Leander Cohen

A Short History and Sample Platter of the “Think” Break

Leander Cohen

There is no thirty seconds in music more iconic than the “Think” break. A section of Lyn Collins’ 1972 single “Think (About It)”, it has been sampled over 3,000 times. But how can one sample be so popular? What makes “Think” great?

“Think” is a textbook example of a drum break, an instrumental, usually drums-only section of a song. In the late 1970s, DJ Kool Herc revolutionized popular music by taking drum breaks from funk music, particularly James Brown, and looping them to create beats. At block parties in the South Bronx, Kool Herc used this technique to create hip hop.

In 1987, well into the so-called “Golden Age” of hip hop, the “Think” break was included on the 16th edition of the break compilation Ultimate Breaks & Beats. After it was sampled in “It Takes Two”, a platinum hit by New York hip hop duo Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, “Think” was everywhere. By the 1990s, it achieved near-ubiquitous use in hip hop and dance tracks, spawning a brand new style known as breakbeat.

Originating in the UK, breakbeat is less of a genre and more of an indication that the artist is sampling a break, often the “Think” break. It encompasses rapid rave bangers, also known as Jungle, mid-tempo, shuffled UK garage beats, and slow, mellow trip hop. Breakbeat began to fade from the mainstream in the 2000s, but the “Think Break” has remained a powerful force, showing up in a wide range of styles and musical contexts. Kanye West, Flume, and Pop Smoke – far from typical breakbeat artists – have all sampled “Think.”

“Think” is raw and raucous, with a dusty snare, clattering tambourine, and raspy shouts of“Woo!” and “Yeah!” It’s a perfect balance of rhythmic simplicity and funk bombast. This is why it lends itself so perfectly to sampling. It’s warm and familiar, it adds a sense of rawness and intensity, but it’s moldable: you can speed it up, add reverb, or add other effects to make it something completely new. If we think of hip hop and dance music as two related cuisines - let’s say Chinese and Japanese food - the “Think” break is like soy sauce. It’s a basic, signature flavor; something that feels familiar, but also something that you can build on.

Building on our food analogy, I’ve put together a “sample platter” (pun intended) of 10 tracks which make particularly creative use of “Think.” (Note: A playlist containing all 10 tracks in order is available on Lele Beats’ Spotify).

1. “The Burial” (1994) - Leviticus

reggae vocals. The effect is a thumping, surreal club banger in which the break takes center stage. It’s also an example of how jungle seamlessly combines Black genres from all sides of the Atlantic. Its percussion is American hip hop-via-funk, its vocals are Jamaican reggae, but its overall sound is distinctly British. It’s hard to imagine listening to “The Burial” outside of a hardcore rave; but its use of “Think” set the tone for the sample’s near-ubiquity in British dance scenes of the 90s.

2. “Pussyole (Old Skool)” (2007) - Dizzee Rascal

Another British track. Four years earlier, Dizzee Rascal brought grime music to the mainstream with his debut album, Boy in da Corner. Grime came out of London in the 2000s and brought rap verses to UK garage, a slower, shuffled derivative of Jungle. Rascal pays homage to this history with “Pussyole (Old Skool),” a synthy grime track built around the “Think” break. Unlike “The Burial,” he doesn’t do much to the sample, which allows his verses to shine. “Pussyole” is slang for someone who’s weak and afraid of confrontation, and the song is rumored to be a diss track against fellow grime rapper Wiley. Rumor or not, I like that Rascal seems less interested in actually dissing his adversary and more in getting his friends to stop hanging out with him. Some of my favorite bars are: “Stop rolling with that bredda you don’t need him / He’s a pussyole, he’s a chief leave him” and “The Sun’s the biggest star in the sky / but naturally it’s gotta make room for the moon every night.”

3. “Gosh” (2015) - Jamie xx

This beautiful intro to Jamie xx’s 2015 masterpiece In Colour offers a subtle take on the 90s British dance sound. It chops up “Think” to make it sound hurried and intense rather than funky. With sound bites of “Oh my Gosh!”, “Hold it down!”, and some guy throwing up (not as gross as it sounds), it’s part-tribute, part-parody of British rave culture. But suddenly, we’re awash in a gorgeous palette of synths, and “Gosh” turns into a sentimental march. Jamie xx does so much here with so little, and it’s all built on “Think.”

4. “Lost in the World” (2010) - Kanye West

The emotional climax of another masterpiece, Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. What Kanye does with the “Think” break here is a stroke of production genius. The song starts with a full minute of Bon Iver’s autotuned crooning, slowly building and layering harmonies. Then BAM! We hear the intro again, this time as a driving, concise hook. The sound at this point feels huge: we have Kanye, we have, like, six harmonized Bon Ivers, and we have the distorted, pounding “Think” break. It’s almost unrecognizable, rendered to distorted shouts and bangs. But it is so perfect for the moment, adding just the right texture, fullness, and emotional weight to a pivotal point on the album.

Dizzee Rascal

What the hell is “Think” doing in a song by the King of Reggaeton? On first listen, it might be hard to find. But “Think” comes in at an instrumental break around the 1:35 mark, where its “Woo!” and “Yeah!” can be heard over the blaring synths. “Think” isn’t typically associated with Latin music, so its use here is especially creative. It adds a nice bit of flair and rawness to the dance break, and makes the song all the more catchy and exciting. Outside of “Think,” my favorite part is the one-off English adlib: “Straight from Washington Heights!”

6. “Livin’ Loose” (2018) - George Clanton

Clanton’s music grows out of vaporwave, an Internet genre mainly consisting of slowed-down mixes of 80s and 90s smooth jazz and R&B. It’s hard to miss the vaporwave influence on “Livin’ Loose,” with its retro synths and sax solo. But Clanton uses “Think” to take the style one step further, turning his atmospheric intro into a funky, genuine dance track. The slightly distorted “Woo!” of the break is a fun touch.

7. “Anasickmodular” (2019) - Floating Points

With “Anasickmodular,” Floating Points puts on a clinic in creating an emotional build out of synths and percussion. The track starts with its own drum break, with sketchy snare sounds and synthy bloops. Then the “Think” break comes in, adding depth and movement to the beat. From there, Floating Points adds layer after layer of synths, finally culminating in a glitchy chop up of the “Think” break in the final minute. It’s an impressive balancing act of electronic weirdness and genuine dance-y catchiness, where “Think” is the glue holding everything together.

8. “PTSD” (2019) - Pop Smoke

“Think” in Brooklyn drill? Absolutely. Drill is known for its menacing samples and syncopated 808s, which are all over “PTSD.” We don’t hear the percussion from “Think” here; instead, producer Rico Beats distorts the “Woo!” “Yeah!” vocal chops from “Think” to add some texture and intensity.

9. “Talk Down” (2021) - Dijon

Dijon strips the “Think” break all the way back. The instrumentation is sparse - we hear bass and a quiet sax, putting the break and Dijon’s raspy voice center stage. The result is an intimate track about a couple bickering on a road trip. Far from the dance or hip hop styles that “Think” gave birth to, “Talk Down” shows that there’s beauty in the original, untouched sound of the break.

10. “Notice I Cried” (2021) - PinkPantheress

And now we’re back, full circle. It’s 2022 and breakbeat is back. PinkPantheress is leading the charge, giving breaks like “Think” the 1990s treatment alongside catchy hooks and lush synths. This particular use of “Think” adds a sense of urgency to a song about heartbreak. But more generally, the breakbeat revival raises some interesting questions. Will artists take inspirations primarily from the 90s, or now that they have an entire body of new styles and sounds which use “Think,” will we see new takes on the original breakbeat sound? Will artists strip the break back, like Dijon, or mold it into an entirely new texture, like Kanye and Floating Points? Either way, the future for “Think” is bright. ◆

Steely Your Face: Lot Culture Within Steely Dan

Will Prim

I have a Steely Dan scar on my right leg. It’s true. When I was 12 years old, I became an avid fan of the Dan through my Dad’s CD choices during our ride to school. After becoming well versed in the band’s world of studio-perfected jazz-rock, my dad took me to see the legendary group in Atlanta. visiting family in the city before the show, I was outside climbing a cement wall with a younger cousin, and somehow ended up with a gnarly cut on my shin. To this day, I’m still not sure how this wound occurred, but if my mother were there with us, it would have resulted in a trip to the hospital. Instead, Dad and I decided to clean it, wrap it, and go see Steely Dan.

Although the band hasn’t released an album since 2003, and has toured infrequently since the death of guitarist Walter Becker, Steely Dan has somehow made its way back into relevance (of sorts). Since the beginning of quarantine, when I imagine the hivemind of bored indie-heads began to dig into their parents’ vinyl collections, there has been a resurgence of interest in Steely Dan and all the extensive lore that surrounds the band. The new interest has been spearheaded by Dan-enthusiasts applying Deadhead/lot culture to Steely Dan, as well as viewing the group’s discography as intensively as Dead or Phish Phans view their respective group’s work.

Outside of every Grateful Dead or Phish show there is essentially a micro-economy set up in the parking lot. In this marketplace, vendors and artists will set up operations and sell handmade products such clothing, artwork, stickers, glassware, and truly anything else that you can think of. This small-scale economy has cultivated an incredibly creative and thriving community of enthusiasts who travel from venue to venue to showcase their work and commemorate the band they follow. The term “lot culture” stems from this environment and the love and downright oddity that encapsulates it. However, one of the most iconic aspects of the lot is the shirts sold by diverse artists. The term “lot-shirt” was invented to describe the unique and intriguing shirts that various vendors sell outside of events to memorialize the band.. There is a drastic difference between a shirt purchased “on the lot” versus a shirt bought from officials inside the venue, thus a culture around lot shirts is born. The shirts often include artistic depictions of songs or band members in different forms (a popular one is the members of Phish portrayed as Simpsons Characters). Overall, lot shirts take unique approaches to commemorating a band and their music and vary from official band merchandise.

While one may view the Grateful Dead/Phish/jam-band scene as diametrically opposed to Steely Dan and its glitz and glamor , a closer examination shows that Steely Dan is ripe for a devout following of weirdos and artists. Donald Fagen peppered Steely Dan songs with obscure references to sci-fi authors and ironic observations about the futility of popular culture; he also foreswore touring in the height of their popularity. Although the group

subscribes to a different cultural niche than The Grateful Dead or other unforgettable jam-bands, these different aspects of Steely Dan seem to directly appeal to the intellectual weirdos that participate in lot culture. For example, a large quantity of the Jam-band Phish’s songs revolve around guitarist Trey Anastasio’s sci-fi epic college thesis titled “The Man who Stepped into Yesterday.” Because of this, lovers of Phish can find comfort when Fagen sings about the “boom on mizar five” in “Sign in Stranger,” or the “celluloid bikers” in “Glamor profession.” Musically, Steely Dan’s complex and adventurous compositions, like “Aja” or “Everything Must Go,” seem to match Phish’s layered composition “You Enjoy Myself” and the Grateful Dead’s “Terrapin Station.” It is easy to notice each song’s dedication to intricate and fine-tuned instrumentals. Although Steely Dan has never committed to improvisation in the same way jam-bands have, the group takes their music further in a live setting compared to a recording studio. All this is to say that this cultural cross-pollination isn’t totally out of the blue. After all, Steely Dan is simply a jam-band for people who like to read.

Leading the pack in this Steely Dan/lot Culture crossover are instagram accounts such as @Double.Wonderful and @HeyitsmeNate. Similar to the lot shirts discussed earlier, their products often include colorful depictions of Steely Dan songs, comedic portrayals of the stereotype and cultural features of the group, or Steely Dan images mixed with Grateful Dead insignia (such as the Steal Your Face Skull or Roses). A favorite of mine that relates directly to my thesis on the issue is a shirt created by @Double.Wonderful that portrays the “Steely Dan to Grateful Dead conversion chart” (pictured below). Some other favorites of mine include a rug made that pictures a Grateful Dead Steal Your Face skull with a picture of Donald Fagen placed inside. These accounts and the products they’ve made truly portray this newfound interest in Steely Dan has cross-pollinated with hippie-band lot culture in a crossover that no one would have expected, but which makes sense now that it’s been done. ◆