Ultimate Breaks and Beats (also commonly abbreviated as UBB) was a series of 25 compilation albums released from 1986 to 1991 by Street Beat Records and edited by "BreakBeat Lou" Flores. Featured on the albums were funk, R&B, soul, jazz and rock tracks from the 1960s to 1980s that included influential drum breaks. The albums found high popularity with hip hop producers, with each new release in the series leading to many records featuring samples of the breaks. In this way, the series impacted the soundscape of rap, hip hop, dance, and pop music in general. Re-releases of the LPs, some packaged in pairs for DJ scratching and mixing convenience, became available and are currently found in many record stores. CDs of some of the volumes may be found as well, including a 2-CD and DVD box set featuring nearly all of the tracks on the 25 albums.

Releases

Complete track listing, taken from Geocities.com and updated with performers' names, missing in the track lists of volumes SBR 499, SBR 500 and the first version of SBR 508. An asterisk after a track name indicates that the song was remixed for inclusion in this compilation.

Not official

SBR 499

SBR 500

Official start of the series

SBR 501

SBR 502

SBR 503

SBR 504

SBR 505

SBR 506

SBR 507

Discontinued (see notes below)

SBR 508

Continued

SBR 509

SBR 510

1 – The Lp, 45rpm and the 12" of "Last Night Changed It All" are all different versions from one another. 2 – Note: "Theme from the Planets" was recorded at 45 rpm speed on this release.

SBR 511

SBR 512

SBR 513

2 – "(Runaway) I Wouldn't Change a Thing" is actually two songs by Coke Escovedo put into one track: the ending of "Runaway" and "I Wouldn't Change a Thing".

SBR 514

SBR 515

SBR 516

SBR 517

SBR 518

4 – ***Note that the intro used in the beginning of the song is taken from the group's track "Troglodyte (Cave Man)".

SBR 519

SBR 520

5 – The group was called The Chubukos for the 7" single, but they were called Afrique for their LP Soul Makossa.

SBR 521

SBR 522

SBR 523

SBR 524

SBR 525

Oddities

There are some oddities in the collection, with releases SBR 499 and SBR 500 discontinued and now considered "unofficial", while SBR 508 was released with two different track listings. The later, alternate track listing for SBR 508 is as below.

SBR 508

Later volumes

Also, two later volumes were released, both as SBR 526. The first version was re-released as Strictly Breaks 1, and the second version was actually mixed and re-edited by Louis Flores.

SBR 526

Other notes

The earliest track on the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series is Joe Tex's "Papa Was Too", released in 1966, with the latest being Fonda Rae's "Touch Me (All Night Long)", released in 1984. The rarest track to be included on the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series is Manzel's "Midnight Theme", originally released on a Fraternity Records 7" record in 1975, though multiple reissues have been released and the song is available on many websites, including YouTube. However, for unknown reasons, the track was the only track left off a CD of all the tracks ever released on the Ultimate Breaks and Beats albums, possibly due to copyright issues. DJ Superix, a British DJ, is the first DJ known to have compiled every single break from every volume of Ultimate Breaks and Beats into one mix, entitled "Ultimate, Ultimate, Ultimate!", released in 2008. DJs Harry Love and MK originally released a mix CD as a tribute to the series entitled Beats Per Minute. While this CD did not feature every break, it was one of the first in the UK dedicated to be the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series. The first ever DJ mix in tribute to Ultimate Breaks & Beats is DJ Q Bert's Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik (1994). Subtitled as "A Pre-School Break Mix", DJ QBert mixed duplicate copies of UBB tracks with scratching and incorporated dialogue and samples from television, film and popular culture, notably comic books, cartoons and video games.

Other similar breakbeat compilations

Many drum break series compilation albums followed Ultimate Breaks and Beats, including: