Rodney O Talks Clearing Sample For “Like That” And Kendrick Lamar’s Game-Shifting Verse

As “Like That” enters its second week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, (and No. 2 on the Global 200), Future, Metro Boomin’, and Kendrick Lamar are not the only artists celebrating. For rapper and producer Rodney O, the top position is a long time coming.

The track samples his and Joe Cooley’s 1988 record “Everlasting Bass” which never reached the Billboard charts. However, Hip-Hop fans regard the record as a certified classic.

While “Everlasting Bass”  has been sampled before by the likes of Three 6 Mafia, and Lil Wayne, “Like That,” takes it to new heights. The California native is not offended by a new generation mistakenly crediting the sound to the aforementioned artists, however, as he is proud that his legacy lives on, and with every song, more people are introduced to his music. 

“It is crazy because the song was big when it came out and for it to be even bigger now all these years later, it’s crazy. I heard the song, I knew it was good, but when it comes out and the world hears it how you hear it and react to it the way you reacted to it, that’s confirmation,” shared the Hip-Hop veteran with VIBE. “Every song that I’ve cleared, they’ve sent it to me prior and I’ve been able to check it out. A lot of people have used the same sample in the past, but when I heard [“Like That”], I was like ‘they totally demolished it.’”

Released last month, the collaboration instantly went viral. The song anchored itself at the center of the Hip-Hop universe with a diss aimed at Drake and J. Cole from the featured Compton representative. By declaring “Motherf**k the big three ni**a it’s just big me, ni**a bum,” Kendrick Lamar sparked an inevitable clash of the titans.  

While the “Dreamville head honcho” responded on “7 Minute Drill” from his surprise album, Might Delete Later, issued last week, he has since retracted his rhymes. Thus far, Drake has yet to officially respond to the blatant call-out, which was mostly directed toward him.

Although Rodney O reviewed the track before its release, he was sent a version without the DAMN rapper’s verse.  Like the rest of us, he listened to “Like That” upon release.  

“It’s funny. Somebody called me the day before it came out and said, ‘Hey man, I got some news for you…I actually heard Kendrick is on that record.’” And I was like, “No, Kendrick ain’t on that record because I have it. Songs now they’ll be two minutes and 30 seconds, so when I heard it, I’m like, ‘That’s the whole song.’ So I said, ‘He might be on a remix or something like that,’  that’s what I’m thinking. I heard it in a restaurant just on my phone. So I really didn’t get to hear what he was saying and all that. Then my phone just started going nuts that night,” remembered the veteran rapper.

When “Everlasting Bass” was created in the 1980s, Rodney O was still in his teens, and used a lot of 808 Bass, a popular sound in modern Hip-Hop.

“I made that record [“Everlasting Bass”] when I was 16 [or] 17 years old. You’re talking about a kid making a record. I think it still resonates with the younger audience because I was a kid when I made it,” he reflected.

“We did a show, it was UTFO, Joeski Love, L.A. Dream Team, [and] Egyptian Lover. I seen how the crowd reacted [to them], so we all came back to the hotel and I was like, ‘I have to make a hit record. I have to have some of this.’  So I went up to my room from the lobby from seeing everybody signing autographs, and I came up with that song that night and we recorded it within a week.”

This isn’t the first time the Grammy-nominated producer dug into Rodney O’s archives.  In 2020, the St. Louis native sampled Rodney O and Joe Cooley’s “Nobody Disses Me” on his collaborative album, Savage Mode II, with 21 Savage on the track “Steppin’ On Ni**as.”

“That’s the essence of it,” shares Rodney O, discussing sampling in Hip-Hop.

“You take a James Brown record and he had that one part in the record where it might’ve been 10 or 15 seconds and you loop it and you put stuff on top of it and it just has such a vibe. I won’t say it’s cheating, but when you sample something, it’s like 80% of it is done. Now it’s just a matter of how you’re going to make it even sound better. Luckily to me, why I’m so happy and fortunate is because to me, Metro Boomin is the Dr. Dre of the South and the Dr. Dre of this time. And I felt like he used my song and flipped it in his prime at the peak of his career, just like Dre did with Parliament,” referring to the West Coast rapper’s 1993 Grammy-winning song “Let Me Ride.”

For Metro and Future, the collaboration is the highest charting song from their collaborative WE DON’T TRUST YOU album, which also reached the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart.  Their second promised album, WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU, is due on Friday (April 12). 

Listen to WE DON’T TRUST YOU below.