A while back, I was trying to deconstruct the hooks in Nas’s “It Ain’t Hard To Tell.” from 1994’s Illmatic album. More specifically, I was interested in the looped “Dada Da Da” at the beginning of the track, also featured throughout the track. There was something very catchy about it, so I decided to search on the interwebs for the answer.
A trip over to who sampled.com brought up the list of sampled tracks from this song, along with the YouTube link of all the songs. Since I was interested in piecing together all the samples as to where they were in Nas’s track, I listened to all of the songs in the Sampled list. Alas, I found out the looped “Dada Da Da” was from Michael Jackson’s Human Behavior.
But…. What was even more interesting was what song was sampled for the horn section. It was Kool & The Gang’s N.T. Now I was familiar with a good amount of their songs from the 80s such as Cherish and Celebration, and even some 70s like Funky Stuff and Summertime Madness (which was on of the tracks on GTA: Vice City.
I listened through NT and I was like “Dude…. This is awesome! Why have I never heard song before?”. I had frequently listened to the Soul Town and The Groove on Sirius XM and had never heard them play it.
The song itself is an instrumental and clocks in at 6:29. It features mostly horn solos, with a flute solo thrown in there. The actual horn sample is at 3:10 on the video link below.
The song is actually from the band’s “Live At P J’s” album released in 1971, several years before the band’s commercial success. The title, “N.T.” actually stands for “No Title”. But, hey, the song is tight, so why come up with a cheesy name if you don’t need to.
This song is old school funk at it’s finest! It is impossible to get angry while listening. Listen to it below and get into that 70s groove!
Watch: Kool & The Gang – N.T. Here