Nina Simone is an iconic jazz singer/songwriter who is sampled frequently but often overlooked as an artist in her own right. The fact is, this incredibly talented musician has been sampled more times than you know, and has a huge catalogue of music that was incredibly popular in her day. The video is from Kanye’s 808s and Heartbreak record, where he samples drums from a Nina Simone song called See-Line Woman. The first mp3 is DJ Z-Trip, who I’ve blogged about on a number of occasions, playing a show in LA in 2003. The song begins with a live band playing the “sample”, and then Z-Trip drops the track Get By off of Talib Kweli’s 2002 album Quality, which samples a relatively minor part of Nina Simone’s Sinnerman. The second mp3 is a recent track by Felix Da Housecat, which also “remixes” the same song.

[audio:Nina Simone vs Talib Kweli – Get By Sinnerman (DJ Z-Trip Live From LA 2003).mp3,Nina Simone – Sinnerman (Felix Da Housecat Remix).mp3]