In 1973, during the Watergate scandal that would bring down Richard Nixon's presidency, a group of high school students from Jamaica, Queens recorded a protest song called "Impeach the President." The group, The Honey Drippers, laid down the track in a basement studio, and it was pressed on a tiny independent label called Alaga Records — reportedly only 100 copies in the initial run. The song itself is a straightforward funk workout with an explicit political message, but it's the drum break that would make it immortal.

The break — a tight, punchy pattern with a distinctive snare crack and a locked-in hi-hat groove — became one of the foundational rhythms of East Coast hip-hop. Marley Marl was among the first to sample it extensively, and from there it spread across the New York production scene. The break's dry, crisp sound gave it a particular affinity for boom-bap production — it hits hard without overwhelming the mix, making it ideal for layering with basslines and vocal samples.

"Impeach the President" went from an obscure political 45 pressed in limited quantities to one of the most sampled records in hip-hop history. Nas, Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Jay-Z, and a who's who of East Coast rappers have built tracks on its foundation. The song became far more famous through sampling than it ever was as a political statement — a common fate for breakbeat source records, where the drummer's few bars of rhythm outlast everything else about the original recording.