Sample Spotlight: Fortunate

The Needle-Drop Moment

Press play on “Fortunate” (2024) and before Pete’s drums crack, a voice flutters in Portuguese:

“Guarde nos olhos a mais pura da fonte.”
Keep the purest water of the spring in your eyes.

The line is lifted straight from Ivan Lins’ 1978 cut “Guarde Nos Olhos,” recorded for his milestone Nos Dias de Hoje album. Pete Rock yanked the first two bars, low-passed them until the Rhodes melted, then looped the vocal for Common’s gratitude bars.

Who Is Ivan Lins?

• Brazil’s electric-piano troubadour. Co-composed “Love Dance,” “Dinorah, Dinorah,” and other Fender-Rhodes standards covered by Quincy, Ella, and Sarah Vaughan.

• Golden-ear studios. “Guarde Nos Olhos” was tracked at Rio’s Estúdio Hawaí with drummer Paulinho Braga on a muted Gretsch kit and Lins on a Wurlitzer 200A run through a Roland Space Echo.
  
  
  

Translation of Hook

Portuguese: “Guarde nos olhos a mais pura da fonte, beba esse horizonte, toque nessas manhãs…”
English (looser interpretation): “Hold in your eyes the source’s purest water, drink that horizon, touch those dawns…”

It’s Ivan telling a lover to preserve innocence while still indulging in life’s panoramic beauty—just the right vibes for Common’s bars.

Pete Rock’s Sample Alchemy

Only the 30-year vinyl assassin Pete Rock would:

1. Pit-dig a mellow Música Popular Brasileira record unknown to most boombap heads.

2. Pitch it a few semitones so the Portuguese floats over drums à la “T.R.O.Y.”

3. Layer a dusty vibraphone one-shot from Ramsey Lewis’ Sun Goddess under the hook so it tucks into the Fender Rhodes.

“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).

Common’s Flex

Common raps about therapy sessions, fatherhood, and late-night walks:

“Blessings in bundles / I’m humbled in Rio nights…”

It’s the same Common who once said “I stagger in the gathering”—now sipping maté, quoting Paulo Coelho, and letting Pete’s Brazilian mist do the heavy lifting.

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.

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

Miscellanea

• Lins met Common at Montreux Jazz (July 2023). Ivan shook Common’s hand backstage, told him the sample was “uma honra” (an honour). Their translator? Herbie Hancock’s road manager.

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

• Hidden chatter. If you solo the right channel in “Fortunate,” Pete left 0.6 seconds of studio chatter: “That’s the one, Com.”
  
  

Watch

• Ivan Lins performing “Guarde Nos Olhos” in studio re-recording: YouTube link

Read

• Check out: Sample Spotlight: Fortunate and the use of Brazilian vocal