“Mile High Memories” from Future and Metro Boomin‘s latest album We Still Don’t Trust You evoked an unexpected memory from pop music: The song contains a sample of Ellie Goulding‘s 2012 track “Hanging On.” And it’s far from the only rap song to sample the English electro-pop singer-songwriter.
Drake famously sampled the two-time Grammy-nominated artist’s “Don’t Say a Word” on the Jay-Z-assisted “Pound Cake / Paris Morton Music 2,” which she pointed out in a 2020 TikTok video. Her covers of Active Child‘s “Hanging On” and The Weeknd‘s “High For This,” the latter of which is sampled on Soulja Boy‘s “Rockstar,” have extended the original songs’ histories and brought them to new genre territories. And her backwards intros (think Missy Elliott’s “Work It”) from “Hanging On” and “Starry Eyed” are fascinating to follow along to in “Mile High Memories” and “I Know” by French Montana, featuring Chinx.
An Ellie Goulding sample in rap music is so nice, Young Thug had to use it twice. He and Rich Homie Quan sampled “Beating Heart” on “Love Me” in August 2015, and one month later, Thug sampled “Hanging On” on “Calling Your Name.” (“Hanging On” got a remix from British rapper Tinie Tempah.) And one MC’s sampling history with EG led to an actual collaboration between the two: Goulding tapped Big Sean for “Easy Lover” from her last studio album Higher Than Heaven after he sampled “Fighter Plane” on his song “High,” featuring Wiz Khalifa and Chiddy Bang.
Billboard rounded up 11 rap songs that have sampled Ellie Goulding, in order of newest to oldest.
