From a time even before the British Invasion, playing rock’n’roll was a way for young adults to try to rise out of the slums to a different level of society. Tons of artists never made it out of their practice rooms, but so many teenagers across the world picked up instruments and gave it a go that, based on probability alone, a bunch of them were going to make it on some level.
In the UK, the British Invasion only increased the public’s interest in music and the cultural flood of new bands. Most didn’t have the tenacity, talent, or luck to become local—let along national—celebrities even if they were very good. Then, there were bands like Simon Dupree & The Big Sound who moved away from friends, sacrificed relationships, lived on digestive biscuits, tea, and lentils, slept on strangers’ floors, and slaved away at menial jobs for next to nothing just for the chance to break out of our humdrum upbringings and do something our parents or our grandparents would never have dreamed of doing.
For me, that’s where the kinship between Gentle Giant and some groups in the underground hip-hop community begins. We all came from the same place—the gloomy slums—and turned to music in an effort to escape our environments and outrun our demons. So, I completely understand how artists such as Questlove feel a special relationship with Gentle Giant, and why rappers like Travis Scott, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Run The Jewels, and yes, even Twiztid have been inspired by our music enough to want to sample our hooks for their songs and, in effect, create a new relationship between the zeitgeists of contemporary rap and our fifty-plus-year-old music.
Gentle Giant haven’t played a note together since 1980. We thought our music would live forever because it’s original, well-crafted, and enjoyable for those who crave something outside the mainstream. And, on a certain level, it has. We’ve seen diehard Gentle Giant fans clamor for vinyl reissues, remastered albums (many of them lovingly crafted by Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson), and box sets of unreleased live recordings. But it’s tracks like Travis Scott’s hit ‘Hyaena,’ the opening number of his 2023 album Utopia, that most effectively expand the reach of Gentle Giant’s music and expose us to a new audience.
‘Hyaena’ opens with an almost thirty-second sample of ‘Proclamation’ from our 1974 album The Power And The Glory. At the time of writing, that is the most recent and most loved recontextualization of our music. When Travis performs ‘Hyaena’ in concert, thousands of fans sing along with the Giant intro. Many of them don’t know where it came from and don’t care. A select few, however—the analytical music fanatics and hip-hop producers—take a dive down the rabbit hole, and, without having to go too deep, discover that Gentle Giant have been sampled on more than a hundred rap songs, while many contemporary artists (including those listed above) have cultivated as much appreciation for our unconventional songs as I have for theirs.
When I started at ATCO and worked with Michel’le, I couldn’t understand the language of hip-hop. I grasped the business side of things, and the danger of it was real enough, but the art eluded me. At first, it all seemed strange and percussive—all beat, no melody—but now I get why underground hip-hop is seen as the new progressive music movement. By focusing on hybrid songwriting and innovative performance, young artists are getting off the streets and into the studio, providing themselves with an opportunity to escape poverty and become established through the expressive language of their music. No one in the establishment is reaching out to help them succeed or even pushing for them to get ahead. This is the world they inhabit, and, as a kid who struggled to escape the streets of Portsmouth and make a name for myself on the global stage, I can relate to that.
And, apparently, it is natural for rap acts to integrate elements of rock into their music. They have been blending styles since 1973, when dancefloor DJ Kool Herc started using two turntables at the same time to loop James Brown’s breakbeat in ‘Funky Drummer,’ and Grandmaster Flash used a crossfader to make the process more fluid when he deejayed warehouse hip-hop parties that same decade.
As it turns out, ‘Diemuthafuckadie’ wasn’t the very first song to feature a Gentle Giant sample. In 1996, unbeknown to me, the British duo The Wiseguys recorded the buoyant rap song, ‘Sweet Baby Truth,’ using samples from Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Hush Now’ and ‘Aspirations’ from The Power And The Glory. Other parts of ‘Aspirations’ would later be sampled by The Samurai Of Prog in 2013 and Roberto Ottaviano in 2015.
The Power And The Glory soon became a favorite among the experimental hip-hop community. ‘Playing The Game’ was sampled by I.G. Off & Hazadous for his 1997 track ‘Hip Hop Til I Die,’ and in 1999 by Lootpak, who also sampled ‘Proclamation’ in two tracks, including one featuring Defari and Tha Alkaholiks. Kenny Dope referenced the same track on his 2001 song ‘Thoughts & Visions,’ before Travis Scott made the intro into a sing-along anthem. Another big year for Gentle Giant samples was 2016. Our 1972 Octopus song ‘Knots’ was famously sampled by Run The Jewels for their hit ‘Legend Has It,’ which was used in a trailer for the 2018 movie Black Panther, and in a Lexus commercial.
For a while, I was oblivious to much of this. I first learned that Gentle Giant had scored major points in the hip-hop community in 2014 when I was running Frontiers Records, a very successful Italian independent label that specializes in melodic rock, and had bought Heart frontwoman Ann Wilson over to The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. We went backstage and were ushered into the talk show’s green room.
I have never liked green rooms; they’re too much like corporate conference rooms before a big meeting, and they make me uncomfortable. I tried to play it cool, though, and Ann and I engaged in small talk while one of the director’s assistants searched for the show’s musical director, Questlove. This was during the first season his group, The Roots, were the house band for the show. When they’d finished whatever it was they were doing, some of the musicians filtered into the room. I introduced them to Ann. Keyboardist James Poyser greeted her, then turned to me.
‘You’re not the Derek Shulman of Gentle Giant, are you?’ he asked.
‘Actually, yes. Yes, I am.’
‘Hold on just a second!’ Poyser rushed out of the room.
‘I don’t know what that is about,’ I said to Ann, and she smiled. We continued talking, and then Poyser returned with Questlove.
‘Derek? Derek Shulman,’ said the six-foot-plus tall drummer with a humungous afro approaching me with something resembling hesitancy.
‘Yes, I’m here representing Ann,’ I said.
‘Oh my God!’ Questlove shot back. ‘I love you, man! Gentle Giant are my favorite rock group. Seriously!’
He and the other members of The Roots asked me for my autograph and took pictures with me. Poor Ann Wilson, who was supposed to be the real music star of the day, quietly sat in a chair, out of the range of the cellphone cameras. This was the kind of treatment she was used to receiving, not observing.
‘Man, if you want to, send me some music stems, we’d love to work with you,’ Questlove said.
I remember thinking, Wow, these guys are on TV every night with all kinds of guest stars. How do they act when Paul McCartney is on the show? Not that they were at all unprofessional with me. I later found out that, no, Questlove doesn’t fanboy over major celebrities. Gentle Giant have a special place in his life, and we have stayed in touch over the years and maintained a strong relationship. He still posts images of us on his socials as one of his favorite bands, for which I’m grateful and humbled.