Sample sunday: M.I.A – Paper Planes… and more

Taking us back to 2008, paper planes was first made popular by the Pineapple Express’ movie trailer and everyone started asking what the song was. The track was released in the 2007 Kala album, M.I.A’s second studio album.

let’s see.. what’s there to say about paper planes. If you think about it it’s probably perfect for what it is; catchy melody, catchy instrumental and its a very simple song all together. Go to any club in the city and you will see everyone go nuts as soon as they blast the song. Everyone goes to the dance floor with their hands in the shape of guns ready to sing along to the chorus and shoot up in the air.. “All I Wanna do is BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM”. It’s probably one of the only “chills” songs that they still play at the clubs and still makes drunk girls loose their shit.

But although the song is extremely catchy and very well produced (mostly by Diplo and Switch) you can’t ignore the fact that M.I.A basically only sung the song and maybe wrote the lyrics to it. Everything else was pretty much borrowed from another already existing song. The instrumental comes from The Clash’s ”Straight to Hell” which is probably why the only people that I’ve met that absolutely hate the song just happen to be huge fans of The Clash. They simply hate M.I.A for becoming super rich partly from sampling Straight to Hell. These people sometimes don’t understand that a) the clash also made a shit ton of money from Paper Planes and b) the music industry of today is based on borrowing and sampling instrumentals and melodies from other tracks because people like to hear something they already recognize.

The chorus was pretty much “borrowed” from Wreckx-n-Effect’s 1992 track “Rump Shaker”. Much like Paper Planes, Rump Shaker had a lot of hits back in It’s day. It hit No. 2 on Billboard Hot 100 AND Hot R&B/Hip-hop Singles & Tracks. But it peaked No.1 on The Hot Rap Singles.

But the Sampling doesn’t stop there, Jay-Z and T.I later sampled M.I.A’s Paper Paper Planes in “Swagga Like Us” Featuring Kanye West and Lil Wayne. The track later hit No.22 on the Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Songs of 2008 list and no.5 on the hot 100.

M.I.A – Paper Planes