N.T.

The record

“N.T.” was released by Kool & the Gang on De-Lite Records in 1971 as a two-part single, with “N.T. (Part I)” running 3:10 and “N.T. (Part II)” running 3:19. It also appeared on the original US pressings of the group's live album Live at PJ's, released in October 1971 and recorded on May 29, 1971, at the P.J.'s nightclub in West Hollywood, California. UK pressings of that album replaced “N.T.” with “The Penguin”, and the 1999 CD reissue included both. According to drummer and co-founder George Brown, the letters stand for “No Title”: when the band finished the recording, producer Gene Redd pointed out that it did not have one, and the name stuck.

The break

The break is a four-bar drum solo by Brown. He has explained that he did not try to show off in it and simply played what he had been playing throughout the song. That restraint, a steady pocket with little decoration, is what made the passage so useful to producers two decades later. A flashier solo would have been much harder to loop under a rap vocal.

Into hip hop

The record was collected on the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series, which helped make it a common source in the late 1980s. N.W.A used it on “Gangsta Gangsta” (1988), and again on “N****z 4 Life” (1991). In 1989 Kool G Rap & DJ Polo built “Truly Yours” on it with a sample of Timmy Thomas's “Sexy Woman”, a track that was itself later sampled by Pete Rock, MF DOOM and Heltah Skeltah, and Cool C used it on “Down to the Grissle” from I Gotta Habit.

Legacy

The best known use is DJ Premier's production of Nas's “N.Y. State of Mind” from Illmatic (1994), where the “N.T.” drums sit under Joe Chambers's “Mind Rain” piano loop and chirps taken from Donald Byrd's “Flight Time”. Nas used the break again on “It Ain't Hard to Tell” the same year. Pete Rock used it on his 1995 remix of Big L's “Put It On”, Q-Tip on “Breathe and Stop” (1999), and the Black Eyed Peas on “Big Love” (2018). “N.T.” and “Summer Madness” are among the most sampled records in the Kool & the Gang catalog. Brown has said in interviews that he never tracked how often it was used and is honored that producers took to it.