Gregory Cylvester "G.C." Coleman was the drummer for The Winstons, a Washington D.C. funk and soul group led by Richard Lewis Spencer. In 1969, the group released "Color Him Father" as a single, which won a Grammy Award. On the B-side was an instrumental jam called "Amen, Brother" — a loose, energetic workout built around a gospel-influenced groove. Roughly halfway through the track, the band drops out and Coleman plays a solo drum break lasting about five seconds. Those five seconds would go on to become the most sampled piece of music in recorded history.

The break went largely unnoticed until the mid-1980s, when hip-hop DJs and producers began mining obscure funk and soul 45s for rhythmic raw material. The "Amen break," as it became known, first gained widespread use in early hip-hop tracks, but its true explosion came with the rise of jungle and drum and bass music in the early 1990s UK rave scene. Producers like Goldie, Remarc, and countless others sped up, chopped, and rearranged Coleman's drumming into the frenetic, time-stretched patterns that defined an entire genre.

Neither Coleman nor The Winstons ever received royalties for the billions of times the break has been used. Coleman died homeless in 2006 at age 61. In 2015, a crowdfunding campaign raised money for Richard Spencer, the surviving band leader, as a gesture of recognition. The "Amen break" has appeared in over 5,000 documented tracks — from N.W.A. to Oasis, from Skrillex to David Bowie — making it not just hip-hop's most important sample, but arguably the most influential six seconds of recorded music ever.