Artist
James Brown
James Brown appears 8 times in our Funk, Soul, Roots, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred, The Waxonia Desk — The Soulquarians Room, and The Waxonia Desk — Where the Accent Moved lists, placing as high as No. 1. Hand-curated, with a reason for every pick.
- Ranked entries
- 8
- Appears on
- Funk, Soul, Roots, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred, The Waxonia Desk — The Soulquarians Room, and The Waxonia Desk — Where the Accent Moved
- Years
- 1965–1970
- Highest placing
- No. 1 in Funk
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
Appears on
Cold Sweat
1967 · King
Ranked No. 1 in Funk
The year zero record. Brown moves the accent to the first beat and stops changing chord, and everything in this list plus most of what follows it on this site is downstream of that one instruction to the band.
Also on Roots, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred, The Waxonia Desk — Where the Accent Moved
Funky Drummer
1970 · King
Ranked No. 3 in Funk
Twenty seconds of Clyde Stubblefield alone became the most sampled bar of music in existence. Hip-hop, jungle and big beat are all, at some level, arguments about what to do with this loop.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred, The Waxonia Desk — The Soulquarians Room
Papa's Got a Brand New Bag
1965 · King
Ranked No. 5 in Soul
The hinge. Still recognisably a soul record, already audibly something else — two years from here the horn stabs stop serving the chords and start serving the drummer.
Cold Sweat
1967 · King
Picked by Roots
Start here. Brown tells the band to put the accent on the first beat and stop changing chord, and the next sixty years of dance music become possible in about eight bars.
Also on Funk, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred, The Waxonia Desk — Where the Accent Moved
Cold Sweat
1967 · King
Picked by The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
The accent moves to the first beat and the chord stops changing. Eight bars that reorganise the next sixty years.
Also on Funk, Roots, The Waxonia Desk — Where the Accent Moved
Funky Drummer
1970 · King
Picked by The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Twenty seconds of Clyde Stubblefield alone, and then thirty years of other people's records. The most consequential drum break in existence.
Funky Drummer
1970 · King
Picked by The Waxonia Desk — The Soulquarians Room
The bar underneath everything above it. A generation of drummers learned Clyde Stubblefield from a sampler rather than from the record, and played him differently as a result.
Also on Funk, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Cold Sweat
1967 · King
Picked by The Waxonia Desk — Where the Accent Moved
The moment the accent moved and harmony stopped being the point. Everything filed under funk since is an argument with the arrangement on this one record.
Also on Funk, Roots, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred