A 25-Year-Fight over a 2-Second Sample

This has to be the best drum sample of all time.

Here's the video to watch on the history of the Amen Break. It's very in-depth and I highly recommend it. I just noticed it's 20 years old too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

I can’t remember who they were talking about now, but I was listening to a podcast recently that had Questlove (drummer from The Roots) and he was retelling about the first time he met someone. As part of the intro he said something like “of course I know you, you sampled me on <track>” and then he laughed at their shock because they absolutely had not cleared the sample and he was just “hey, it’s alright. We’re cool”.

But it was wild to me to think that in the middle of a track there’s like a 2-3 sec bit of percussion and he can (correctly!) go “hey, that’s me!”. It wasn’t some looping thing throughout the song. Just a single sample. And he knew it was him playing it!