When your diggin for that rare sample, What do you look for?

artwork, year, instruments, musicians, region, label

in no specific order.........

year, musicians, label...

i dont really give a shit about the instruments cos most likely its not the bagpipe shit anyways (the shit i´d buy)

I always look for Bagpipes, Banjos, Bowties, Burl Ives, Big Bumpy Bugged-Out Biches, Bobby Brown, Busted Baritones, Burt Bacharach, Big Band, Bad Bootlegs, Bix Beiderbecke, Benatar, Bennett, and The Boss, generaly.

me too... and these dope-ass polka records

no bagpipes??!!1 you're missing out on some serious Rufus Harley heatrocks...

thats what i always have to dig through before i find anything.

ill buy anything that i think ill like...just found a spiderman record/comic book 12" for 1$ at the goodwill. pretty entertaining and it did have a few samples from kid koala and dj shortee.

so you never know.

btw i just love these "strings for lovers", "strings for sentimental moods" records

I have my musicians and groups that I will always pickup, even if I hear that it sucks.

I have certain drummers I look for Steve Gad, Jab'O, Grady, etc. etc.

But, I pretty much go in with a hit or miss kinda attitude. I'll completely judge an LP by it's cover sometimes and end up with a $15 pile of shit or end up with a $2 heat rock.

And, of course I have some stuff that I'm always looking for; specific albums, singles and whatnot.

So, yeah, that's how I do it, baby.

For anything you haven't actually heard before, definitely: label, year, artwork ,I would say are three most important factors.


Sometimes you can tell a record's a piece of crap as soon as you clock the cover. Like about 95% of stuff from the 80s: Soft-focus close-ups of bad make-up and massive hair - GET THAT SH*T OUT OF MY FACE!!


Very few really amazing albums have truly terrible covers... anyone think of any??



By the way, how come What does your soul look like pt.4 isn't on the vinyl pressing of Entroducing but its on the CD?? What bullsh*t that's my favourite song on the album! Its like taking taking the smile from the Mona Lisa. If they couldn't fit it on, Mo Wax should have cut something else off it.

Although... which track?? Its a tough one!

its lot easier to find some good sampleable(is that even a word?) shit in the states than in the little country like finland cause theres lot more shit in circulation than here...

let it be known, nuff said

same thing with the uk aswell well in terms of soul/funk(well at least where i live)

anyways ive not bought records for ages im actually gonna start sizing down my collection,but when i have 'digged' in the past(god i hate that word) ive gone for artists i already know,the year the album came out,sometimes the label,but ive got some of my best stuff just going in the 50p bins and doing random buys based on the covers if its crap i just throw them away only 50p innit!

i live in Bistol, UK and its becoming increasingly hard to find any thing i want for cheap... ebay means everyone thinks all their records are worth more then they really are. an old record is only worth as much as what the biggest mug will pay for it... thats why loads of these expensive records stay on the wall in the shops for years. The UK sucks for digging. at least in the south... i havent had a good charity shop find for years (last one was OG jungle bros - "straight out the jungle" lp for £1) - prove me wrong and name some spots i should check out.

my favourite spot is Ben's collectors records in Guildford, Surrey. anyone been there??? amazing!


this is a different thread...

the digging is crazy in the states, i mean like as far as i know how things are there i could be spending shit loads of money to records i havent ever heard before...

and ill bet that ill find some shit (more than i would find here)ill never heard before if i´d just go to let say 3 places on one digging session...

there is too much same shit in the circulation where i live in, and it doesnt even help it i go to different city to dig for records, with a good luck i could find one fucking record(a month or so) i might be able to sample...

so it kinda shitty out here, but i have to admit that the times when i find something real rare shit from the driftshops i feel great... for instance i went digging to my local driftshop last month and it was the firts time ever ive found anything rare and it felt really dope it was like something else.

digging is limted where i live. we have one record store here and it's limited with the vinyl that it has even though the store is mainly vinyl. just a tiny place. outside of that, i really have no where. i have been travelling to other cities and digging there though. when i do dig i usually go after something that i've been wanting for a while. i haven't gotten past that to start digging for random shit just yet.

dont know if im doing something wrong but ive always been digging randomly, i mean for random shit you know never planned to find anything particular, though that might be kinda inbuilt from the fact that it is impostible to find the shit (i mean 70´s funk and soul records in general) here...

dont really know how much you guys pay for example for a Temptations - the temptations album (not rare in any way) but if you find it here you have to pay about 5€ (about the same in dollars) here and its still in bad quality...

maybe i didnt make sense with this reply here...?

I live in Glasgow at the minute - 3rd biggest city in the UK - and I have the exact same problem as the rest of you non-US guys. (I'm actually from Belfast which is a million times worse than Glasgow even!)


Yeah you can maybe go into Oxfam (or any other charity shop) and they'll have reams and reams of cheap records - but are any of them even half way decent or worth sampling?? Are they F*ck!!


Same problem finding rappers over here. So what you end up with is a bunch of beats made from "obvious" samples with no rhymes anywhere in sight. Good eh?? Haha!


You could probably walk into hundreds of records stores in LA and pick up a Bar-kays album or Shuggie Otis or some shit for next to nothing in almost every one!


Any of the US crowd wanna tell us how easy/cheap it is to get obscure soul/funk records over there??



Only stuff you can get hold of over here is classic jazz and even then you still get ripped off.


Good soul shit (outside of Motown) - forget about it!

(PS. Deesupreme I left some feedback re: your beat on the old beat thread)

when i dig, i just look for rare stuff. i dont give a shit whether its good or not. just has to be rare and on really old scratched, crackly vinyl.

I dig by mood. It feels right for me. For example, a couple of months back I was heavy on the latin beats, so I dug constantly for anything latin (mostly Cuban, Puerto Rican and Columbian). Then I digressed to Bossa Nova which had me hooked until last week. I'm now back to Euro stuff.

I usually buy records when I'm digging

yeah thats about right..all that...im from Texas.........most cats dont even know what the term "diggin" means
more records for me
though i aint into paying 100$ bills or more for some rare shit
i like cheap shit
though i love collecting album covers with women on em.....that whole ohio players type shit

Dam I feel bad 4 u lot at least u save money in London there is hella record shops i find a lot of good shit and i dont pay much, my collections pretty deep im feeling it.

u man in the uk should hit london up and i'll tell u a bunch of places to hit up.


when i dig 1st thing i check for is if the cover got a shiny cove it has i throw that shit back in the pile, also check for the dates, producers, lables, instruments, album covers & genre's

ARTIST, SONGS, PRICE, YEAR, LABEL, COVER, PLAYERS, PRODUCER.

Y'all talkin' about prices, I've been known to switch the price tags up if I want it and I don't wanna pay for it, as my man Perry put it.

sometimes I dig with a shovel

you dig it; i shovel

hahaha, you guys are ridiculous, escpecially when youre form uk saying that its wack for you to shop records there/dig there, we from norway use to go on digging vacations in uk because it SO much better finds there.. the prices is about the same thou (expensive), im in us every summer cause of family and work, and its MAD cheap out there, but mor bullshit music (at least i think), i dont like average soul & funk shit. i collect eurogroove shit, so europe is best for us eurogroovejunkies i guess.. helsinki is known foro ne of the worlds sickest stores? isnt it? but i guess thats an expensive collector store or something?


excuse me for the wack english.
as i just said im from norway. haha


in oslo we have 5 stores, all of them are wack as fuck, but i keep checkin them VERY often, sometimes i find rare shit for cheap money.



when i dig, i dig for labels(if its small ones/privates etc) but i ALWAYS carry pt01, and i ALWAYS check the instrument lineup, i also check records of artists i feel of course.

"helsinki is known foro ne of the worlds sickest stores?"

dude im quite sure it aint cos im from finland and i have heard about that place, it possible that the store is somekind of collectors store (fucking expensive) though so it wouldnt be a suprise if i havent heard about it...

but im still about 90 % sure it aint worlds sickest man...

what you said about finding rare shit for absolute steal price is true here too... today i found this one fairly rare 70´s soul album from my shitty local store and it cost me 1 euro (same in dollars) so yeah it seems to be sick on the occations when you really FIND something

you own any of these girlie cover rekkids?!

cool, which album?

look for..

haircuts, late night lookin people on the sleeve, subtle spiritual references.

guess you aint been to the north west of england then huh bro?

Diggin is a art that many dont know... i mean anyone can find a marvin gay record u know...its finding thos hard to find records ...thats the metaphor of diggin..you looking for the rare jewel

i don't really agree with that digging is art. i mean all it is really ís knowledge, patience and luck. i never call myself a digger, cus i'm not really. i buy records frequently and sometimes i sample those records. but my patience is real bad, my luck isn't that good and my knowledge, man. i can't remember shit. all this stuff about who play what on what record. i can't remember that! i go by covers (although i've got some good records with bad covers and alot of bad records with good covers), label, year, etc. same as everyone else. and i try to buy things cheap. i live in stockholm and i can't really complain on the "diggin"-scene. there's alot of recordshops and alot of diggers here. of course there are some records that pop up every once in a while, but we got a lot of good stuff too. of course expensive shit since everybody know what it's worth here. i'm guessing the states would be like the mecca of records. since it's big and there's always been part of the culture to go out and buy records. and of course, the best artists.

$1 Bin. yes.

It may not be an art, but it's definitely a passion. And it's an addictive passion. Sometimes I find myself going to a Record Shop or a Good Will with no intention of buying a record, at least it's not the initial intention. Sometimes I get the most enjoyment from simply flipping through the albums and looking at all the different covers. But then again, it's also the thrill of the hunt. And when you find that one gem whether it's a rareity, a personal fav, or whatever, it makes it all worth it.

With my hands...

damn kid thats old school!

I got a tip from Quantic (not personally, but from an interview posted on you tube) he says, look in the lower placed records.

ie, if there are records at easy reaching level, go for the ones you got to crouch for because probably less people have gone diggin there because people in general are lazy bastards. Ive picked that up at my fave record shop and its paid off thus far...


hope nobody shops at teh same shop as me.

check out www.dustygroove.com pretty nice internet digging spot.

i'm fairly new to it; i'm getting a boss sp-303 in like two days. but i generally just look for artists i recognise, year, and attractive sleeves. i may recognize the artist's name from a madlib song, or whatever. my philosophy is though if madlib likes it then it must be good. it sounds pathetic, but i'm sure some people will agree.