo Heltah Skeltah performing under the moniker Ruckus. More recently, he’s been releasing records as a solo artist, and steadily earning a reputation for a great storytelling ability framed by a vicious and deliberate flow. Price just released his third solo album Mic Tyson on October 30th, and it’s already been his most successful outing to date, debuting at number seven on Billboard’s Rap Albums chart.

Four out of fifteen songs on Mic Tyson have Beverly Hills producer The Alchemist handling production duties, including one of the album’s strongest offerings, the Budka Suflera-sampling “Bar-Barian.” On “Bar-Barian,” The Alchemist splices a couple of bars from around the one-minute mark of “Noc Nad Norwidem,” and pitches those samplesup considerably to construct the song’s core verse loop. A healthy does of vinyl crackles and pops underscore Price’s rhymes on the rather sparse arrangement, with a laid back drum-beat nicely offsetting Price’s aggro flow.

On “Bar-Barian,” The Alchemist proves that when you’re a sample-based hip-hop producer, finding an effective loop is more than half the battle.