Tracklib partners up with !K7 Music to offer music from Strut, Black Fire & more for sampling

22 May 2023 - Press release

Label group !K7 Music, home to four in-house labels, makes part of its iconic catalog available on Tracklib for sampling. The partnership marks a groundbreaking way to give a new generation of producers access to legally sample and license !K7 Music's catalog within minutes. The new additions to sampling service Tracklib include music by 'the godfather of acid jazz' Brian Auger, leading reissue label Strut Records, the legendary free-spirited ensemble Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids, and pioneering jazz label Black Fire. More from !K7 Music's label family including songs from Strut, neo-classical imprint 7K!, and more is planned to be made available to Tracklib soon.

With the availability of selected music from !K7 Music's roster, Tracklib continues to vastly expand its catalog—which is already more than 100K original songs and exclusive stems deep. "At !K7 Music, we always look for fair and innovative ways to bring new revenue streams for the labels and artists we work with," says Zac Vibert of !K7 Music. "So Tracklib is an excellent fit to help us in this quest. This partnership will help spread our artists' music to a new audience while opening new creative opportunities to license tracks from the catalogs we represent." Other recent additions to Tracklib include the widely praised record labels Partisan, Ansonia, Edition Records, Bandai Namco, Sonor Music Editions, and Charly. 

"At !K7 Music, we always look for fair and innovative ways to bring new revenue streams for the labels and artists we work with. So Tracklib is an excellent fit to help us in this quest."
— Zac Vibert (!K7)

The artists from !K7 Music's labels have been, respectively, sampled by the likes of Madlib, Bonobo, Mos Def, Boards Of Canada, Air, KRS-One, Ninja Tune's founders Matt Black and Jonathan More, J. Cole, and most recently by rapper Logic, among many others. That's a testament to the relevance of !K7 Music's ever-consistent label group. Samples from Tracklib, in their turn, have in the last year been used on Kendrick Lamar's Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, Nas' King's Disease 3, on Brockhampton's final album The Family, and the Kaytranada-produced single "Drugstore" by IDK, among many other releases.

"Tracklib continues the concept of fairness and innovating ways to do business; to not be trapped in a singular old-style operational capability."
—James 'Plunky' Branch (of Oneness of Juju)

A key example of the cultural significance of !K7-represented record labels, is Black Fire, now available on Tracklib. Amidst the spiritual jazz movement and Black Arts Movement of the Sixties and Seventies, the Washington, D.C.-based independent record label truly revolutionized a model of 'fairness' towards its artists. The label follows in the footsteps of other influential Black-owned labels like Strata-East and Tribe. "Fairness was one of our creeds," explains James 'Plunky' Branch, co-founder of Black Fire and the pioneering spiritual jazz-funk group Oneness of Juju. "So the idea of Tracklib is exciting to continue that process. Because it continues the concept of fairness and innovating ways to do business; to not be trapped in a singular old-style operational capability." Black Fire was truly ahead of its time and paved the way for the independently-minded musical landscape as we know it today.

"When you affect people like J Dilla, Kanye West, KRS-One, or J. Cole—that speaks loudly!," adds Plunky, who sees the art of sampling as an extension of his work with Black Fire: "I see the rhythm aspect of sampling as an extension of what we learn from traditional rhythms from Africa, Cuba, Brazil... The way those rhythms are constructed, beat by beat, is not too dissimilar from what people do when they sample or take a piece of the rhythm to create something new. Sampling gets at the heart of that."