One Song - James Brown’s “Funky Drummer (Part 2)”

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

This episode is made in partnership with Spotify. SongDNA beta is available on Spotify Premium. Check out “Funky Drummer” on SongDNA via the Spotify mobile app. Why did the drum beat that birthed hip hop only cost 50 bucks? In Part 2 of our “Funky Drummer” breakdown, Diallo & LUXXURY devote an entire episode to the genius and legacy of the funky drummer himself: Clyde Stubblefield. It’s our “Oops! All Drummers!” episode, so strap in for some syncopations, paradiddles, breaks, ghost notes, backbeats, ostinados, tresillos, and the eight simple bars of hi-hat, snare, and kick that birthed decades of great (and not-so-great) samples.  We start in the stems, deep diving on what makes this iconic beat so damn good, including the four ideas that Stubblefield abandons along the road to the titular funk. Then, we get into the song’s legacy and the decades of samples that Stubblefield’s beat created, from 80s hip hop to 90s rock to 2000s cartoons.  We’re giving Stubblefield his due. Because after all—the name of the tune is Funky Drummer.  Songs Discussed: “Cold Sweat” (1967) – James Brown “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose” (1970) – James Brown “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968) – James Brown “Mother Popcorn” (1969) – James Brown “The Classy M.C.'s” (1985) – MC Quick Quintin and MC Mello J. “It’s A Demo” (1986) – Kool G Rap & DJ Polo “South Bronx” (1987) – Boogie Down Productions “Jack the Ripper” (1989) – LL Cool J “Mama Said Knock You Out” (1990) – LL Cool J “Rock the Bells” (1985) – LL Cool J “Rebel Without A Pause” (1987) – Public Enemy “Bring the Noise” (1987) – Public Enemy “Fuck Tha Police” (1989) – N.W.A. “Run’s House” (1988) – Run-D.M.C.  “Let Me Ride” (1992) – Dr. Dre “Justify My Love” (1990) – Madonna “To My Donna” (1991) – Young Black Teenagers “Where I’m From” (1993) – Digable Planets “The Next Movement” (1999) – The Roots “The Magic Number” (1989) – De La Soul “Freedom! '90” (1990) – George Michael “2001” (1992) – Melissa Etheridge “G-Bop” (1992) – Kenny G “The Powerpuff Girls Theme” (1998) – James L. Venable, Thomas Chase, and Stephen Rucker “In Effect” (1995) – DJ Red Alert & Mike Slammer “Officer” (1992) – The Pharcyde Subscribe to the One Song Patreon at patreon.com/onesong Check out the One Song Spotify playlist Engineering by Katie Gilchrist Produced, edited, and mixed by Eric Hicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ain't a bunker Ain't it bonka Ain't it bonkia That is a fast comeback No room for error No room for air You gotta try bread Or waving with a delicious

Pratt organic coffee Starting with just one dollar All day every day Now until December 31st You gotta try breakfast At participating A&W locations in Ontario I'm actor, writer, director and sometimes DJ

Diallo Riddle. And I'm songwriter, DJ, and musicologist Luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before, and you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify while you're there. Please like and subscribe. Today's episode is made in partnership with Spotify. Their song DNA beta is available on Spotify premium, and that feature will be guiding us through some of the sample rabbit holes we're going down today. All right, so on our last episode, we talked about every musician on this record,

with the exception of drummer Clyde Stubblefield. Because we felt in order to give the drummer some, we needed to dedicate an entire episode to him. And listen, if you haven't already heard part one, go back and do that now and then come back to this. Now, luxury, let's get into the drums because James asked the drum to do something. And for a few seconds, the rhythm takes over. Those few seconds are going to outlive almost everything else about this recording, almost everything else happening in the studio that day.

But before we pull that break out of the record, we need to meet the man who played it. So his name was Clyde Stubblefield. Yeah, let's talk about Clyde Stubblefield, the man, the unsung hero of not just one, but both episodes. Maybe the unsung hero of hip-hop altogether. Hip-hop, I would say early dance music, electronica. bass, jungle,

all... A bit of a debt to this gentleman in place. Decision he made on the fly, not only is it on the fly, but you'll hear it happening in real time. On this episode,

kind of like the first one where the song was unfolding. We heard every instrument playing their part. Every player playing their part making decisions in the moment that balanced James' instructions with their own decision-making,

musical decision-making. You hear how Clyde Stubblefield finds the beat about halfway through. We're going to take you through moment by moment in the stems, in the drumbeat of the song. But Clyde Stubblefield himself was born April 18, 1943, Chattanooga, Tennessee. All right.

He moved to Macon, Georgia, to tour with Otis Redding. And he ended up recording and touring with James Brown for about six years. So this is towards the end of his tenure. In fact, importantly, this is in the last few months of his tenure. As we discussed on the previous episode, there were frequent mutinies in the James Brown backing band experience. And he was about to be a part of one. By the way, James didn't have a problem. You know, making those musicians walk the plank either.

No, absolutely not. So, ironically, the song is recorded November 20th, 1969, and just a few months later, he's no longer playing with James Brown. He ends up spending the last 40 years of his life. He moves to Madison, Wisconsin, and just plays locally on the scene after the James Brown experience. Yeah. So the story of Clyde Stubblefield playing with James Brown begins in 1965 with an earlier band mutiny.

And at this point, James has maybe had enough of these drummers and bass players and guitar players having too much power and leaving him with no drummers or bass players or guitar players. So he decides to start having two drummers and multiple players. So if there's any heat, you know, he can kind of play them off each other as it were. So he auditions two drummers. The first one, two weeks earlier, we got Jabbo Starks famously, of other breakbeat fame, we'll be talking about later. And again, two weeks later, Clyde Stubblefield goes to audition. There's another drum kit on stage.

He's like, what's going on? Turns out that he is the second of the two drummers to take the stage with James Brown for the next five years. And it should be said that in many, if not most, performances, they're both on stage. And from one song to the next, one drummer may or may not be playing. It's possible that James may decide to have

only one drummer play that night. The other guy's just there the whole time. So he sort of do a little power dynamics with the live performers here. And I love this description, this is Questlove's description, of one of the differences between the two drummers. Okay. Because, like, James would decide who should play a song

based on his sense of what that drummer brought that was unique. And in Jabbo's case, he goes, Questlove's quote is, Stark's was the Beatles to Clyde's Stones. Okay, so Jabbo was doing the clean shuffle, and Clyde has this famously free jazz left hand on the snare. We're going to hear that when we get into the stems, but all the ghost notes, all the subtle kind of taps

so that a snare suddenly has thousands of potential sounds. It can make not just a two and four backbeat, different levels, different attention being paid to the tone. A lot of that you hear the delicacy of how he treats the kit. So when we get into the stems, we'll point out all of those real minor tonal differences that make the part what it is. So in this crucial period from 65 to 70,

Stubblefield plays not only, on funky drummer, but he's also on cold sweat. Back to our last episode, we talked about that song. Give it up or tearing it loose. Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. Tried up beating the head against the wall and working for someone else. Say it loud.

And one of my favorites, Mother Popcorn. That delayed second snare hit, you know, the syncopation. Kind of makes the song. Kind of makes the song. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I think that's important to point out. Clyde and Jabba are very different drummers. And from both of them, James sort of expected a certain level of precision

and immediate responses to his cues. Like we talked about that really quick, one, two, three, four. You've got to be on, you've got to be listening and paying attention, yeah. But here's where the title of the song becomes a little bit complicated, because James Brown says, give the drummer some, but did the drummer get any? Clyde was paid to perform the session as a session drummer.

He didn't own the master. He didn't receive songwriting credit, and he didn't have a contract giving him a share of future sample clearance money. Because nobody knew what that was in 1969, no? Nobody would have been like, are you a Marshall? To say nothing of him having any power to bring it to James and say, hey, can you sign this contract where I get future royalties? Not going to happen. I don't think that James would have signed that. Not going to happen.

Basically, when another artist would come along and legally sample Clyde's performance, that money, look, it didn't automatically go to Clyde at all. Even those, those were literally his hands playing on those drums. I think it's so weird. To say nothing of constructing writing the part. Yes. It is songwriting to construct a part that you play on any instrument, but in copyright terms, songwriting is exclusively limited to lyrics and melody.

Any other part of what is the song is not considered by copyright, at least is not supported by all the cases that we know about. We talk about on this show. It doesn't equal songwriting where you get a percentage of the copyright for life. You know, it's really kind of tragic because he didn't miss out because producers only used a few things. seconds, he missed out because he didn't own those couple of seconds. Right.

We're going to talk about that more later on in this episode. We are going to give full shine to not just the party he played, but it's reuse across decades of musical recorded material. And it really lands the plane how much of injustice it is and how stupid our copyright system is. And a little bit of how the musicians union used to work because back then the band leader got a certain amount. The session players got another amount.

It goes all the way back to like the big band era. Yeah. You know, so James wasn't, too, in his defense, James isn't doing anything that's not kind of typical for that time. Yeah. But as we stated on episode one of this two-part series, Clyde kind of finds that groove. Right.

You know. And further support to your point, too, is that in 1969, Clyde Stubblefield's main gig was to perform on stage, and he's getting paid actually a salary. I've seen in interviews where he talks about how he was paid. I think, well, the number is very depending on the information source, but he was paid a weekly salary essentially, of which recording this song was just a part of his weekly salary.

Yeah, exactly. So the main gig, though, is to be on stage with James Brown at a predictable, like, this week, next week, the week after that. So if there was ever a time when he might have thought to himself, gosh, I made a contribution to that song, to say nothing of whether publishing was even a thought that they would have had in 1969. Of course.

It wasn't necessarily something people were talking about. It's likely that what came first was, I want to keep my job. I want to play with James Brown on stage next week, and I'm not going to rock the boat. Here's what's interesting. We've kind of come full circle because I think of the earliest days of music,

it was understood that the real money was in the performance. It was in performing live. And then somewhere after the 50s and the 60s, especially when the Beatles start writing their own songs, everybody starts understanding, oh, there's this thing called publishing where the real money's at. And at that point, the publishing became more valuable

than the live show. And now we kind of, thanks to AI and a bunch of other stuff, private equity firms, buying people's catalogs. Now for the musician, it's come full circle. Now the real money is once again back in the live show. I mean, look, I want to support what you're saying, but man, there's levels of complication. To be a performing musician now is also terrible. Famously, a lot of, like, big acts that have to cancel tours.

Right, because the venue is too big. Break even. Or maybe it's all coming only from the merch or the hot. Hot dog sale, concession, or whatever. The money that comes from touring is certainly also not what used to be. So money from any musicianship now, that's its own kind of. We do talk about that a lot on the Patreon. Don't forget.

The real money is in the Patreon. The real money's in the Patreon. But even then to your point, you're right, up until music was recorded, all of human history, musicians, maybe they taught lessons here and there, but for the most part, a musician is paid because what you're hearing in the moment. Yeah. A performance, a recital, whatever it is. Again, maybe a lesson.

But there is no recordings to speak of until. the early 20th century. And even with publishing, the second thing you mentioned, to this day, publishing is still confusing, complicated, and requires a certain measure of leverage and power in a conversation that most drummers still don't have. Drummers especially. Drummers especially, to this day,

are usually the first one to get cut out of a songwriting split. Unless you're Phil Collins. Phil Collins, there's no cutting him out. No cutting him out, no. As mentioned in our first episode, this song is a combination of, pre-planned sections. There are only a handful of them.

And the rest of it is the musicians playing parts that they either worked out in advance or, in some cases, like with Clyde Stubblefield. You can hear them sort of working it out as the recording progresses. In real time, this is nine minutes of a drum performance. There's no splices of any kind that I'm able to find. And he's in the room with the other musicians. And you hear the evolution of his part until the famous moment that we'll all hear together and get chills up our spine.

But the beat begins rather simply after the opening hits. So here are the opening hits, and then we get into a motif that's not the famous beat. Okay, listen. Two and four. One e and a two, e-end, a one-e-end, a one-e-end, a two-e-end, ah. So the snare is on, syncopated on a-a-one, two-e-end, a one-e-and, a two-e-old. So you're hearing the a-16th note, a syncopated 16th note. Again, we did a deep dive about funkiness.

also on the first episode. But part of what makes the beat feel funky is we have pretty strict 16th notes just going on the hi-hat, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And you're getting the syncopated stutter, this like anticipated snare drum that's a little unexpected,

even though we heard it a measure ago. And that's what's driving it. I would actually say it's not driving the beat forward. This is not an example of a James Brown song with The One. I think that second stuttering snare kind of gives us a different feel. The funk's a little more stutter.

I know, and the first time we played in the studio today, I was kind of doing my own version of The Jerk. Yeah. And I think that that little stutter really propels your body into the jerk. Yeah. And further sort of supporting this idea that the first half of this song

doesn't really have a James Brown, The One, in it. Listen to actually the downbeat, and I'll point it out. There actually isn't anything on the downbeat. The kick is not on the downbeat. So I'll count it out for you and you'll hear it. One.

two, three, four, one. Hear how that snare is right before the downbeat. One, one, two, three, four. This is not a song where that one grounds you and then the rest of the bar or the rest of the two bar cycle you can kind of mess around with. You're actually kind of gliding over it. I'll bring in the bass just for some context there

to make that make more sense. So listen to, again, that snare drum. I'll count it as we're listening. One, two. three, four, one. It's on the ah of four. You're right. You're right. It's really right before the one. It's anticipating the one, and the one itself is not really much of anything.

Wow. It's almost like the opposite of Della, who's always a little bit behind. Here, it's almost like he's jumping the gun a little bit. Yeah, yeah. It's anticipating the next bar, which means that we don't get that James Brown won, which is such a legendary thing. But interestingly, as the song develops and as his part develops, you'll hear that start to change until he locks into the famous.

What's funny is that that first part before he's, what it's a little bit before the beat, it feels a little bit more, I want to use the term 60s, like 60s, kind of like swinging, almost like, you know, a casual stroll through Woolworths on your way back to a gas guzzling car. Yeah, it has kind of a go-go feel, especially with that baseline, these two chords, the cycle between these two chords. Yeah, you can see a dancer being like, it's a little more French. It's a little more like Disco Tech French Paris 1965 Oh dude yeah with like with some different instrumentation

Like some more strings this could be Burr Backrock Yeah yeah yeah it's obviously James Brown And it's unquestionably got funk in it There's no doubt but it's not the funk we're about to get to Which gets even stankier as the song goes along So we does that for a little bit And then he starts to mess around and find some other ideas Let me give you some context to that

because it's interesting to hear it without any context. It's almost hard to find where the downbeat is. But what we had just heard, that motif thing with the anticipated second snare hit, that's just for about 40 seconds. And then either he gets the nod from James, he either gets some sense of displeasure, like, oh, I should change it,

or he just decides to change. Here's what he does, and I'll bring it in now with the bass so you kind of hear it together with that. And now he changes. He's throwing in a lot of snares. He's almost turning the beat upside down. It almost makes it harder to dance to.

Oh my gosh. It was almost like a double time. I expected like it to go into double time almost. It's almost too clever by half. He's sort of like looking for a complicated part, but it's sort of the rhythmic density of it makes it like, all right, we're getting away from funk. It's funky.

I love it, but like it's, I'm not dancing to it. It's not going to lock in the groove like a couple minutes from now. So he's playing with ideas. I'll play some more because he did that for about 30 seconds. And then he changed again. Count how many snares are in a bar. He's putting four snares in every bar. It's four, but none of them are on that beat.

You expect. Four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, E, and a two, a, E, and a three, E, and a four. E. So he switched from the A of two and four to the E. So it's a different 16th note.

It's a 16th note before. Yeah. It's interesting because that changes the groove altogether. Before we had an anticipatory groove, because it was four, e and a. and now it's duh-da-da-da-da. These subtle changes change the feel

of the song. Of the entire song. Because don't forget the rest of the parts, the rest of the band is relatively staying the same with what they're doing. So a little bit later, I'm going to fast forward to around the, let's see, this is the two-and-a-half minute mark.

Let's see what happens here. He's still kind of doing that. And by the way, notice the resonance of that kick drum. Yeah. It's got a lot of tone to it. It's not muted, like, a Fleetwood Mac kind of 70s kind of thing. Feels much more like a heartbeat almost.

Arithmetic, you should probably go see a doctor. And then we get to the change. Again, go back to that first episode for a deeper dive into it. But this song's arrangement in a nutshell is we have that which we call the hit or the head. That's a pre-planned section which starts the song. And then it happens one more time in the middle as kind of an indicator for the band to kind of come

together after they've been bandings. Which happens all the time in jazz. That's right. You play the main part and then everybody goes off in the improv. You come back to it. Back to the head. And this next guy's chance to solo. That's right.

It keeps a little sense of organization before we go back off to exploring places. Yeah. And I like that that kick drum has like some boom in it, but it doesn't sound like the modern kick. Yeah. You know, the one that I always say feels like, you know, Black Man's massage when you drive that street. Like, no, seriously, like nowadays like drum, modern kicks are made to flatten buildings.

Yeah. But in this one, you can hear why a producer would want to take it, maybe even make it harder with some, like, talk about a modern producer, we want to take it. Make it a little bit harder. But it already does move some air. There's so much to what you say, and I think there's two things that makes me think of.

One is one of the wonderful things in exploring the stems of this song, is you hear it's pretty low-fi. The recording quality is pretty basic. It's late night. Maybe they got an engineer. There's no names on the credits that I can tell you. James Brown's the producer. I think he just got a guy out of bed

to string up some microphones and hit record and, you know, to get a decent enough sound but it kind of reminds me of Prince where at the end of the day, Prince's recording style wasn't to dial it into steely Dan levels of perfection. And neither was James Brown because what mattered most was the performance,

the emotion, the sound. So those drums sound great, don't get me wrong. But they're not, like I'm saying, they're not dialed in like Fleetwood Mac and, you know, Pink Floyd, like, would soon start to happen in music where perfection is aspired to in the production side of things, in the engineering side of things. No, I think you're absolutely right. And I also think that at the other day, as we said in part one of this series, they're finding it in the process. And I think

that that's one of the reasons why, like you said, not everything's dialed in immediately. So here's what I want to point out. Listen now that you know we're going to listen to that section. We're ending VAMP 1. We're doing the pre-planned hits, which James has set up with Take Me in the Change. So they'd obviously plan that as well because the band does a little shift there. And then when he comes back, he's doing something totally different. And it takes us down the path to what is soon to be this iconic beat.

But one more thing to point out as you listen to just the isolated drums. And that part is how many snares he's throwing in? The snare drum, this left hand, this jazz left hand is doing so much. It's so much a part of his signature sound. And anyway, let's listen and we'll discuss on the other side. But this is the change part. And here's the head. And he's already starting to develop this new beat.

Right? I'll play that part again. I'll play the new thing. And I feel like he's got his kick on the one. He's doing stuff more with a kick. The snare is doing a little less of the flitty syncopated. stuff. And he's playing with the open high hat. He's starting to fool around with other ideas. I like the little mini periddle. What is that? Yeah. I mean those are like a little mini

ghost notes. It's the snare is just bouncing. He's sort of holding the stick lightly. Yeah. So it goes a little bit of a buzz, a little bit of a ghost note thing. A little bounce. There it is. I mean like we just went from that other beat was just milliseconds ago. Just we went through the change. And now the undercurrents of this iconic beat. You can already hear the modernity coming in. That's right. That's almost it right there.

Uh-huh. So I'm picturing James is in the room. Mm-hmm. And just to call back to that other episode, he's about to do, I think, his fourth vocal idea. He's in search of what the song's about. So he's tried like three or four different lyrics and none of them really stick.

He's about to do the honky-tonk woman thing. So here's what I want to do. I want to play that drum part with him singing honky-tonk women, the fourth idea soon to be abandoned. And then let's listen with James because when he's done with that, he's listening, and this is the moment

that you know he's like, wait a second. You can hear in his silence that he's picking up on what Clyde is putting down. So let's listen to just James and Clyde. And he stops because he's like, damn, what is that? And we're about to get to the iconic beat for the first time. Here it comes.

Here. That's where he finds it. That's the moment that Clyde's double field. For a minute, I was James and I was looking over like, like, what that man's doing? Yes. I like, he's just like awestruck by it. He's listening, he's looking, and he's silent.

Remember, the rest of the song, he's either kind of calling stuff out, trying ideas, you know, lyrically or verbally, or moving over to the organ to do solo. In this moment, he's dead silent. you can see nothing in the track because he's like, whoa, what is that? So I'm just going to play that moment again just so you can hear the transition from not the funky drummer beat to the funky drummer beat for the first time. Here it comes. This is it.

So James hears that and he's just got to say something. He's just got to say something. So here's what he says. Fellas. Wait a second, fellas. One more time, I want to give the drummer some of this funky soul we got. You don't have to do no solo brother, just to keep what you got.

Don't turn it loose. I love that. Don't change a thing. Don't turn loose. I'm just going to pause it there because we were joking on the last episode how quickly that second four that count back in was. But there's the instruction too, because, like, I mean, we heard it together, but I forgot that he's setting everybody up.

He's preparing you for what the next 30 seconds of your life are going to be like. I'm going to do this. Then this is going to happen. Like, he really gave five instructions. Okay, drummer. Continue what you're doing. Don't change a thing. No solos. Don't let it go. Don't let it go. It's a mother. Don't change a thing. The rest of you guys, shut the fuck up.

I don't want to hear it peep out of you. I just want to hear the drums when I count to four. Or you go out. You go out and then wait for me and then come back in when I say four again. So I'll just play that again so you can hear all these instructions. One more time, I want to give the drum of some of this funky soul we got. Yeah. You don't have to do no solo in, brother. Just keep what you got. Because it's a mother. When I count the four I want you to come back in

I'll keep playing it Now he's got a new lyric Zimakala makes Bihala Another yeah To my shake Got to work me to death In my shirt Okay here we come we're getting there

He's noticed but I didn't I wasn't looking out for it till just now One of our guitarists I'm not sure which one Hangs in there for one note Later than I think he's supposed to He's a little late with the leaving He's in on the one with the drums.

So like, one, two, three, four, hit it. Do you want to hear that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's in the loop. It's in the iconic loop. He's that one instrument that's actually in the breakbeat. You're absolutely right. Can we hear that?

I'm just looking on the Sims. It looks like there's a handful of instruments that hit the downbeat. So they don't go out at the end of the previous bar. They hit the first note of the next bar. Let's listen. The guitar is the loudest. But the bass is also playing here. I'll just play everything here.

Here's what happens on that one note. Yeah. And that's what makes it so fun to loop. There actually is instrumentality. There is absolutely musicianship other than the drums on that famous loop. Yeah, there's this little artifact of that one note that didn't, you know, it's otherwise a clean break. Whether it was intentional or not, they all hit on the one and then went out.

All right. So before we listen to the 20 seconds that changed history, The eight bars that arguably sparked the birth of hip-hop, among others, you know, jungle, drumming, whatever you want to say. I'm just going to point out a couple things to listen for. There's just three single elements. You're only hearing three instruments, in other words. The drums are a hi-hat snare and kick drum. Our drummer is only playing three different things.

And here's what's happening in all of them. Here's what's to listen for. The 16th notes, by the way, he's playing them with one hand. So he's just playing 16th notes on the top of the high hat. there are two or three open hi-hats and the other 13 or 14 16th notes are closed. So you'll hear the interchange of that's contributing to the overall form of this beat. You're going to hear four kick drums. One is on the one.

The other three are syncopated. So one is the one. Boom, boom. Ka, cap-boom and there's six snares there's two on the backbeat the two and four bum-bum ga ga get-ke-po get-com but he's got four ghost notes in there too yeah it's but bum-bum-ga da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dda-tall I'll slow it down for you in fact let's do a half-time you can hear those open what a mother

as he says. It is a mother. Hey, don't release it. So we have dynamics in play. We have pocket. We have uneven placement. Tambor sound, in other words. So much going on with just one guy

with four limbs and, you know, literally three different drums. What's funny is it also reminds me of those times when I'd be in the, in the Roots room at Fallon, working on some ridiculous silly song with them for the show. Yeah. But then at the same time, I'm like, man, I'm literally standing next to Quest's drums in this very tiny sort of closet space while he's like, you know, just knocking out those beats.

That's something about a drum kit that's underrated is like how, I mean, think about the marching band aspect. You have a whole entire guy with a snare, a whole entire guy with the symbols. A drum kit. A whole entire guy with the bass drum. That's why to the day. I call it the bass drum. I don't call it a kick drum because I think of it as like that thing in the marching band that we had. But a trap kit is one person.

playing upwards of 7, 8, 9, 10 different instruments, each of which has 100 ways of making sound beyond, you know, rim shots, not just the... So across the board, the amount of sound being produced by this one person is, you know, to be marveled at. Yeah. So once Clyde Stubblefield is done with that beat,

its history has been made. That is the break, arguably hip-hop. If it doesn't start there, it's hugely influenced by what we just heard, this moment. And it's almost like James Brown, I don't know if he knows that he's making history to that degree. My personal opinion, I don't know that James Brown knows that he's making music history here.

But you've got to remember, the year this song came out, people aren't calling it funk yet. Not wholesale. You know, like between James Brown and Sly, it will become eventually known as funk. But it's not a genre yet. It's not a genre. Yeah, yeah.

But the word funkies out there, and he says it's the funkie drummer. Let's hear that. It's the title of the song. The name of those tunes the funky drama. The funky drama. It's funny hearing this.

The funky drama. After hearing him, the rest, the earlier part of the song, not know what the song is called. Like he's trying all these different lyrical ideas and he's like, ah, I finally got the title. So I'll repeat it a few times. The name of two.

He's almost like leaving like a note for himself the same way on our podcast. Right. He's like, Hey, future guys, trim this part. Right. Like he's like calling this out, but then they just left it in there.

They just left it in there. Because it was just cool. The name of the tune is the funky drummer, and it was, and that's what it became. And to this day, he's the only person who can say the word funky, and it actually sounds cool. I think I've been doing a decent job on this podcast. Oh, no, no, I'm not even calling you out my friend. If I ever tell my kids, hey, it's funky. They're like, Dad, stop cursing.

I'm like, no, there's an in-funk. Can we hear the actual ending of the song? Because it's a long song, you guys. So after he's locked in and done the iconic break, and he's followed the instructions which is not to change anything. He does start to play around with it. He throws some more ghost notes in. It gets really, like, even funkier.

As soon as I said, even funkier, I regret it's saying it. Don't get self-conscious. Let's listen to some of what Clyde Sebelfield does in the final, by the way, that's a nine-minute jam, even though what they put out. It's one of those long, like, you know, it's one of those songs. It's the reasons the A-track was invented. Just to fit this song. He locks in for that groove for quite some time,

but then towards the very end, he starts getting real loose, and then he ends in a way that I don't think is on the final recording. So let's listen to that. Adding a bunch more snare stuff. It's so incredible. That is so cool. Right? So syncopated.

Kid drummers, do your paradiddles. Yeah. Do your drum exercises on the drum pad, because then you can do cool stuff like this. Yeah, so he's throwing in a lot more ghost notes in there. He's throwing in some more syncopations. He's kind of like going crazy in the most, like, incredible way. But then it's time for the song to end.

And then it ends. All right, we're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we're going to try to expose, if we can, all of the major songs that have used this break as their foundation. All 2,500 at last count. Yeah. You can hold us to it. There won't be one we won't discuss.

We've got songs. We've got samples. We've got stories galore when we get back. So stick around. We'll break it down. You've got to try breakfast. And what better way than with a delicious pre-organic coffee? Starting with just $1 all day, every day now until December 31st.

You gotta try breakfast at A&W. At participating A&W locations in Ontario. And we're back. And we're gonna talk about breaks. A break is the moment when the rest of the song strips away and the rhythm takes control. It may only last a few seconds on the record, but dancers heard those seconds and said that part, that part right there.

And DJs understood that if the best part of the song was too short, they could make it longer. So in comes the innovation of two copies of the same record. That's right. They could play the break on one turntable, and before it ends,

move to the same part of the break on the second turntable. Reset the first and do it again, back and forth. The ones and twos. And that's how a temporary moment inside one song becomes an entire environment in another.

That's right. The DJ is creating basically a live loop. This is before sampling exists. The idea of looping is extending the best part, the break. Loopers for studios. That happens in studio sometimes. But early hip-hop actually did have DJs cutting two records together to get the extension of a bar or a two-bar break.

And it starts with Cool Herk in 1973 or 74. He's definitely playing lots of James Brown records. In fact, give it up or turn it loose, a 1970 re-recording of that song, is famously one of the biggest, most exciting moments of 1973 hip-hop history would have been Cool, Cool, Herk playing this on the dance floor. I'll play it for you right now. Stop the beat. Clide. There's slide again. And that's still exciting at this day.

Yeah, still sounds great. You can imagine yourself up in the Bronx in some kind of like, you know, events hall. Right. At the rec room at the apartment complex. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Or out in the park, as they would say. But with those drums, those congas just rocketing off of the walls.

It's so exciting. And Herk's innovation, one of them at least, is credited to him is the idea like, That part is exciting. So let's get two records of it. And when the first iteration of it is done, I'll just put it on the other record. Famously, he was a little sloppy about it. Like, it wasn't until Grandmaster Flash

that it starts to get a clean loop. Listen, none of these DJs who we revere, it's sort of like, you know, it's like comparing Pele to, you know, imbape. Like, it's a very different sport now. Right. There are people who are technically more proficient,

but the reason we're laboring this point is because this is in a, It's an innovation. It seems taken for granted for now, but at the time, it was mind-blowing. Right. And we previously had, I did an episode with Fat Five Freddy, and I remember Brett King was a guy who was sitting in the studio with us that day. And he said he was there in New York around 1980. He was like, he remembers where he was the first time he saw a guy spin on his head.

Oh, my God. He thought he was tripping. You know, he couldn't believe that was even possible. So cool. But these kind of things were like mind-blowing when they were brand new. Right, absolutely. So right away, we have the king of breaks is on day one. It's already Clyde Stivelfield.

It's the same drummer. So the idea of break beats begins right here with a break on a single record. The DJ has two of those records and goes back and forth between those. Gradually, we start to get samplers in the mid-80s. And gradually, what happens with the break itself starts to go from being the entirety of the loop to thanks to pioneers like Marley Marl, you start to chop it up and you just use a kick, you just use a snare. Just a layering in. Lairing it. Public enemy famously does a very similar thing with all of their productions.

But at Ground Zero on day one, it's the loop, it's the break, and it's Clyde's double field a lot of the time. So much Clyde. And just the one final thing that's relevant to this whole conversation about the advent of samplers is that originally Funky Drummer was just a single with two and a half minutes per side. There was Funky Drummer Part 1 that gave you two and a half minutes of that 10 minutes song. And part two gave you two more minutes, two and a half more minutes of it. But you didn't get the whole thing. It wasn't until August 9. 1986, that it first appeared in its entirety on a record called In the Jungle Groove, a compilation, the first time the full nine-minute version, and it included for DJs a bonus beat reprise of just the funky drummer thing. And not coincidentally, that's when you start hearing it used in hip-hop. Everywhere. Everywhere in hip-hop. Once producers start chopping it up and layering it, and rearranging it, there's almost an infinite number of ways to flip this drum loop. And

And I don't know about Infinite, but at least 2000. We're going to talk about three sort of distinct eras of sampling a funky drummer. And let's start with the first one. Who is one of the first people to ever sample this on a produced record? Right. Well, so release dates are hard to come by with, like, exact what day of and what month. We do know that in 1985, MC Quentin and MC MelloJ came out with the classy MCs, and it sounds like this. What's weird is this is not even through the whole song.

It's just in like little sections, yes. Or whatever. And I gotta say, I'm surprised, 1985 is the first sort of sampling of this. But I guess that pre-85 rap was more driven by 808, you know, the TR, the rolling 808. The drum machines, right? And it's interesting to hear it mixed together. By the way, I'm only noticing now.

this is 1985 release based on what Little is known on Discog, etc., which would imply that it is actually the 7-inch version and not the 1986 CD-clean-way issue. You can hear the dust and the grooves there. So actually, I think this may have preceded the full nine-minute version coming out. That would make a lot of sense. Yeah, and it's also, of course, we have to say this, but it's very possible that it was being,

just as it was being used by turntablist, by DJs in live settings that weren't recorded, it's not to say that these earliest uses were the first uses. They're just some of the earliest recorded uses of funky drummer that we're aware of. That we're aware of. Exactly right. So that is the first example of sampling that we can find. One of the first uses of that breakbeat.

But then I was blown away. One of the first uses of the sample by a group that I know is Cool GRAP. Tell us about that. Let's listen. This is called It's a Demo CoolG Wrap on Cold Chilling from 1986. And the tune starts with the breakbeat. Yeah, I don't know what drum machine that is. It might be in Oberheim, like, whatever,

but it's a drum machine, and the brake is either being cut. It could be a sample or a... It sounds like they're hitting a button. You're probably right. It's 1986, which is right on the cusp of affordable samplers. We had this in claviors. We had the expense of the fair lights. But in 86, they start to get a little more affordable.

And then you do start to hear them coming into the mix in hip-hop. Yeah. I think you're right. That precision and that type of repetition might be a button. more than it is a scratching DJ. But I'm sure there are DJs out there that learned how to scratch like a button and vice versa, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Just to get that sound. So that is one of the first examples of... I don't know, by the way, huge Cool J-Rab and DJ Polo fan. I don't know that I knew this one, so that's really cool. And then finally, in the earliest uses, this one is very well known. Yes. One of the seminal hip-hop tracks, New York tracks, just hip-hop in general.

This song eats, sleeps, and breathes New York City. York City. That's right. It's Boogie Down Productions, BDP, South Bronx from 1987. It's a South South Wrong. The South South Wrong. The South South Wrong. Many people tell me this style is terrific. It is kind. It's fairly consistent that we have the drum machine sample mix. Actually, I hadn't noticed that before. It's such a delight. That early, that early hard-hitting

Boogie Down Productions as well as Marley Mall, all that early stuff. Yeah. I just love it. It's also fun to be reminded. MC Shan, the bridge. Right. I was going to say. You know, the bridge is over like that. It's just stripped down and raw. Right. And it's part of the BDP story too. Yeah. It's such a big part of that. And it's also fun I'm being reminded of how often when you have a James Brown sample with a beat in it, you've also got James Brown making noise in the background. That's part and parcel of it. It's almost like to help deliver the lineage, the heritage of hip hop itself because there is this cool work that we mentioned. It's been the there since day one. So part of the lineage of being in hip hop in 1987 is taking it back to the

quote old school. And that includes the James Brown beat being recognizable as James Brown. A hundred percent. And I think you're absolutely right. There's an explosion. If you just go on, who sampled? There's an explosion of people sampling the funky drummer specifically in 1986 and 1987. One of our, one of my favorites from this period, if we can play a little bit, is L.O. Cool Jays, is Jack Jack the Ripper. Let's listen. It's so distinctive, those snare hits. It's literally down to the snare hits.

That's the part that you're noting, that's being used that's noticeable in that mix of other things. You can hear like just in one year's time, we've gone from really stripped down stuff, 86, early 87, to like now you have LL Cool J who by this point is already kind of an established rapper, to be clear. he's already like, he's got that as a foundation. He's got the drum loop as a foundation,

but he's layering it with so many other things. And LL's not the only act to do this. We're about to go into another act that was really fond of this beat, but he liked it so much, used it in more than one tune. For example, this one. One of my favorite Alzheimer's, Mama said, knock you out from 1990. It's a, look, if you were around when that song came out,

there was no way you couldn't hear that song. It was just so good. And maybe memorize all the lyrics. The music video was fantastic. Oh, yeah. The live version, the MTV Unplugged version with a big jacked guitar player with the underarm deodorant thing going on. Remember that?

I don't know that I remember that. I love that you do. It was so distinct. It was a jacked guitar player and LL himself had his shirt off. Totally jacked. But he had like the underarm deodorant. He kept showing. So it's iconic for the underarm deodorant as well as the performance.

And of course the song. All they needed was the saxophone player from the loss. That's what I'm thinking of in my head. That guy. They should have, I think his name is Tom Capello. But now it's Sergio because of the parody on SNL, the John Ham parody. But this is LL, in some ways in 1990, to hear funky drummer in a beat is already, it's like two layers of old school. He's referring to his 87 use of it, as well as the original song itself.

So there's all these layers of hip-hop history being built in here. And not unimportantly, also in the same song, L.L. quotes himself because he samples rock the bells. Which comes from... Which we think might be ACDC, but we're not sure. Back in black? Yeah, might be back and black. This sounds black and black-ish.

So there's already lots of layers and references going on with just the choice of using a beat. We're not looking for a beat because it's innovative and new necessarily. Part of the value of that beat is that it has history. I love it. And there's no band that loves that beat more than Public Enemy. Let's talk about them.

Public Enemy uses funky drummer on no fewer than four tunes distinctively. Starting with 1987's Rebel Without a Pause. Oh, great song. Yes, the rhythm's a ripple. Without a pause, I'm lowering my lucky. It's three snare hits that make the sample the thing, right?

You're not hearing the kick drum, really. The hi-hats and the kick drum. the kick in the high hats in that song are over, you know, there's a drum machine that is louder than what's in the sample. So you barely hear them if at all. Well, I mean, if there weren't the drum machine, there would be no, we've said on previous episodes. There'd be no base in public enemy songs.

That wasn't where they were coming from. But it was also like James Brown was noted for being like, you know, in his pre-living in America days as being like sort of like a black revolutionary. And, you know, I'm saying loud I'm black and I'm proud. And that fit well with the public enemy. ethos. Absolutely. It's not for nothing then that they use it on Bring the Noise. I was going to say I won't play all them but do I do a mini mix. Just name them then play a quick snip. Okay. I'll just do that. A man called the Snips. I don't know. They should just make

really short songs. I'll just give you a clean version. I think you already have it but they use it again on Bring the Noise also in 1987. I think it's like soap on a road because the beats and the lives are so dope. Listen for lessons I'm saying inside music. I think it's just in that little break section too, right? Yeah. With the 16th note, Bump, Bop, Buk, Buk, Buk, kick drum in it.

It's so, like, heavy metal. And not to jump the gun, but see, I hear the coming at drum and bass because they've really spit that loop up. Yeah. It's chopped within an inch of its life. Yeah. And you hear Jungle, as it would have been called in the UK. You're the coming of Jungle almost.

You're totally right, yeah, especially with that kick drum doing its thing. It's 16th minute thing. And by the way, this song has been sampled by. so many, but, you know, we think that one of the, if not the, most played song that's ever sampled it is by the famous West Coast rap group in W.A. Let's play a little bit of that. Let's listen to Fuck the Police. MC Wren, will you please give your testimony to the jury about this fucked-up incident? Fuck the police and rancented with authority. Because the niggas on the street is a majority of gang.

I mean, I'm sorry, there's Playboy Cardi, there's Cancars. All this. My son is listening to nothing about the hardest of today's music. This is hard. This still feels hard to me. But it doesn't feel hard to our kids. We live in a world where, to this day, New York City Cops is not on the Strokes album, as it was on the copy that I got.

This is sort of like that hot button issue that's been around since my grandfather's time. Of course. And, you know, there's a reason why this song is played all over the world. That said, you can hear how that funky drummer loop is it's hitting hard. It hits hard in a way.

And it was interesting, like you've said many times, it's primarily those snare hits. Yeah, the syncopated hits. Give it its personality. And it makes the case for analog recording because, you know, whether, you know, the height of the ceiling, the echo in the room, there's so many things that go into analog recording

that are hard to duplicate. Yeah. But the second you hear that sample, you know what you hear. You're absolutely right. That is one of the most iconic uses of the breakbeat, of the funky drummer breakbeat. Run DMC, Run's house is another pretty iconic one.

And then I would say neck and neck perhaps with the NWA use is the Dreus, the Let Me Ride. Of of the chronic, 1991. The nigger saying, hell yeah. Look on the nigger saying. Some plausible deniability,

whether that's the funky drummer, elements of the funky drummer beat. It could be, but it might not be, too. It's only in that little section where you definitely hear that, what we're just discussing, a distinctive snare to my ear, at least. Can I just make, this is a hot take?

Okay, hot take. It's a hot take. I can't wait. But this is something I'm going to kind of codify, at least in my own life. It's being recorded. And it's such as not a hot take because nobody buys albums anymore. Okay. But anytime I've been listening to an album and the fourth song comes on and I like it, like it's like a really good song.

Okay. Third or fourth song, there's usually a point of which I have to stop it and I'll call whoever my music friend is. I have different music friends for different genres, you're sort of like in almost all my genres at this point. And I'm like, this person brought, I'll never forget when this song starts on the chronic, I was like, I called a friend, I was like

Dre's got, I couldn't, I didn't have a cell phone in 1990s, but I just remember I had to get to a phone. Okay. And call my friends and say, oh, this this album is a problem. And I thought the same way, like in a good way, a problem in a good way. Like you're not going to be able to stop listening to it, that's the problem. Yes, yes.

I had to pause. Believe it or not, not to mention the stroke stories. I felt the same way about their first album. I felt the same way about Jay-Z's The Blueprint. There's just certain albums. This is above and beyond. When you get to the third or fourth song,

and you're like, this feels not just like the music is good, but there's an event taking place on this album. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is important. I literally have to stop it and tell somebody like, okay. This is significant. I'm not on track five,

but I'm going to call it fucking classic album. Is the hot take aspect of what you just said? It's something about that fourth song. The fourth song. It's not the first or second. They kept it going that long already. Can the first two or three songs be less, lesser? You know what's weird?

The first song can be great, but I think it constructed the perfect album. The first song should honestly not be too great as to overshine songs two and three. You want to get on the freeway gradually. You want to get on like the first song, to go back to the blueprint by Jay-Z, the first song is not like the great song.

The first song on The Chronic is, like an extended intro. Yeah. But it's a cool extended intro. Got it. First song on is, is this it? Very sort of languid

Julian Casablanca on the track. But he's not, he's not peeking already. Like it's an on-ramp. That first song has to be sort of like an on-ramp. And then they sort of take, think about Sergeant Peppers. It comes in strong,

but like that's not, that's not the big, that's not, they're not peaking on the first song. Um, and to a certain extent, any time, like,

the single is the first song. major red flag. Major red flag when you're single is the first, you don't want that. Because that's that idea. It's all downhill. So I just had to put that out there. I remember what I heard, let me ride.

I just, I wanted to pull my car over and call somebody, but the technology didn't exist. So I had to wait until I got home and then pick up a rotary. Yeah, anyway. Okay, well, as hot takes go, I think that one is pretty...

Lukewarm. I don't think you're going to get a lot of hate for that. I won't get a lot of hate. That's the good news. There are a couple of track sixers out there. It's good to have hot takes that are, designed to not actually bring Hayden, so I think you're succeeding.

It's a hot take in that I've never really thought about it, but yeah, there's a point of which an album can win you over. There you go. Track four. We're talking about use as a funky drummer. What's the next period that we're diving into? Well, then it starts to get either fun or maybe the word is colonized, because at this point, in the 90s when the white people find it,

hey, some of these white people are damn cool. These are great white people. These are some of the best white people. These are some of the best white people. Let's face it. I love that you brought up Madonna's Justify My Love. Can we hear a little bit of that? Because I do love that track.

So this is from 1990, Justify My Love. Yeah. And it samples Security of the First World from Public Enemy. Needing. Waiting for you. Justify my love. It's really cool how a strip down and simple that tune is. Here's the original.

Just you can see here wholesale where it comes from. is the public enemy which is a great track it's basically thus public enemy song with a synth and a vocal on top it is controversial in two ways one is it's unclear

whether actually funky drummer is in there it may not be interpolation it's definitely a drum machine it could be a drum machine mixed with the snare which is so distinctive I think that's what I hear to my ear it's like that's definitely predominantly a drum machine recreation interpolation of that beat

but I think the original sounds are really buried, buried, buried, buried, if there at all. In any case, Lenny Kravitz co-wrote that song with Ingrid Chavez, who's in Graffiti Bridge. She's the Prince movie, yeah. But she didn't credit and she sued, and then public enemy sued, or they were going to sue. But producer, Public Enemy Bomb Squad member, Hank Shockley,

at the time, he claimed that there wasn't any funky drummer in there. We have no reason not to believe him, because, like, it really does sound like a programmed beat. But he then reused his beat sarcastically in this young black teenager's song, which is called To Maidana. Claim you like a virgin, or all the brothers plurgeon yet you stress fear.

Well, listen, not, my dear. Just to find love or justify. I mean, that's the Madonna song. That's the Madonna song. It's a recreation, though, because he took his own public enemy song and then used that and got a different female vocalist. and then had the band Young Black Teenagers rap on it. Almost forgotten about a white group, white rap group from the late 80s.

Yeah, but that was his way of being like, look, you're going to steal my song? I'll steal my own song and I'll title it to Maidana, as in Madonna. And by the way, we are skipping a lot of some of our favorite songs. We're big fans of Digible Planets. Go back and listen to where I'm from. You will hear this sample. The Roots Next Movement. We did a whole episode on it.

also contains a small interpolation of the song. And then I would be remiss if I didn't mention we talked a lot about the magic number by De La Sol. That also samples this. So, you've been hearing this drum break for a long, long time. So in 1990, we have Madonna using it,

and we also have George Michael using it. One of my favorite George Michael songs, actually. It's a great song. Freedom 90. Here it is. Also, debatable whether or not that's an interpolation, by the way. I have, there's an internet fan who DMs me frequently, but has like an assumed name. Like, they're sort of, they're always telling me industry stories because they were there. I totally believe them. Yeah.

But they've never revealed who they are. Oh, wow. And they, this person once told me that they were in the room when the George Michael, the programmer, reprogrammed the beat for Freedom 1990. I cannot corroborate that any more than my DMs from an anonymous source. I love that. I always wanted to come up with a whole host of, oh, yeah, James Murphy from LCD SoundsSets

that sort of hints at that on losing my edge. I was playing the keyboard. Like, it's something that you can't corroborate. Anyone can say anything, basically, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, I played for Steve Woodwood. I was this tambourine guy. He never gave me credit. All I know, it's that George Michael estate

has somebody who's, like, in my DMs to, like, prevent them from being sued by the James Brown estate. So they're like, no, it's an interpolation. That's so fun. But, you know, this one and the Madonna one and the Public Enemy one may or may not have elements of Clyde Stubblefield's recorded, you know, performance in there. And at the end of the day, Clyde, well, I don't want to give the game away, but Clyde wouldn't have been paid anyway. So I'm not mad if they took a little bit of the sound, a little bit of that snare and layered it with the rest of it. We're going to get into the splits in just a little bit.

Oh, absolutely. Just a couple more fun white people songs. We have literally Melissa Etheridge in 1992 with the songs. 2001. That's right. Melissa Etheridge using funky drummer. Let's listen. I did not think that our Jay's Brown episode would lead to Melissa Etheridge. That has to be the weirdest white use. Well, you think it might be the weirdest, but let's listen to what Kenny G did in 1992 with the song. I'm sorry, Dad. We're going to play some Kenny G. This song is called it. I'm so sorry about this, almost more than the Kenny G. It's called G-bop. Oh no

Biggest stop Cut it off No no no no no don't get in this groove You'll never find your way back Every time I say funky on this episode I feel like I am coming across Like Kenny G is coming across on GBob here No no shade to Kenny G

Maybe a little shade to Kenny G He's a wonderful man Is he really? I don't know I know that my father being a jazz enthusiast This was his antichrist. Of course. Anyone who is a jazz enthusiast is the opposite of Kenny Jean.

Oh, my God. Hey, I got a white usage for you. I didn't know this is going to become the white usage. I can't wait. Let's hear it. Do you know this? Powerpuff girls. The Powerpuff girls.

None of whom are black, but even they use James Brown way cooler than Kenny G. Could ever hope to. Some of them feel a little black-coated, I have to say. A little, a little bit. There's a conversation. There's a conversation to be had about it. I love the cartoon. That and Dexter's Lab, those are my kind of cartoons.

Well, that's a perfect setup to the last kind of the final, you know, the piece of the edifice of what Clyde Stubblefeld has built on planet Earth. Culturally, he's brought us all of these different uses and different songs. He has arguably laid portions of the, like, ground floor of hip-hop. If not just for funky drummer alone, he also had give it up or turn it loose, right? Yes. But also, there's entire genres beyond hip-hop that he influenced, such as Jungle and D&B.

Let's listen to In Effect by DJ Red Alert and Mike Slammer. So it's undeniable that one of the top beats in both Jungle and D&B, like, certainly Amen Brother is probably number one in those genres and the think beat, the Lynn Collins think about a beat. But funky drummer is in the top five. Absolutely. You're going to hear it across. Any D&B night that you go to, you'll probably hear a handful of songs using Funky Drummer. I mean, like I said, we could have literally stayed in this rabbit hole.

And it's so fine. We can do two more episodes? A hundred episodes. Can I tell you about one that Spotify's new song DNA helped me out with? Okay. So if you go and you put this into, if you put Funky Drummer into your Spotify, you can see all the contributors from James Brown. Clyde Stubblefield has his own, like, button that you can push. Deservidly so.

I love that. Fred Wesley, all these guys. So I was poking around in sampled or interpolated section. And I was scrolling down. And lo and behold, one of my all-time favorite hip-hop songs from the 90s also samples Funky Drummer. And it's The Farside, Officer. By the way, I love the fact that that's the Farsight, both sampling and imitating, sampling Chuck D's voice.

But also one of them imitating Flavor Flav. Right. And then there's the grunt in there with the J.B's the grunt sample as well. That teacettle sound. So from James Brown to Public Enemy to the far side, we've got something from each decade of this... I love that. ...of this song in that song. That is an homage to the lineage of the story of hip-hop. And that's an important thing is maybe a takeaway for everything that we've just presented today

with all of these sample rabbit holes and connections is the point of the reuse is the connectivity. Yes. There is something beautiful about you having heard this before. in another song and making that connection, and then maybe finding a storyline that works for you about how these things are connected, the history of music, the history of a genre, maybe the fact that it doesn't seem connected.

Why is Kenny G. using this beat? Well, he wants to have a little piece of that hip-hop credibility. All of that is really part of why the reuse of funky drummer is so culturally important. Absolutely, and I think on the show, we're always talking about connections. Song DNA literally will help show you connections that you didn't even know we're there.

Or it might remind you some that you remember but had forgotten. All right, now that we've talked about the song and all the songs that have sampled or interpolated it, luxury, but man, how do the splits work out? James Brown. Yeah. That's the answer. I sort of figured.

100% of the publishing of the song, funky drummer. He never got paid. Clyde Stubblefield, to be clear, never got paid. Quote, I never got paid for recording just to check for salary. It was a work for hire. It's very classic. It's not unexpected. No.

But it is clearly the story that we've been telling today tells you why this is how it is, but how it is ain't fair. Like that's the simplest way for me personally. That's my opinion to put. I know that you think it's only fair. No, I tend to like to see people get condescending for their work. Especially for building a legacy. Call me crazy. Half a century of musical, the legacy that he's built in all of the songs and genres.

By the way, this is a little bit different. You know, in certain times we've talked about people not getting, you know, a split, so to speak. Yeah. And it was egregious at the time because you would think that there was a way to get paid off of this. This is sort of a little bit different because in 1969, nobody was thinking, oh, there's going to be several art forms that come along that are going to make the publishing an absolute barrel of money. You took the words out on my mouth. Part of why the sort of counter argument to like it being unfair would be well, he knew what he was doing when he took the gig. And if he really, like in 1969, if you are a drummer, your power of leverage in negotiating.

is next to zero. You want the next gig, so you're not going to rock the boat by asking for more money. And in James' defense, he thinks of himself as Duke Gellington, Glenn Miller, like, he's the band leader.

You're lucky to be my drummer. Yes, you're the band leader. I'm throwing stuff out to you. You're throwing stuff back. Like, this idea that a guy would play for nine seconds, and that nine's, you know, that eight bars or whatever it is,

that would end up being worth bazillions. Yes. It was just a very foreign concept. 100%. We think he should have gotten some money. There are ways to go back and, you know, go to Sting and say, hey, Sting, that thing I played on your song is generating a lot of income. Now, I'd like my part of that.

There are ways to do that. But you need to be able to hire a lawyer. Sting's never going to hire you again. You'll get a reputation as being a boat rocker or a diva or just so unimpossible to work. But the cards are really stacked against you. We think I did a lot of research on this. I wasn't able to find a consistent figure, but he probably got 50 bucks for funky drummer. And the other thing to add to that is the way copyright works is, okay, at what point is the published writer, songwriter?

At what point is that coming from traditionally it's music and lyrics, right? Drummers are generally, their parts are not considered the music, which is pretty unfair. Especially in a situation like this where it was so distinctive that James Brown himself called out that the name of the tune is funky drummer because of what this drummer played. He might have had an argument had he access to a lawyer, had he a plan B for once James Brown stops hiring him because he's suing him. He might have gotten into the copyright had he had the opportunity. But like, think about how many if-then statements I just made. Like the unfairness of the 50 bucks for 50 years of recorded material is pretty egregious, I'd say. A lot of times on the show, we do unsung heroes, but it's pretty clear that we want to make the sung hero.

Yeah. Clive Stubblefield. Tell us how his story goes. goes. Clyde Stubblefield, the unsung hero, but also exactly, we're doing this entire episode to give him his shine because it's so deserved. In 2002, there was a tumor in his kidney that was removed because he suffered from renal disease. And he died at 73 from kidney failure. Apparently, before that happened, Prince reportedly paid almost $100,000. I've heard about this story, yeah. You know, there's no insurance for drummers. There's no, like he just, this was his moment after this, as we mentioned before, he went to live in Madison, Wisconsin for the rest of his life, and didn't have a lot of money. He just was a performing musician.

He seemed to enjoy that life, but it wasn't lucrative. And when he got this disease, he couldn't afford to treat it. So thankfully, Prince apparently stepped into that too. Prince, huge, James Brown, and was looking out for people. Exactly. And unfortunately, he died of kidney failure at age 73. We all got to die someday, but not all of us leave is lasting a legacy as Clyde's double-filled. Today we felt like we gave the drummer some.

We certainly did. His legacy is secure, so is James Browns, and the funky drummer. What an amazing record. Gave birth to the funk and hip hop and a lot, lot more. Thanks for listening to the show. As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-L-O. And on TikTok at DiL-O-R-R-Y.

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