![]() ![]() The first hip-hop records: Enter The Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash He played raw street funk, but his emphasis was on the rhythm, which, at further parties, then at nearby Cedar Park, and then into nightclubs, he extended by mixing two, then three records together on twin record decks, utilising the breakdowns (“breaks”) that were common in funk tunes, when the track was reduced to its essence: the beat. When Herc first DJed, at an 11 August 1973 party he co-promoted with his sister, Cindy, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, in Morris Heights, his feel was already different to other local spinners. Besides which, The Bronx had its own more modest reggae culture, so Herc was aware of developments in Jamaican music such as the rise of the supreme toaster U-Roy, in 1970, and the birth of dub, which was built on the bare foundations of rhythm. Though Kool Herc was just seven when his parents moved the family to the Bronx, he’d absorbed enough of Jamaican musical culture to enable him to think differently to his North American neighbours. Sir Lord Comic, Count Machuki, King Stitt, King Sporty and more could not only drive dancers into a frenzy, they worked it to outcompete rivals, helping to make their sounds rule their area. He grew up listening to the ska, rocksteady and soul music that floated through the air in Kingston, and witnessed the local heroes – toasters or MCs – who roused the crowds with rhyming couplets uttered over the tunes the DJs – selectors – placed on the decks. Herc was born in Kingston, Jamaica, a city with more sound systems per square mile than human ears can calculate. Last night a DJ saved my life: Kool Herc and the first hip-hop party But it took a related musical culture to provide the necessary stimuli to initiate the birth of hop-hop, and it was embodied by Clive Campbell, a Bronx, NYC, record spinner who gloried in the name of DJ Kool Herc. The Last Poets just plain warned… Black communities were attuned to it all: speaking over sound was a way of life for some. Gil Scott-Heron’s poetic brainpower fuelled state-of-the-nation observations. Wanda Robinson delivered lonely loft musings. They just talk over records.” But rap had always been there in the background, be it Cab Calloway talking jive, or Solomon Burke, Millie Jackson, Isaac Hayes or Bobby Womack recording monologues that explained the feelings behind their songs. “Why, have you heard this new rap music? It’s hardly music at all, my dear. In the mid-70s, kids started taking the mic and talking over records at block parties in the areas of New York City where Manhattan sophisticates, happy to be seen doing dreadful dances at the sort of clubs that refused admission to Black people, would never dare to tread. The birth of hip-hop would be no less controversial. And each was condemned in turn: swing would supposedly turn the daughters of the middle-classes into cocaine-crazed flappers R&B was the devil’s music funk was grits and gruntin’. Each of these was built on the bedrock of the beat, no matter how complex the sweetenings might be. ![]() Far from primitive, it was sophisticated it gave birth to the blues, to gospel, to jazz to swing, rhythm’n’blues and bebop to soul and funk. Their music was a voice and a beat handclaps, a drum. It had been a part of music in America since plantation workers beat out rhythms that slavers feared, condemned, could not comprehend. Listen to the This Is Hip-Hop At Fifty playlist here. And one thing is certain: hip-hop don’t stop. There are many variants of rap and too many figures who helped build it to cram them all into this hip-hop history, but there is only one hip-hop. Hip-hop’s development is the story of a music that has shaped itself and commented on its progress and current status even as it was being made. Hip-hop has given young women the chance to express themselves in ways that were unthinkable when it first emerged it’s commented on the evils of modern life, and it still resonates right across the cultural landscape. Hip-hop has long since been recognised as a massive societal phenomenon and a dazzling artistic endeavour, and its stars have gone on to light up Hollywood, fascinate us on TV, and become hugely wealthy and influential business figures. The music provided the perfect soundtrack to the 80s and 90s, when individual voices had to speak loudly to be heard amid the rapid changes in society. What they wanted was a beat and a rhyme to reflect modern times. When rap burst into the public consciousness at the start of the 80s, many seasoned observers saw it as a an inevitably limited craze: why, those guys didn’t even sing. ![]()
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