The rhythm itself is beautifully simple in its structure: the kick drum that should arrive on the first beat of a half-time groove is ‘dropped’, moving to the third beat instead, where it sits under the snare or sidestick, bringing a lazy, ‘false offbeat’ emphasis to the track.
You can check out a thoroughly representative example of it in the Wailers’ helpfully named track One Drop, from the 1979 album Survival. Although not the only rhythm used in reggae, the one drop is probably the one most people hear in their heads when they think of the genre.
