Sample Spotlight: Fortunate

The Needle-Drop Moment

Press play on “Fortunate" and a Portuguese line blooms: “Guarde nos olhos a água mais pura da fonte.” The phrase comes from Ivan Lins’s “Guarde Nos Olhos” on Nos Dias de Hoje; issued by EMI-Odeon in 1978, with production credited to Eduardo Souto Neto and art direction credits on certain editions to Milton Miranda. The English translation: “Hold in your eyes the source’s purest water.” Pete chops the luminous refrain that Common floats gratitude bars upon.

Who Is Ivan Lins?

An MPB (Brazilian popular music) star considered Brazil’s electric-piano troubadour, he co-composed “Love Dance,” “Dinorah, Dinorah,” and other Fender-Rhodes standards. The album Nos Dias de Hoje (1978) sits in a late-’70s run that blends lyrical romanticism and studio artistry—see the overview at AllMusic. Listen to the Portuguese lyric line that Pete flips here: “Guarde nos Olhos."

Pete Rock’s Sample Alchemy

“Fortunate” lives on The Auditorium Vol. 1, with Pete on the boards and Common in reflective form. The 30-year vinyl assassin pitted the mellow Brasilian record unknown to most boombap heads, pitched it a few semitones, looped Madonna's "Lucky Star" synth intro, then layered the Portuguese vocal sample.

“If the sample don’t smell like an attic I don’t load it,” Pete joked on DJ Premier’s So Wassup? podcast (Jan 2024).

Other Heads Who Flipped Lins

• Black Milk – “Silk” (2018) chops Lins’ “Deixa Eu Dizer” horn riff.

• Madlib – “Boora” (Beat Konducta Vol 3) sprinkles two-second vocal stabs from “Dinorah, Dinorah.”

• MF DOOM – “Gazillion Ear” (via Dilla) filters Lins’ “Novo Tempo” acoustic intro for the mid-section bridge.

• Nujabes & Shing02 — “Luv(sic) Pt. 2” flips “Qualquer Dia"

• Little Brother – “Good Clothes” loops a chunk of “Começar de Novo.”
  
  

Miscellanea

• Cover lineage: George Benson’s “Dinorah, Dinorah" tracks back to Lins’s original.

• Quincy Jones’s “Setembro (Brazilian Wedding Song)” formalized Lins/Martins in the jazz-pop songbook.

• Guarde Nos lawsuits. Sony cleared the master in 48 hours because Lin's approval waived 10 percent of the mechanical royalties “for the culture.”
  
  

Watch & Listen

• Ivan Lins performing “Guarde Nos Olhos” in studio re-recording.

• Common & Pete Rock: “Fortunate.”

• Listen to the track as the finale to Strictly Butter | 01.