Best Sample Flip

Every song in this bracket is standing on someone else's record. A sample is a piece of an existing recording lifted and reused, and the question here is not which song is best but which one did the most with what it took. That makes for uneven matchups on purpose. Rapper's Delight has a studio band replaying the bassline from Chic's Good Times because sampling hardware barely existed in 1979. Old Town Road has a banjo loop that Lil Nas X bought online for thirty dollars, put there by Nine Inch Nails.

The legal history is part of the story and shows up all over the draw. The Verve cleared four bars of an orchestral cover of a Rolling Stones song and ended up handing over the royalties to Bitter Sweet Symphony. Vanilla Ice denied taking Under Pressure while the bassline played underneath him. Olivia Rodrigo added Paramore to the credits of good 4 u after listeners made the comparison themselves.

Some flips leave the source recognizable and some bury it. Stan runs Dido's Thank You almost as it was recorded. Shook Ones, Pt. II filters a Herbie Hancock piano figure until people still argue about what it is. Both are in the same draw, and the choice between them is not really a comparison of songs.

Every candidate plays here. Where the artist has an official video it is that; where they do not, it is the label's own upload.