9th
Ghostface Killah - “Save Me Dear”
Elaine’s brother’s admonishing Biz Markie’s interpolation of “(You) Got What I Need” on “Just a Friend,” immediately made me think of another rapper who borrowed from the late, great Freddie Scott. While the Biz flipped the script from sincere and soulful to tongue-in-cheek and comedic, Ghostface takes the original’s sentiment and runs with it.
Most samples take 5 or 10 seconds or a chorus at most, chop it out, and loop it to create a canvas for the MC in question. On “Save Me Dear,” Ghost (yeah, he produced it himself) more or less let’s the track ride while he does his thing over top. The song doesn’t so much sample “(You) Got What I Need” as it does borrow it almost wholesale. The rhythm section gets a boost in the low end and a few other short samples get thrown over top, but the verses, while cut up and rearranged, are there nearly in their entirety.
Sampling was originally about taking something old and, a la “Just a Friend,” changing it into something new. “Save Me Dear” seems to throw that idea out the window, not so much taking a past idea and transforming it into something totally different, but taking something classic and charging headlong down the same path. It doesn’t twist a few bars into a backing track. It doesn’t even try to twist the original’s meaning. In fact, it sounds more like a duet than anything.
For some reason—maybe because it was just too iconic in the hip hop world after Biz Markie used it—the the original’s chorus is the only thing that’s been chopped out after Ghostface is done with it. If you’ve heard “(You) Got What I Need,” that might seem strange. Great love songs tend to have one part that really hits you; one part that makes you “get” what the voice on the other end of the headphones is trying to convey. And from the first time the title’s words escape Freddie’s lips, when the cooing of the back up singers and the horns swallow up that plonking piano line, it’s the “youuuuuuuu got what I need” that really gives the song it’s soul.
But maybe that’s part of the beauty of “Save Me Dear:” with that critical piece missing from the puzzle, it’s up to Ghostface to express that same feeling with his words. It ends up taking him a few more lines, but, by the time 3-minutes and 3-seconds have ticked away, you get it.
Oh, and since I’m supposed to add something personal, I should note that I’ve snuck this onto some mixtape at some point for the three people I’ve said “I love you” to in the last half a decade. And I can’t say that about any other song.
