It Takes Two

Posted byEthan Leave a comment on It Takes Two

In 1972, James Brown produced a single for one of his backup singers, Lyn Collins, called “Think (About It)”.

If you listen to this without any context, it sounds like a perfectly fine funk song with an unusual rubato introduction. But then, at 1:22, there’s suddenly that break, followed immediately by that hook. Sing it with me, 80s kids.

WhoSampled.com lists over four thousand samples of “Think (About It)”, though be advised that this list is full of inaccuracies. In addition to the Yeah Woo break and the iconic vocal hook, people also sample many other parts of the track, like the vocals on the intro and the tambourine break at 2:21. But it’s that main Yeah Woo break that is the real magic. It’s one of the most important shared holy sonic objects in the canon, right up there with the Amen break and the Funky Drummer.

Let’s enjoy the Yeah Woo break on a loop for half an hour.

Why is this so good? I don’t have a definitive answer, but I can point to specific features that contribute to the experience. Music notation isn’t really the right tool for the job, but it’s a starting point.

You can see the microtiming by looking at the audio waveform against the sixteenth note grid in Ableton.

The basic skeleton of the break is the kick on beat one and the snares on beats two and four. The kick has a distinctive timbre because it’s overlaid with the reverb tail of a G7 chord played on the organ. The snares are crisp, loud and clearly pitched. The snare hit on beat two is just a little bit late, while the hit on beat four is exactly on time. There are also snare ghost notes on the sixteenth note offbeat before beat three and the eighth note offbeat after beat three. This is all happening against a continual bed of tambourine on every sixteenth note, swinging lightly and generally behind the beat a little.

Finally, there are James Brown’s shouts: “yeah” on the eighth note offbeat after beat two, and “woo” on the eighth note offbeat after beat four. The “woo” is cut off halfway through by the end of the bar, and therefore the end of the loop. This gives the “woo” an unearthly quality, because it’s a fragment rather than a natural-sounding human utterance.

The “yeah” and “woo” are the most striking timbres in the break, but the whole thing sounds excellent. There’s a satisfying reverb, whether naturally from the room or artificially from the board I can’t tell, and the tape has just the right amount of saturation. So the sound is spacious and roomy, but it’s also hot and punchy rather than washed out. I know James Brown wasn’t trying to create a sample library with these recordings, but he couldn’t have succeeded any better if he had been trying.

The Yeah Woo break doesn’t just sound good in hip-hop and dance music. It sounds good under just about everything I’ve tried it with. And I mean everything! Here it is under a Bach violin sonata – the break enters at 0:52.

Here’s the break in a Renaissance-era chaconne, starting at 0:21.

So that’s the break. Let’s look at the chorus of “It Takes Two.” You can download my MuseScore transcription here. First, here’s the Lyn Collins sample:

Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock had a session singer named Rhonda Parris re-sing the vocal part, apparently for copyright reasons, and she interprets the melody a little differently:

Rhonda Parris sings the melody with mostly the same rhythm as Lyn Collins but with different pitches. Check out the word “right” in the line “it takes two to make a thing go right.” Lyn Collins sings it on G and A. Rhonda Parris sings it on G and a very sharp B-flat, almost a B-natural. I colored it blue because it’s a blue note, in between the piano keys. On the line “it takes two to make it outta sight”, Lyn Collins starts on B-flat and then alternates G and F. Rhonda Parris sings almost the entire line on C, before ending B-flat to C to G. That implies a change to the IV chord, even though the underlying track doesn’t otherwise suggest it.

The harmonic backdrop of the hook is minimal, but interesting. The horns play the root and third of a G major chord on the first beat of the phrase. Then the guitar and bass answer. The guitar slides a pair of minor thirds up chromatically, A and C to A-sharp and C-sharp to B and D. It’s like an ultra-stripped-down version of a blues cliche that I call the Blue Monk riff. Here it is in G:

The bass, meanwhile, plays F, G, and G an octave down, which is just the root and flat seventh of the underlying G7 chord. And that’s it for harmony! The second bar of the phrase is melody only. The Lyn Collins song has lots of other chords and melodies before and after the sampled part, but my years of exposure to Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock made me prefer to just hear the hook over and over.

By the way, the Lyn Collins track is not the only sample source in “It Takes Two.” The intro is a sample of “Space Dust” by The Galactic Force Band (1978). Once you’ve enjoyed the intro, keep listening, there’s an amazing breakbeat at 0:59, and the groove that follows is pretty great too.

DJ E-Z Rock overlays the Yeah Woo break with the drum machine beat from “Set It Off” by Strafe (1984).

Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock also use “Hit it!” from Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick’s classic “La Di Da Di” (1985).

Finally, there’s a James Brown “hit me” in there too, though I’m not sure which song it’s from.

From Rolling Stone’s interview with Rob Base, I learned that he and DJ E-Z Rock made “It Takes Two” with producer William Hamilton as a demo to try to get signed to a label. He chose the Lyn Collins sample while E-Z Rock chose the Strafe beat. Apparently, the Yeah Woo got some pushback.

A lot of people said, “Oh too much ‘woo, yeah,’ you need to take it out at some point.” I had to fight and say, “Nah, we got to keep that in the whole record. That’s got to stay in there.” And people didn’t understand where I was coming from.

On Ultimate Breaks & Beats Volume 16, the Lyn Collins break and Galactic Force Band sample used in the intro are right next to each other on Side Two.

Basically, it’s just like, it was right there. The hit was right there in our face. And we just took it [laughs].

“It Takes Two” is just the most memorable of dozens of rap songs that sampled the Yeah Woo break and other parts of “Think (About It)”. In the 90s, the Yeah Woo became a staple of drum n bass, and in the past few years it has been popping up frequently now that drum n bass has come back in style. (The kids are alright!) Here are some noteworthy usages in chronological order:

Even if you have no interest in producing electronic music, you should still get familiar with the Yeah Woo break. First, as a matter of cultural literacy, you should know this break and its possibilities the way you should know the Bach cello suites. Second, practicing your instrument over the break is a really good way to improve your timekeeping, and is way more musically satisfying than a metronome. Third, if you haven’t listened to the break on a continuous loop by itself, you should. I have yet to get tired of it after decades of familiarity, and it can be consciousness-altering after a while. You’d think the “yeah” and “woo” would get on your nerves, and I guess they would if you weren’t in the right frame of mind. But if you want to dance, or just head nod, or otherwise use your whole body to connect with the ancestors, the “yeah” and “woo” work like incantations, and the whole break is a reliably effective magic spell.

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