Funky Drummer

"Funky Drummer" is a song recorded by James Brown in 1969.

Summary
The song is, as the title implies, a funk song. It consists of two parts.

Funky Drummer (Part 1) is 2 minutes and 36 seconds long, and it is the A-Side of the Funky Drummer 45. It is a funky, repetitive horn- and bass-driven groove, with an organ solo by Brown himself, as well as a saxophone solo.

Funky Drummer (Part 2) is 2 minutes and 55 seconds long, and it serves as the B-Side of the Funky Drummer 45. The tune changes at the beginning of Part 2. The insistent horn riff of the previous side is still present, but it is greatly overshadowed by the new guitar riff. This side contains another organ solo, and most notoriously, a drum solo by Clyde Stubblefield.

Drum Break
Similar to his recording of "Cold Sweat", James indicates the imminent drum break with the following commands.

One more time, I wanna give the drummer some of this funky soul we got here.

"You don't have to do no soloin', brother; just keep what you got. Don't turn it loose...'cause it's a mother.

''When I count to four, I want everybody to lay off and let the drummer go. When I count to four, I want you to come back in." Stubblefield's drum solo starts with a guitar stab, lasts for 8 bars (approximately ten seconds), and is punctuated by Brown's ad-libs of "ain't it funky?" towards its end. Despite this, it was still heavily sampled a decade and a half later, with the release of "In The Jungle Groove", a 1986 album containing a remix of Funky Drummer with an extended open drum groove.

Sampling Of The Break
Despite never reaching the fame that some of James Brown's other tunes achieved in its own day, it became famous for becoming one of the go-to samples for Hip-Hop producers in the mid-80's. This is in part due to its inclusion on Volume 12 of the breakbeat compilation series "Ultimate Breaks And Beats" in 1986. It continued to be used throughout the '90s, '00s, and '10s. As of September 2017, the break has been sampled 1422 times. The following is a partial list of artists who have sampled the drum break.

MC Zappa Public Enemy N.W.A. Dr. Dre Ice Cube Stetsasonic LL Cool J
 * Funky NES
 * Fight The Power
 * Rebel Without A Pause
 * Bring The Noise
 * She Watch Channel Zero?!
 * Hazy Shade Of Criminal
 * Too Much Posse
 * What What
 * Fuck Tha Police
 * Quiet On Tha Set
 * Let Me Ride
 * Endangered Species
 * Jackin' For Beats
 * DBC Let the Music Play
 * Sally
 * Speaking of a Girl Named Suzy
 * The Hip Hop Band
 * Mama Said Knock You Out
 * Boomin System
 * Nitro

Trivia

 * The drum break, in the original version, runs at 96 BPM. The Bonus Beat Reprise from "In The Jungle Groove" runs at 99 BPM.
 * Clyde Stubblefield has never been able to play the break live correctly since the original recording. He was also never compensated properly for all the use of his drumming, only having been paid for the initial studio recording.
 * James Brown himself sampled this drum break three times on his 1988 "I'm Real" album, on The Payback Mix, She Looks All Types A Good, and I'm Real.