Ennio Morricone, Oscar-Winning Composer Sampled By Jay-Z, G-Unit, Dies at 91

Ennio Morricone scored films for Quentin Tarantino, Brian de Palma, and many more.

Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer for over 500 films, died in Rome on Monday at the age of 91. Morricone is widely known as one of film’s most versatile composers.

While the bulk of his filmography consists of Italian films, Morricone worked on a number of American films as well. He scored The Dollars Trilogy of Clint Eastwood films: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. More recently, he scored Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 film The Hateful Eight. The soundtrack won an Oscar for Best Original Score. The honor was his first competitive Academy Award.

Years prior, in 2007, Morricone was awarded an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. He earned five nominations before taking home Best Original Score in 2016. Additionally, he won two Golden Globe awards and four Grammy awards.

Morricone’s “Ecstasy of Gold” from the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack was famously sampled on JAY-Z‘s Blueprint 2 title track. Three years before, Jay’s “So Ghetto” sampled Morricone’s “Sporco Ma Distinto” from the 1993 film Le Ruffian soundtrack. In 2003, G-Unit sampled the 1971 track “Piume Di Cristallo” for “My Buddy.”

Morricone’s lawyer Giorgio Assumma, confirmed the news. Morricone was admitted to a hospital in Rome after falling and fracturing a femur.

Musicians and actors alike shared their condolences on social media. “One of a kind,” award-winning composer Hans Zimmer said Monday on BBC Breakfast, “his music was outstanding and done with great emotional fortitude and great intellectual thought.”