1 Thing

Produced by Rich Harrison in 2004, the track was built around a drum break looped from The Meters' 1969 recording 'Oh Calcutta', with Harrison again deploying the same sample-driven, live-percussion aesthetic he had pioneered on Beyoncé's 'Crazy in Love'. Amerie recorded the vocals in New York during sessions for her second album 'Touch'. Released in early 2005 on Columbia Records, '1 Thing' became a crossover breakthrough for Amerie, reaching number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart, with critics singling out its raw, propulsive drum break as a bold departure from the polished production dominating R&B radio at the time. The track's insistent, unadorned drum loop has made it a reference point for producers and critics discussing the use of live percussion in contemporary R&B, and it was widely sampled and interpolated in subsequent years; it received renewed global attention in the 2020s when it became a viral phenomenon on TikTok, introducing it to a new generation of listeners.