OTIS feat. Otis Reading

I'm a Jay-Z fan. And I begrudgingly a Kanye West fan, can't deny the man's talent. And I am wicked excited to hear Watch the Throne when it drops. I might actually pay money to own it, which in this day and digital age is a hell of a thing to say about almost anything. It better be worth it. But that is not why I'm posting this. This post is about sampling. I am a believer in sampling. Always have been. "Paul's Boutique", "3 Feet High and Rising" and "De la Soul is Dead" all the way through to DJ Spooky, DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, etc. But I just listened to OTIS, the new single from Watch the Throne and simply do not know how I feel about someone sampling an entire song, in this case Try a Little Tenderness by Otis Redding. Otis Redding was great. Great I tell you, a master of soul music. I'm one of those people who think something is wrong with you if you don't like Otis Redding and his peers. So when I hear this song, and the lyrics are tight and complex, and the verbal jousting is on point I get a little disappointed that the production doesn't match up. This song sounds like it's fighting itself. The entire time I listened to it I was thinking Otis Redding. Not Jay-Z. Not Kanye West. And here is where I feel the song fails. It's not like H.A.M. where you kinda recognize bits and pieces of stuff and that brings the song to another level. No. This song distracts because it doesn't challenge when it is supposed to have me head-nodding. I can only hope the rest of the songs on the album stretch it a little bit more, challenge my ear. Go for it. I want to be challenged, make me go digging through my digital crates trying to find that two second clip of music.