The brainchild of Bronx-bred record fanatic Lenny Roberts and b-boy/DJ/tape editor Louis “Breakbeat Lou” Flores, the *Ultimate Breaks & Beats* compilation series is the most vital distillation of hip-hop’s musical DNA in existence. Founded in 1986 and spread over 25 indispensable volumes, *UBB* anthologized music from wholly disparate genres – soul, funk, rock, Latin, jazz and new wave – with one simple, unifying concept: All of the tracks included in the series feature essential breaks, those “open” parts of a track that, when put to use by a DJ with two copies, represents the music’s foundational building blocks. *UBB* preserved these breaks and beats – once the exclusive domain of elite original school pioneers – and made them accessible, emerging at the very moment when sampling technology exploded, thus changing the course of hip-hop production forever. Entire chunks of hip-hop’s recorded canon are unimaginable without it.
