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The Original: Otis Redding — Try a Little Tenderness
The Flip: Jay-Z & Kanye West — Otis
When Two Titans Bowed to a Third
There is a moment in hip-hop history when the sample does not just support the song — it becomes the entire argument. When Jay-Z and Kanye West dropped Otis in the summer of 2011 as the lead single from Watch the Throne, they were not hiding their source material. They were celebrating it. They named the track after the man himself. And standing behind the boards, quietly responsible for the alchemy, was Philadelphia-born producer Bink!, a craftsman whose ear for soul has always been sharper than his public profile suggests. To understand why Otis hit the way it did, you have to go back — way back — to a recording studio in 1966 and a voice that could crack the world open.
The Original: A Slow Burn That Becomes an Inferno
Try a Little Tenderness is not just a song. It is a lesson in dynamics, patience, and release. Otis Redding recorded his version in 1966 for the Volt label, and while the composition itself dates back to the 1930s, Redding made it entirely and permanently his own. The arrangement, built around the Booker T. & the M.G.’s rhythm section and the Memphis Horns, starts with an almost delicate restraint. The opening moves at a ballad’s pace, Redding stretching each syllable like taffy, the horns sitting low and warm underneath him.
But then comes the turn — the moment every crate digger who has ever handled this record knows intimately. Around the three-minute mark, the tempo surges. The horns ignite. The snare starts cracking. And Redding transforms from tender crooner into an almost primal force, shouting and pleading and exhorting the listener all at once. That transition — from vulnerability to abandon — is one of the most electrically charged moments in all of recorded soul music.
What makes this specific recording magnetic raw material is the horn arrangement. Those punchy, staccato horn stabs in the record’s frenzied back half are not just embellishment. They are rhythmic weapons. They lock into a groove that feels almost percussive, giving a sample-minded producer something with tremendous kinetic energy to work with. The recording itself has a warm, slightly compressed quality — the sound of analog tape doing exactly what it was born to do.
The Flip: Bink! Turns Tenderness Into Triumph
Bink!’s genius on Otis was knowing exactly where to enter the record and what to strip away. Rather than leaning on the ballad’s gentle opening, he went straight for the throat — pulling from that explosive latter section where Redding’s performance hits its apex. He looped and chopped the horn stabs, restructuring them into a stuttering, percussive bed that immediately announces itself as something muscular and modern while staying rooted in the original’s raw energy.
The emotional transformation here is significant. In the Redding original, those horn blasts arrive as the payoff of a slow emotional build — they carry the weight of everything that came before them. In Bink!’s flip, they arrive immediately, cold-opened, with no runway. The tenderness is stripped away and what remains is pure swagger. That is a deliberate and brilliant inversion. Where Redding was pleading, Jay-Z and Kanye are proclaiming. The sample’s original vulnerability is recontextualized as confidence, even dominance.
Bink! also made the smart choice to let the loop breathe. He did not bury it under layers of additional production. The horns are exposed, the soul is audible, and that transparency gives Jay and Kanye room to perform to the rafters without competing with a cluttered instrumental.
What the Crate Teaches
The relationship between Try a Little Tenderness and Otis is a masterclass in what crate digging is really about — not just finding a needle in a haystack, but understanding why certain recordings contain inexhaustible energy. Redding’s performance has been heard millions of times across decades, and yet Bink! found a new door inside it. That is the gift of great source material. It does not expire. It waits patiently in the crate for the right set of ears and the right moment in history. In 2011, those ears belonged to Bink!, and the moment was enormous.
Listen to the Beat
Inspired by the sample covered in this article, I flipped it into an original beat. If you want to hear how the source material translates into something new, give it a listen.
Listen to More Beats
Explore more sample flips and original beats on the JANOME BEATS YouTube channel.
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