How Hip-Hop Fell in Love with Ahmad Jamal’s Jazz Piano

In 1958, Ahmad Jamal released At the Pershing: But Not for Me — a live trio record that quietly became one of the biggest-selling jazz albums of all time.

At the time, nobody could have predicted that decades later, beats built from this soft-spoken pianist’s recordings would form the backbone of some of hip hop’s greatest tracks.

From Jay-Z to Nas, Gang Starr to Common, Jamal’s fingerprints are all over the genre. This is the story of how a jazz minimalist became an unlikely hip hop hero.

Ahmad Jamal: A Different Kind of Pianist

Born in Pittsburgh in 1930, Ahmad Jamal wasn’t interested in playing fast and flashy. While many pianists in the bebop era chased dense harmonies and breakneck tempos, Jamal went in the opposite direction.

He used space, silence, and understatement as his weapons. Miles Davis was a famous admirer, once saying he “learned a lot from Ahmad Jamal’s concept of space.”

This less-is-more approach didn’t just set him apart in jazz clubs — it laid a blueprint for the kind of hypnotic grooves hip hop producers would later crave.

The Jazz Album That Started It All

On January 16, 1958, Jamal’s trio recorded live at Chicago’s Pershing Lounge. The result was At the Pershing: But Not for Me.

The standout track?

“Poinciana” — stretched to nearly nine minutes, with Israel Crosby’s bass and Vernel Fournier’s New Orleans-inspired drum groove locking in behind Jamal’s floating lines.

It wasn’t just a hit in jazz circles. The record sold over a million copies — rare for a jazz trio album — and stayed on the Billboard charts for more than two years.

That hypnotic, looping rhythm would resurface decades later, sampled in tracks like “Feelin’ It” by Jay-Z (1996) and “The World Is Yours” by Nas (1994).

Enter Hip Hop: Four Amhad Jamal-Inspired Tracks

By the late 1980s and early ’90s, a generation of hip hop producers were digging deep into old jazz LPs for beats and loops.

What they found in Jamal’s records was gold: clean trio recordings, strong grooves, and plenty of open space to layer rhymes over.

Here are four of the most famous:

Nas – “The World Is Yours” (1994)

Produced by Pete Rock, it samples Jamal’s “I Love Music” (1970) almost note-for-note, creating one of the most iconic beats in rap history.

Jay-Z – “Feelin’ It” (1996)

Draws directly from “Poinciana,” turning Jamal’s relaxed swing into the backbone of a street anthem.

Common – “Resurrection” (1994)

Produced by No I.D., this Chicago anthem samples Jamal’s rendition of Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance.”

It’s a subtle but powerful use of Jamal’s harmonic approach, weaving his reimagined voicings into the backbone of Common’s rhymes.

The track shows how hip hop producers weren’t just sampling notes — they were borrowing Jamal’s unique interpretation of jazz standards to create something new.

Gang Starr – “Soliloquy of Chaos” (1992)

DJ Premier pulled from Jamal’s “Swahililand” (1974), spinning it into a gritty, cinematic soundscape.

Each of these tracks didn’t just use Jamal’s recordings as background — they turned his touch into a new kind of voice inside hip hop.

It was, in a way, the same reason Miles Davis admired him. Jamal didn’t crowd the canvas — he left space for others to shine.

Ahmad Jamal on Being Sampled

Unlike some jazz artists who bristled at being chopped up for loops, Jamal took a more nuanced view.

In interviews later in life, he acknowledged the sampling trend, pointing out both the creativity and the lack of credit musicians often received. “I don’t mind people taking something if they do something with it,” he said in one interview. “But acknowledgment is very important.”

By the 2000s, he was seeing proper recognition. Hip hop fans were tracing samples back to his records, rediscovering the source material, and boosting Jamal’s streaming numbers.

From the Lounge to the Streets

There’s an irony here. In 1958, At the Pershing was recorded in a swanky Chicago hotel lounge, with clinking glasses and polite applause in the background.

Forty years later, those same grooves were being blasted from boomboxes in Queensbridge and Chicago’s South Side.

The shift proves how timeless his sound was. Jamal’s music didn’t just survive the transition — it thrived in a whole new context.

Why It Matters

The story of Ahmad Jamal in hip hop isn’t just about sampling. It’s about lineage.

Jazz and hip hop share DNA: improvisation, rhythm, storytelling, and community. By weaving Jamal’s voice into their records, producers like Pete Rock and DJ Premier weren’t stealing — they were continuing the conversation.

And when Nas rapped “I’m out for presidents to represent me” over Jamal’s lush chords, it wasn’t just a great beat. It was proof that the quiet elegance of a Pittsburgh pianist could echo across generations, reshaping music in ways he never could have imagined.