What do rappers like LL Cool J, Chamillionaire, Meek Mill and Mach-Hommy have in common with electronic artists such as DJ Shadow, Four Tet, Burial and The Prodigy? Answer: they all have found very cool Finnish songs to sample in their music!

From jazz to folk and metal to schlager, Finnish songs have been the inspiration – and sometimes even the actual base – to many international hits, in the form of sampling. We collected a playlist of 20 international songs with a beat, riff, melody or even a lyric that was lifted from a Finnish song.

The latest reminder occurred just a couple of weeks ago, when LL Cool J released his 14th album The Force, with production by famed rapper and producer Q-Tip (A Tribe Called Quest). The album's track "30 Decembers" sampled "Lucky Golden Stripes and Starpose", a pretty obscure (to the world, not to Finns) progressive rock song, originally by the group Wigwam. How Q-Tip had managed to get his hands on the Wigwam album is still a mystery (although a Finnish second hand vinyl vendor now based in NYC has been suspect), but the results still speak for themselves.

And hip hop is not the only musical genre to find inspiration in Finnish tunes – just listen to the playlist below and find out! There's a crazy EDM party starter by DJ Snake, which heavily samples the voices of folk group Värttinä. There's DJ Shadow's downtempo classic "Midnight in a Perfect World", almost completely based on Pekka Pohjola's (Wigwam's original bass player, among other things) track "Sekoilu seestyy – The Madness Subsides". Meanwhile, Apocalyptica's cello rock has served as the basis for tracks by French rapper Ziak and American hip hop experimentalist Buck 65. And lots more – dig in and find out the sampling songs as well as the original tunes!