Ahmad Jamal's "I Love Music" (1978) represents the sophisticated end of hip-hop's sample sources. Jamal is a jazz pianist of enormous reputation — Miles Davis cited him as a primary influence — and his recordings have a harmonic richness and rhythmic subtlety that set them apart from the funk and soul records that constitute most of hip-hop's sample library.

Producers who sampled Jamal's work — including Nas, who built "The World Is Yours" around Jamal's composition — were reaching for a different level of musical sophistication. The jazz sample tradition in hip-hop, exemplified by artists like A Tribe Called Quest and Pete Rock, owes a significant debt to Jamal's catalog. His recordings proved that hip-hop beats could be harmonically complex and rhythmically nuanced without losing their street-level impact.