Sampling the wee hours with Double Dee & Steinski

Sampling is so commonplace in popular music these days, it's actually difficult to remember when it bowled a listener over with a "shock of the new" effect.
We're dog-sitting for my father-in-law this weekend, and when his pacing dog REBEL woke me up for good at 4 a.m., I cursed a bit when I realized I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Then, I treated myself to the pioneering sampling sounds of DOUBLE DEE & STEINSKI.
Doug "Double Dee" DiFranco and Steve "Steinski" Stein essentially launched the use of samples of other songs in hip hop during the early 1980s, thanks to such underground classics as "LESSON 2: THE JAMES BROWN MIX."
The song is mostly a montage of instrumental breaks from classic James Brown records, with loads of sonic surprises thrown into the mix.
There's some Tweety Bird dialogue in here, bits of "Dance to the Music" by Sly and the Family Stone and the "What does it all mean" snippet of then-New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia reading the Dick Tracy comic strip on the radio. That particular sample has been used dozens if not hundreds of times since, often paired with some of Frankie Smith's "Double Dutch Bus."
The samples are now so ubiquitous, it's difficult to recall their initial appearance in hip hop.
That's why I listened to Double Dee & Steinski, when I realized I wouldn't be heading back to sleep any time soon.