No Matter How Hard You Try...

The Whatnauts - Message from a Black Man


If you're a hip-hop fan, there's a chance you've heard this song, or its renditions by The Temptations, The Spinners, or others sampled in some form either recently or in the past. The most recent notable use would be RZA...ahem, Bobby Digital's use of it for a track off of his latest effort Digi Snax, "You Can't Stop Me Now":



Or even more recently, about today in fact, "You Can't Stop Us Now", a prospective track from the Album Formerly Known as Nigger, was leaked. When I saw the song title on the tracklist for this now-untitled Nas album, I sort of suspected it would use the same sample, and my suspicions turned out to be true. However this time the singer of the hook was performed by Eban Thomas of the Stylistics:



However, that's not where it ends. The place where I first heard this sample, and in my opinion, the track that used the sample the best, was by MF DOOM, under the guise of King Geedorah, featuring Mister Fantastik (he sounds like a more chilled-out Del tha Funkee Homosapien), a guy that I've only heard on DOOM records and would actually like to hear more from, since he's yet to disappoint. Anyway, the song's called "Anti-Matter", and it's dopeness:



But that's not all folks! There's also a track by Mos Def that chops it up even more, a track by Mathematics called "Gangsta" I can't find, and Unstoppable by Ill Bill, which I think samples the Temptations version.

So the question arises...whose is illest?