The Amen Break is a six-second drum solo that has become one of the most sampled pieces of audio in music history. It originates from the 1969 B-side single "Amen, Brother" by the American soul group The Winstons, led by Richard Lewis Spencer. Recorded hastily in Atlanta, the track was a loosely gospel-based instrumental. At 1 minute and 26 seconds, drummer Gregory "G.C." Coleman performed a four-bar drum break entirely solo — the other instruments fall silent and Coleman pounds through an electrifying pattern. For two bars he holds his groove, in the third he delays a snare hit to agitate the rhythm, and in the fourth he leaves the first beat empty before unleashing a syncopated flurry crowned by an early crash cymbal. Musically it sits at approximately 136 BPM in 4/4 time, driven by kick drum, snare, and a distinctive ride cymbal pattern with a warm, analog character shaped by 1969 tape saturation. Neither Coleman nor Spencer ever received royalties from its use. The break was rediscovered by hip-hop DJs in the early 1980s through the Ultimate Breaks and Beats compilations, and by the mid-80s it was powering tracks by Salt-N-Pepa, N.W.A., and Mantronix. In the early 1990s, UK producers sped, chopped, and processed the Amen Break to create the backbone of entire electronic genres — jungle and drum and bass. It has since appeared in rock (Oasis's "D'You Know What I Mean?"), David Bowie's "Little Wonder," the Futurama theme, and countless commercials. An estimated 2,000+ commercial recordings have sampled it, making it arguably the single most influential rhythm in modern music. Gregory Coleman died homeless in 1996, never knowing the magnitude of what he had created in those six seconds.