Today on my digging adventure I went to a local record shop. Upon first glance I seen that the majority of the vinyl records were brand new re-prints. I have an issue with reprints as they are expensive and often times do not sound as good as the originals, as weird as that sounds. For the price of a reprint i can get 4-7 normal records. When digging for records blind (not knowing much about the album itself) you're more likely to catch a sample from the random records than you are from the one reprint that you do not have much of an idea of what's on there. This post is more about looking for samples rather than buying the reprint of one of your rare favourite albums that you can't find or short run prints.
Out of the new print vinyls I seen some Halloween movie soundtracks records and a Cowboy Beebop and some new anime records which are really dope but as the price tags are $45. It's hard for a lot of people to enjoy these records at that price tag... These records are also short printed and werent mass produced and millions made or hunderds of thousands, so the chance of you getting these new vinyls used in a record store are going to be slim to none. You'd have to order them used off of ebay or discogs.com (which will be oevrpriced).
When i go digging for records I like to spend my money on a bunch of records ranging from $1-$20. I prefer my records to be beaten up scratchy and for less money as these all bring down the price of a record. Lets be real I'm a sampler, so at the end of the day I'm only really sampling a few seconds at a time. Scratches on a record are only going to add some character to my beats. For listening pleasure these scratched damaged records aren't playable or easy on the ear. Remember some hip hop groups like Mobb Deep actually ADD scratches to their beats to muddy them up and make them sound grittier!!! I always preach buying scratch damaged records is not a bad thing. I actually go out of my way to find rare damaged records for the low low :) Hip Hop was built on 8 bit and 12 bit muddt gritty distorted samplers...
What I look for when digging are late 50s - mid 60s records, with graphic/painted covers (often singers on a stage or holding a microphone with a cheesy haircut) and a white background back cover. During these years they don't usually put the year on the back of the cover. They started adding dates to the back of the cover mostly in 1969/1970 and up. There is some sweet soul on these types of records and during the years I've just fallen in love with them... (more on these types of records later on in a dedicated blog post) There's also certain labels I'll never pass up when digging: Buddah Records, Curtom Records, Blue Notes, Kudu Records, Stax Records, Volt Records. When I see these labels they're a must that I pick them up and take them home to sample!!!
I ended up finding a Phyllis Hymm record on Buddah Records: Self Titled Phyllis Hyman album and let me tell you there was no disappointment at all when listening to this vinyl. The first joint "Loving You, Losing You" was a heater and got busy to sampling it right away. it was a disco song but the intro had some airy rhodes piano and all the sounds were open with no percussion being played over them... This is a samplers dream!!!
I ended up sampling 4 songs off of the vinyl album and this is why I always preach about the label Buddah Records. I've never been disappointed by them ever!!!