As several Saturdance posts must have indicated by now, I’m a sucker for a great dance track centered around a familiar vocal sample. So Blaqwell has done everything right with “Dope Beat.”

The New York/New Jersey producer (aka Jamel Rankins) has taken Timbaland’s intro from Aaliyah’s “Try Again” — “Been a long time… without a dope beat to step to” — and made it the core of the tech-house “Dope Beat,” released on Todd Terry’s InHouse Records. It’s also possible that Blaqwell may have even re-voiced the sample for “Dope Beat.” (Timbaland did, after all, lift the opening rhyme from Eric B. & Rakim’s “I Know You Got Soul” for “Try Again,” twisting the same rap a second time for his Magoo & Missy Elliot single, “Cop That Shit”).

Matters of provenance aside, Blaqwell’s entrancing “Dope Beat” is impossible not to step to.

Purchase Blaqwell – “Dope Beat” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.