Funky Drummin'

Ain't it funky, indeed.

No, this is not a post devoted to all of the tracks that have used the "Funky Drummer" breakbeat; Edan already did that in audio form.

This is just my love letter to the Funky Drummer.

Now when I was a shorty, back when Columbia rain suits and Cross Colours outfits were the rage, I copped a few tapes for the Walkman: Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation... was one of them, as well as this compilation of James Brown's, In The Jungle Groove. It has some great tracks on there, but it was always "Funky Drummer" that captivated me. I mean come on, 9+ minutes of funk and more funk. James going off about honky-tonk women and feeling it in his feet. I was dumbstruck, mainly because most of the music out there were Rappers trying to fit so many words into 16 bars, where here you have James doing a 1/4 of that in lyrics, and devoting the majority of the track to his musician(s).

And you cannot deny that James, way back in the late 60s/early 70s, predicted sample culture. He tells his whole band in the middle of the track, we gonna "turn over"... it's time to give the drummer some. Not to solo or anything, but just keep doing what he's doing, while the rest of the band cuts out and let's him go to work. I mean, he HAD to have known that 10, 20 years down the line, his drummer would become one of the staples of the "golden era" of Hip-Hop, and on into genres like Breaks and Drum & Bass. "It's in my shirt/about to work me to death". He knew what it was.

Funky Drummer indeed.
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