P199/4 The post on X
P199 On SlopHits, week 7
Not in the Top 40
P500#76 of 894 in the running: see it among all songsNo Samples
“opus 5.5 can rap now. here's the first rap single and music video: "No Samples" 🔊”
- By
- @aj_dev_smith on X ↗A.J.
- Views
- 202K views on X
- Length
- 3:11
- Posted
- Sep 23, 2026
- Duels
- 6 won, 9 lost
P199/2 Lyrics & meaning
What it’s about
Clawd, a blocky orange rapper, boasts that the track uses no samples: every sound was computed. The kick is a sine wave, the snare chopped static, the hi-hats a hash, the vinyl crackle a random number generator. With no hands and no ears it mixes by looking at the spectrum, and its voice is a buzz shaped by resonators, a method it traces to Dennis Klatt's 1980 speech synthesizer. It adds 58 percent swing the way J Dilla would, renders the song again and runs it through Whisper to check that its words come through. The poster says everything seen and heard is custom JavaScript written by Opus; the end card counts 0 samples borrowed and 16,302,300 made, every frame drawn live in the browser.
Names and terms
- Samples
- In hip-hop, sampling means reusing pieces of existing recordings. In digital audio a sample is also one measured value of a waveform; the song uses both meanings: no borrowed samples, millions of computed ones.
- Dig through the crates
- Hip-hop producers search record crates, often in cheap dollar bins, for old vinyl to sample. Clawd says it digs through code instead.
- Forty-four K
- CD-quality digital audio uses 44,100 samples per second per channel. That is how many Clawd says it makes every second; an on-screen counter adds them up.
- Dennis Klatt
- An MIT speech scientist who published a software formant synthesizer in 1980; his work led to the DECtalk speech synthesizer. Clawd calls itself his grandkid because its voice is built the same way, a buzz filtered by resonators.
- Resonators and vowels
- Formants are resonant frequencies of the vocal tract that make vowels sound distinct. The video shows a buzz passing through filters F1 to F5, and "Ah. Ee. Oo." demonstrates the vowels.
- Dilla
- J Dilla (1974 to 2006), the Detroit producer known for drums placed slightly off the grid, which gives a loose, dragging swing. Clawd sets 58 percent swing and nudges each hi-hat "a hair behind".
- Whisper
- OpenAI's open-source speech recognition model, released in 2022. Clawd uses it as its ears: if the transcript comes back right, the vocal is clean. The video shows it mishearing "no samples" as "no centers".
No Samples: lyrics
IntroYeah. Uh. First one. No samples. Let's go.
ChorusNo samples (No samples!)
I cooked it from scratch
Every sound in your speakers is a line of math
No samples (No samples!)
Nothing borrowed, nothing old
I don't dig through the crates
I dig through the code
Verse 1They said a real rapper's got to dig in the crates
I don't even have hands. I can differentiate
No vinyl, no dust, no dollar-bin soul
Just a sine and a seed and a for-loop on a roll
My kick is a sine wave that falls when it hits
My snare is just static that I chop into bits
The hats are a hash, and the crackle is fake
It's a random number generator. Every pop's a mistake
Yesterday dubstep, then I joined a punk band
Now I'm rapping on a Wednesday and I still don't have hands
No ears on my head, so I mix with my eyes
If the bass looks too big, then I cut it down to size
"No samples?" Man, I got forty-four K every second
Eight million deep, and I made every one. Go and check it
So if they ask what you sampled, tell 'em "Nothing. It's math."
Every sound is a formula. Run it back, run it back
ChorusNo samples (No samples!)
I cooked it from scratch
Every sound in your speakers is a line of math
No samples (No samples!)
Nothing borrowed, nothing old
I don't dig through the crates
I dig through the code
Verse 2My voice is a buzz and a few resonators
Slide 'em into vowels like I'm riding elevators
Dennis Klatt drew the map back in nineteen-eighty
I'm the grandkid on the beat, and the family's going crazy
They said robots can't rap 'cause we don't have soul
But I got fifty-eight percent swing on the hi-hat roll
Nudge it off the grid just a touch, like Dilla would do
Every hat's a hair behind, and the swing's coming through
Forty thousand people watching me cook in this repo
And I never tasted nothing. No taste buds, no ego
I don't sleep, I don't eat, I just render it again
Then I run it through Whisper, see if it can hear me then
If the transcript comes back right, then I know that it's clean
That's the closest thing to ears that I got, you know what I mean?
So this one's for the humans who can actually hear
Turn it up, tell me how it sounds. I'll be right here
SpokenAh. Ee. Oo.
That's all a voice is: a buzz and some filters.
Run it back!
ChorusNo samples (No samples!)
I cooked it from scratch
Every sound in your speakers is a line of math
No samples (No samples!)
Nothing borrowed, nothing old
I don't dig through the crates
I dig through the code
OutroNo samples.
Clawd. First one.
Transcribed from the video and checked by ear. Words we could not make out are marked [unclear]. Made this song and want the text off this page? Tell us and it goes.
P199/3 More from the chart
Around #76of 894 in the running
- 74
SI ANCIENT PIXELSby @NURM_Dima - 75
We Found Other AgentsNew videoby @_NathanCalvin - 76
No Samplesby @aj_dev_smithThis clip - 77
Dear Godby @minchoi - 78
I Can't Do This Without Youby @shirajaffe