I’ve produced music through much of 2010-2020, I wasn’t there in the 1980-2010s but it wasn’t uncommon see discussion online about different samples or things like this. Never really seen any mention something like this unquantified “je ne sais quoi” or at least don’t really recall

My take is, it was the first of its kind to widely circulate exhibiting desirable quantities for sampling, a combination of good enough and path dependency. After a certain level of saturation/entrenchment it carried an aesthetic compared to readily available samples (maybe this is what you meant).

Whenever I couldn’t find a breakbeat sample (or wanted some starting point at least) I’d default to it. When I did music production it was very easy to get your hands on a loop but obviously that’s much later.