A soul band's throwaway B-side contained a seven-second drum solo. Decades later it became the backbone of hip-hop, jungle, and drum and bass — sampled in thousands of tracks. The drummer died homeless and never saw a cent.
The source. Listen at 1:26 for Gregory Coleman's drum break, buried on the B-side of a gospel-soul single that won the band a Grammy for the A-side, not this.
The full anatomy of a loop that appears in N.W.A, Aphex Twin, Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, and a thousand video-game soundtracks — one of the most sampled recordings ever made.
An 18-minute audio essay that traces the break from vinyl obscurity to cultural DNA, using it to interrogate copyright and the myth that 'information wants to be free.' It went viral — uploaded, fittingly, without permission.
A tight visual explainer on how a single measure of drumming got chopped, pitched, and re-sequenced into entire genres of music.
How the loop crossed the Atlantic and became the engine of UK jungle and drum and bass in the 1990s, sped up to breakneck tempos.
In 2015, two British DJs launched a GoFundMe to compensate Winstons frontman Richard Spencer — 46 years too late for any royalty claim. It raised over $30,000.
The man who owned the copyright never knew the break had conquered music until 1996 — past the statute of limitations. Drummer Gregory Coleman died homeless in 2006, having earned nothing.