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Jungle music is one of the most radical and punkish forms of electronic music, employing
fast tempos (150-190 BPM is common) and placing extended and mangled breakbeats on top of
throbbing, dominant basslines originally borrowed from reggae. Jungle borrows samples and
styles from almost all types of music, assimilating them and bringing them into a
completely different context.

Pure jungle often uses an MC's rasta vocals and rapping, but "jungle" is
sometimes used as a blanket term for drum and bass, jump up, dancehall, techstep, drill
and bass, ambient DnB and many other breakbeat subgenres, all with different sounds and
aesthetics. Drum'n'bass tends to be darker, while jump-up and dancehall are intended for
dance clubs.

Jungle beats, originally cut from hip hop and funk records of the 1970s and 1980s, were
made possible by adavances in musical technology. As jungle began to emerge many loop
samplers would not allow beats faster than 150 BPM, but as technology became more powerful
artists made beats specifically for jungle, often out of beats sampled from old records.
Drum machines were also employed when their design allowed.

One of the original jungle breaks, a classic that remains the most used breakbeat in
history, is the amen break, from a funk song called "Amen Brother" by The
Winstons. The energy and intensity of this particular breakbeat is regarded by many as a
definitive example of the jungle sound.