All language subtitles for Microphone.Check.2024.1080p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX].en-en

This is the 50th anniversary of hip-hop,

but we still have a
lot of discrepancies as

far as the origins of hip-hop, a lot of
claims, who did what, who was the first

diss, who was the diss,
and that and such and

such, but at the end
of the day, we need a

definitive story, all right, and that
story can only be told by the founders

of this culture. Like everything was
being driven and influenced by young

black American culture, like the slang,
the style of dress, the initial music

that we chose. If you look at all the
boroughs, you got, you know, money-making man

and money-earning Mount Vernon and
crooklin. The Bronx was the boogie down

Bronx. We was partying up
there. I am Coke La Rock,

the first MC of hip-hop.
First cat to pick the mic up.

I introduced rapping to the turntable
because when I came with it,

nobody in the world was doing it. I'm right
after Rudy Ray Moore. They want to come

in the mix, they want to say, I was
restarting. No, no you didn't, no you didn't.

No you didn't. What can't be known as hip

-hop was solely an African
-American creation.

What would you get out
of some Jamaican toast?

What is that? I've never
heard of a rapper use

a Jamaican toast or a Jamaican look as a

rhyme. I never heard
of it, and I don't know

where that myth came
from. My name is Legendary

Jane Trixie from the
Bronx, the ex from the

narrative that hip-hop
has had three founding

fathers that's been
rolling for the last almost

30 years, which isn't
true. You don't have just

three people who created
hip-hop. Hip-hop was

created by a number of
different people. I am the

grandfather, the godfather
of the graffiti culture.

I am the first element
of hip-hop. The roots

of hip-hop being Jamaican,
absolutely false.

My name is M.C. Shah Ra. I am a founding
member of the M.C. slash rap culture.

Cassette taste was the internet of our
time. It just traveled around by hand.

I know for a fact that the B-boys dance

started from the gods,
the five percenters that

would be at the jams
back in the days who were

acting as security. If
they get the real truth

of how it all was created, then so many
lives would not be able to be in existence.

This is the Bronx in
1977. That's Grandmaster

Flash on the turntables
and Keith Cowboy on

the mic. This is some of the earliest
known footage of an actual hip-hop jam.

Four years earlier, what
would come to be known

as the first official
hip-hop jam was thrown by

Kool Herc on 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. There's
a lot of myths and disputes and legends

surrounding the events of that jam. So
what really happened at that 1973 party?

Hip-hop has become the
most dominant culture

in the world. You go
all around the world,

you see people dressing
like hip-hop B-boys,

dressing like rappers.
I've been to places like

East Island and I've
seen people dressing in

hip-hop clothes just
all over every corner

of the earth. Everybody's
emulating hip-hop

culture. I believe
because hip-hop is so big,

it's so majestic, I think that the story,

much like I always
compare it to religion,

when something is so
big that there's not an

easy answer for it, we
sometimes exaggerate

and we add on. So I
believe the party happened,

but my question is always,
what about August 10th,

the day before the party? How was it
not hip-hop the day before the party?

And afterwards, what happened then? I
don't think the skies magically opened up

and all these elements were happening at

this party. So once
again, when it came into

Kool Herc's party, I
picked the mic up because

it was there and I was
calling out names. So

again, I wasn't even
chasing Herc. I didn't

have nothing in mind about MC and DJing.

The very first breakbeat
party that I went

to is the gentleman by
the name of Kool Herc.

I went to Kool Herc
party for the first time

around in the middle
part of 1974 at a place

called the Twilight Zone.
The Flyer, we know that

the Flyer was a reimagining
of the party because

the Flyer was actually
made for the sandwich

and cedar clothing brand.
And we didn't really

start seeing the Flyer
really come about a lot

until the internet age.
You know, a lot of people

tell that story like they was at the first
party. They wasn't at the first party.

Hey y'all, I am your boy,
the chief rocker Busy

B, known to the world
as hip-hop's first solo

MC from the Boogie Down Bronx. You know,

everybody talking about
they was at the party,

it's every three Cindy
made for Herc. I don't

believe nobody that told
you that story was there.

I don't believe too
many people were there.

And it wasn't no big
thing. It was just a party

as far as the little
cardboard flyer says. It

says exactly what it
was. And you would assume

his family and his friends
came to that because

nobody on the planet
earth that said they was

there like it was a big
function. And then again,

if it was, it was his
friends and his family.

This is a uniquely
American art form founded

by descendants of the
enslaved, foundation of

Black Americans, right?
And so I just think that

it's become so powerful
and just like everything

that comes from our
communities. At some point,

people try to take it
away from us or they try

to co-opt it, or they
try to inject themselves

into something so that
they can feel like they're

part of something and
not stealing. So Kool

Herc's 1973 party is very
controversial. You know,

the narrative, the closer
we got to the 50, the

more the narrative
started to be questioned.

I've been to 1520. I
actually have spoken in

the rec room at 1520.
It's a very small room.

And I wouldn't say you
can fit 50 people in

there comfortably. One
of the biggest myths

about hip hop culture is
that hip hop originated

out of Jamaica and nothing
can be further from

the truth. That narrative came into play

around 1981 when 2020
ABC News did a special

about hip hop culture.
The first special they

ever done about hip hop
culture was done in 1981.

And they talked about
how we would rhyme over

here in the South and
the correlation between

that and the toasting
that was going on in

Jamaica. Stories in
rhyme have traditionally

been common among the black
poor in the deep South.

Rap's Caribbean
counterpart can be found in

the reggae rhythms and rhymes of Jamaica.

So people kind of took that report and
then later said, well, the origin of hip

hop must be Jamaican toasting, which it's

not. Jamaican brothers
were doing anything,

like I said, and the black Americans
were doing nothing. I didn't see.

And if they were Jamaican,
I don't know, because

we all black. So and
we all talk, you know,

you would know if they were in
the house because they talk funny.

We always create something
new that people look

down on. That's how you
know hip hop is ours

a hundred percent and
no one else's, because

we see the same pattern
over and over and over

and over again. It happened with jazz.
Jazz was known as jungle music. You know,

they outlaw Harry
Ossinger, outlaw weed based

off of jazz. People think of jazz as this

highly sophisticated
form of music. Now, no,

jazz was some stuff that
was outlawed. It was

degenerate. It was
music that was going to

make, according to the
movie Reefer Madness,

it was going to make black men rape white
women. The people don't know the first

marijuana arrest in
California state history

happened here in Los
Angeles on Sunset Boulevard

in 1937 when Louis
Armstrong, the same father

of jazz, of American music, who rapped,

got arrested on Sunset
Boulevard for smoking

weed. And whenever we
as foundation of black

Americans, we do something
constructive, there's

always this desire from the media and the

dominant society to
erase our involvement in

it. So we are seeing now
a concerted effort from

those in the dominant
society to talk about hip

hop and the origins of
it while they're slowly

trying to erase the foundation of black
American origin and creation of hip hop.

Rock and roll is another genre that was
created out of the black community that has

been co-opted completely almost. I mean,

even I did a piece on
this. It was looking at

the possibility of black
rappers going extinct,

right? And if you
compare that to rock and

roll, for example, you
got Ike Turner and then

you got Bill Haley and
his comments, right?

Ike Turner came out two
years before, right?

I can't think of the
name of the album right

now, but the Ike Turner
album was considered

the nexus of rock and roll, right? It was

considered the beginning
of it. And then two

years later, Bill Haley
and his comments came out

with an album. And over
history, you can look

at Google trends on
this. Like if you just

go look at different
points in time when people

are talking about the
history of rock and roll,

you can see that it
starts with Ike Turner.

And then over time,
publications start talking

about Bill Haley and his comments. So if

you go look at the
history of rock and roll,

you will find competing articles that are
giving credit to two different artists,

even though one was
like three years before

the other one, two,
three years before the

other one. Now we don't even, we don't
even claim rock and roll anymore.

The origin of hip hop comes from Southern
culture. We have to understand a lot of

black people who were up in the South
Bronx and Harlem and New York, they were

people who had migrated
up there from the South.

This is why you have a
lot of the early pioneers

of hip hop who have South Carolina, North
Carolina roots. So a lot of our families

are now coming up North
and primarily most of

them winded up in Harlem
because Harlem was

the Mecca for black
culture. And so because we

are the children that's
coming up around that

time in the late fifties, early sixties,
I'm going in the early sixties, you know,

we're exposed to all of that black power,
that black Panther movement, you know,

here in Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin

Luther King, you know,
all of these people and

different things they
wrote, or even people

like the last poets. You
could easily walk down

the street of Harlem
and hear a record shop

playing these different
music and different

things like that. So we had a lot
of black pride about ourselves.

I also think that time
period you're coming

out of Vietnam, like
you're coming out in the

Vietnam era, you got
a lot of people coming

home that are happy to
be here and are ready

to dance and express
themselves. So I think

that leads into, you
know, some of the sounds

that we hear in disco,
some of the, you know,

the progression and
music that's over there.

Well, one of the things I often like to
say to people to just to kind of help them

to understand that the frame of mind we
had in the seventies when hip hop started

is that because we were
teenagers, we're all

basically born in the
60s. So we are the first

generation whose parents
are coming out of

slavery and then actually
coming through the

black migration. And so you actually see

families now moving
from the south up north.

People who had not been able to own, now
they could listen to music, they could own

phonograph, and they
cannot fear because, you

know, in the south, black
people, whether it's

a church or a school,
are always subject to

attacks from white folks.
There was a greater

freedom for cultural
expression. This is rare

footage of a block
party in Harlem in 1967,

where we're witnessing foundational black

Americans engaging in
their cultural expressions

while performing street
dances to the James

Brown track Cold Sweat,
which is one of the first

records to feature a
funk breakbeat. So we're

witnessing the early seeds being planted

of what would eventually become hip hop.
You know, we had rap music around before,

but rapping over swing
has a different kind

of feel to it. Rapping
over to the blues has

a different feel to it.
But when James Brown

came and laid that one on
us, it gave us a pocket

to where rap started
making more sense than

any other form of music. So without funk,

there's literally no way you can have
rap thrive the way it is right now.

You know, that's how the
ghetto was built. You

know, people came from
down south, and they

came to New York to try to look for
opportunities, and then they wound up in the

projects. At the time in
the 70s, we were rocking

out to funk music, disco
music, very up-tempo

music. So we weren't
grooving to the slow, kind

of mundane, Caribbean
music that was out at the

time. So that narrative
that we got hip hop from

Jamaican or Caribbean
culture is absolutely false.

Early on, you're talking
about funk. Funk and

disco, but they're
twins because, you know,

rappers are like, that
was a disco track, you

know. But then we just,
the majority of hip

hop, that's funk bass.
When you're talking

about the Bomb Squad,
that's funk. When you're

talking about Dr. Dre,
that's funk. You know what

I mean? So the pocket,
hip hop couldn't exist

without the pocket of funk. Blacks moving

to the big cities and
then those blacks who

could get jobs were
responsible for buying a

disproportionate number
of phonograph players,

meaning that the whole record industry, a

significant part of it
had to do with the fact

that black folks bought
records and record

players. And if you look
and research all the

things in Jamaica,
anything in Jamaica, any

of their hit records or
anything, they emulate

what American is. So
anything that the DJs

would say or the records
that they would play

is from America. They redid what American

music is. They were very
influenced by Western

country music. That's why a lot of
Jamaican performers back in the day,

days, they'd have names
like Josie Wales and

they would have cowboy
hats on and they would

be positioned like this on their album
covers because they loved American

Westerns and shit like that. In reverse,
Jamaicans had nothing to do with hip hop

the way it is. I'm not hip
hop according to most people,

but I am the source of
what hip hop became.

They even said I was
Jamaican. That's called

Herc. My mother came
from North Carolina. My

father, to be truthful,
they said he was born in

Jersey, not to be
disrespectful to anybody's

nationality. I didn't
know Herc was Jamaican

for a good while. When you look at a
lot of the early pioneers in hip hop,

none of them heard any toasting records.
They weren't playing toasting records or

Jamaican records or
reggae records at some

of the earliest jams.
Even Kool Herc himself

has said he didn't play Caribbean records

because the audience
just didn't take to it.

Jamaican toasting? No, we're not on the
mic. I mean, if you're 14, 15 years old,

what Jamaican artist
are you listening to?

You don't even know a
Jamaican artist. We're

all in high school, so we don't
have that kind of information.

So the roots of hip hop being
Jamaican, absolutely false.

And we listen to the
early creators of Scott

Music. They tell you they got it from us

because they were coming to America
working the sugar fields in World War II.

And part of their
economy was to get black

American music, as many
records as they can get

in Florida, and take
them back to Jamaica.

Same thing in the 50s.
And it said in the book

Blue Monday, radio signals can be heard
in Jamaica out of Florida in the wardens.

And so it's no coincidence that the
Jamaican music took on that more Louisiana,

see, fast dominoes from the
wardens. It's from Louisiana.

If you really know the history of
music and the relationship between

America and Jamaican
music, Jamaicans were

the ones that were
imitating American music

since the 50s. We get
that sound. Even early

James Brown, he was Try
Me. It's a man's world.

That's early rhythm
and blues. But he took

that same format that
was rhythm and blues,

the same structure. It's just that when
you were doing old rhythm and blues,

a lot of it was just
on the two. It was very

up like that. What
James Brown did was say,

no, no, no, no, no. We're going to slow it
down a little bit. And instead of going,

we're going to go, we're going to go one.

And that little change,
it's still rhythm and

blues, but you're changing
the accent on where

the beat is. And that
change in the accent is

what punctuates what
we call rap and hip-hop

because rap hip-hop is a very aggressive

sound. It's very assertive.
So it needed that

drive. It needed that punch. Another myth
that they put out is that sound systems

came from Jamaican
culture. We got the sound

system concept from the
Caribbeans. And that's

not true either because
in the early 70s and

the late 60s, there
were DJs all around New

York who had sound
systems. Pete DJ Jones, he

definitely had a big
sound system. Flowers,

wow. He had a crazy big sound system.
You had a lot of cats in Queens. They had

crazy sound systems
because they had places

to keep it. Cats in
the Bronx, they live in

apartments. So they would have crates of

records all in their
apartment, but the speakers

would be in so-and-so's
house. Amps would be

in so-and-so's house.
And when they came out

to play, they had to go to these particular
so-and-so's to make their stuff happen.

If we got a concept
of a sound system from

Jamaica, name the Jamaican
manufacturing company

that created the sound system. What did
they bring that we didn't already have?

We could have gone to
Sears and Roebuck to

get anything that they
got. They had to come

to America to go to Sears and Roebuck.
All we had to go down to was 155th Street.

What do you mean? So when they say that
the sound system thing came from Jamaica,

let's just break it down.
At the time, and this is

no disrespect to Jamaica
because I love Jamaica.

This is no disrespect.
We're talking about the

50s and the 60s. Jamaica
is still very much

so a third world country.
They don't have the

resources to have these
grand sound systems

that we're talking about.
People can't afford

them. You know, when it comes to America,

yeah, black people during the 50s and
the 60s, we weren't doing the best,

but we can afford a sound system. One
thing about us, we can afford some music.

I'm Zool King Charlie
Rock, one of the first 11

Zool Kings, one of the
original 11 Zool Kings.

They want to try and
sandwich Caribbeans in

the air for whatever
reason, I don't know.

Your sound system is your sound system. I

don't know anything about
Caribbeans being them

too and they got it from them. They didn't
get it from them. Not putting on a disco

record saying, welcome
to the party who's in

the house. That's not
the star of hip-hop.

Not the Jamaicans setting up the speakers
playing reggae. That's not hip-hop.

You know what I mean?
Hip-hop is what we see

today. I hate that they try to take that,

not just from the Bronx,
but from black people.

If you went to Brooklyn with Grandmaster

Flowers and them guys,
they had systems. They

was known because you
could go and it'd be

a concert. They have
concert type of speakers

and the little DJ right
there in the middle.

Out of all that crew,
this is the Soundview DJs.

The only one who had a
really big sound system

and it was really established
was Kool D and his

brother Tyron the Mixologist,
may he rest in peace.

D was the only one. Well, I'm Kool
DJ D. I started in the early 70s,

1973. I first started out in Brooklyn
playing with a group called Fantasia.

I left Fantasia and I
left Brooklyn and we

moved up to the Bronx
and then I got my own

equipment and we started
playing up in the

parks and in clubs in
Manhattan and stuff like

that. At the end of
the day, Hurk never did

have a big sound system. He had a system,

like again, Breakout had
a system because again,

it was just Flash. AJ
and Love Bugstarski,

they didn't have systems. Again, they
was the average like everybody else,

but to say somebody had
a system, Mario had a

system. They didn't give
us the sound system.

We knew about the sound
system anyway. I bought

my sound system from Harvey Sounds in the

beginning. It's a store down
on 45th Street in Manhattan.

How essential is the sound system to
hip-hop? We have to ask that question.

We all have iPhones. We
can go ahead and pull

out our iPhone right now
and pull up some Nas.

Is it not hip-hop because it's not in the

big sound system? Like,
okay, we have cars.

The sound system is
just a piece of plastic.

What gets played through
it is what makes it what

it is. I had a cross
favorite in 1973. It was

GLI Disco 38. That's the
model. It's the first

one in the Bronx. Who Hurk? He didn't
have a system. He had equipment, you know,

but to say he had a
system and he did that,

nah, I never saw it
too much. And then like

when we was at the PAL,
he would have his three

speakers set up on the
stage. So it looked

like a big system, but it was actually on

the stage. So if you
down there and you see

the speakers is up
there, it'll look like a

big, gigantic system.
And your sounds is good,

but you will hear it in the sounds. We
already had some had systems. All right,

you had PTJ Jones. He had his system.
You had plumber. He had his system.

Show me a break beat in a whaler song.
Show me a break beat in any of this music

in Roscoe. Show me a
break beat in any of that

music that they were
doing. Then I'll say they

brought it to us, but
it wasn't there. Now the

break beats came after
they heard James Brown

do it. Then they're like, Oh, look at this.
We can do it too. But it came from us.

Let's be clear. And there's no disrespect

that it came from us.
Just pay honor to the

people who gave it to
you. That's all. I think

anyone who's coming
with the narrative that

it was 50, 50 blacks in
anybody is categorically

false. I mean, not even
just from a hip hop

standpoint, but if you
separate the elements of

hip hop that we look at
as hip hop at that point

in time, and now all
of those were already

happening. You can look
up, there's a picture,

you can Google it right now. Anyone
listening, Mary D. William, Mary D. Mary D.

Was one of the founders
of what's the record

company that the Beatles,
that signed the Beatles,

her and her brother, DJ records. Well,
you see before she founded DJ records,

you can Google an image
of her in the studio

with two big turntables,
taking a picture like.

Another media narrative
that's being pushed

is that there is a holy
trinity of hip hop.

And there are just three founding fathers.
But when you peel back the layers,

you'll see that there were several people

influencing the
foundation of the culture.

So who were some of these other
pioneering founders of hip hop?

Hip hop was created by a multitude of
people. It wasn't just one person who said,

I'm going to start a
party in 1973 and boom,

hip hop began. It was
an amalgamation of so

many different cultures
coming out of foundational

black American culture,
coming out of the South

by way of the Bronx. And it just all came

together organically.
And then it morphed into

what we now know as
hip hop. When you talk

about going to parties,
clubs, block parties,

or whatever, it was the DJs that preceded

hip hop that was talked
about, DJ Hollywood,

Eddie Cheeba, you know what I mean? Guys
like that and DJs that were radio DJs,

Frankie Crocker and guys like that. Other

than that, hip hop brought
DJs to the streets.

My theory is hip hop came from
the streets. It didn't really,

you know, really one guy really created
it. It was a lot of elements there

that created this culture
on everything we have.

The myth of the three founding fathers
started around 1992. The Source magazine

did a cover story about hip hop and they
had a lot of the different pioneers there.

And they interviewed
several people and they

took photos with several
people. From what I

understand, they took
Herc Flash and Bambada and

got three of them in the
photo and did a photo

with them by themselves. And then the
magazine cover came out saying the three

founding fathers of hip
hop. 74, 75, 76, those

were the formative years
of hip hop. Hip hop

hadn't gotten on its
feet fully yet. It wasn't

established as a culture
yet. It was just people

playing music in the
street. Okay. We hadn't

connected the dots yet.
All right. Hip hop was

still in its infancy,
in its formation. And

then we were just coming
off another cultural

movement, which was
the disco movement. One

of the reasons why they
emphasized on Herc,

Flash and Bambada, those
three brothers, they

had the Caribbean
backgrounds. And I think that

was a way for them to
kind of, the media, and

I'm talking about the
media, that was a way for

them to deny the input of
a lot of the foundation

of black American founders
of hip hop. Because I

noticed a lot of the
other founders of hip hop,

the people who were there
in the very beginning,

the ones who have the foundation of black

American lineage, many of
them were systematically

etched out of the narrative. And the only

ones that are emphasized,
coincidentally have

Caribbean backgrounds.
And there were so many

other people who were
instrumental in the creation

of hip hop. That's why
Herc is the top guy,

like as far as doing
the jam, because most of

the jams in the early
days, it was a bunch

of guys. It was like,
smelled like balls and

kneecaps when you went in there. You know

what I mean? Herc was
the first one that had

actual, you know, girls, you know, it was

guys in there hustling,
guys in there selling,

you know, weed or
whatever it was, dust. But

it was a real party,
you know what I mean?

And everything else was,
you know, and then when

we came along, we kind
of established ourselves

a little bit, a little bit more. I
think what set Herc apart was that Herc

primarily focused on
playing the break beats

and doing parties where
the kids like those

break beats in particular,
whereas a lot of the

other DJs were playing
disco and other types of

records, other RandB
records, and they were not

emphasizing on the
breaks as much. Herc just

primarily focused on the
break beats. And I think

that made him stand out.
He wasn't the creator

of the break beats
because again, there were

other people playing
break beats before him.

With Mean Gene, at this
time, he stopped working

with Flash and he developed
his own group because

he had a brother named
Theodore. He had a kid.

Theodore was a kid, but
that was his brother.

And he knew he can DJ. So he said, I'd
rather just try to bring my little brother

and y'all rap with my
brother if he need MCs.

Herc was not a proficient
DJ in the sense of the word.

Okay? There were better
DJs in that regard.

Flash, for example, was
a much better DJ than

Herc. But Herc is the
one who made all of it

popular. Flash did the
cutting. Theodore did

the scratching. Flash didn't
know about the cutting,

the scratching. He cut,
he can cut a record.

He would cut it so fast to, you know,
that was his name, Flash. But Theodore was

That was unheard of. Nobody knew, nobody

even thought that you
can do that to a record

until they saw that
little guy do it. Somebody

like Herc, and with all respect to Herc,

there's never anything
taken away from Herc.

But from people who
witnessed what he was doing,

they said that he didn't
necessarily always mix on

beat. He would just kind
of slam records together.

One of the reasons that
a coke or a rock may not

have been able to say a
long rhyme is because he

doesn't have a music
bed that permits him to

rhyme a long time because
the music is shifting.

The pitch is not, the
tempo is not perfect.

One of the media
narratives is that we got

the concept of break
beats from Kool Herc. And

according to Herc, I
think Herc said he heard

other DJs playing break
beats before he was. There

were other people who
were in the Bronx early

saying that they went to
parties and there were DJs

emphasizing the break
beats. So there were other

DJs playing break beats
on records. Sometimes

the narrative was that
some DJs were extending

the breaks. I think DJ Jones said that he
extended the breaks. For my research and

interviews over the last
two decades or more, I

have heard people say that
there were some people

who played break beats prior to Kool Herc.
I think in an older interview, Herc said

he even saw somebody, I think John Brown

or somebody like that,
playing break beats.

He used to go to school with me
after this man's name was John Brown.

This is where, you
know, just begun. Jimmy

Casta. Jimmy Casta. So did you make that,

did you discover that?
I played more. I played

more of it from a lineup from John Brown.

Before Herc was playing
breaks, people were

playing break beat
records. They just weren't

known as break beat records. They weren't

labeled as break beat
records. They were just

called a song with a
get down part in it. All

right. And that's how our
elders referred to it.

Let's say you play a
song by Rufus Thomas. All

right. And then it
breaks down and you just

got the beat rocking. That's the get down

part. That's when you
see the old people go,

oh shit, and they get low. That's the get

down part. That
translated into the break.

I remember there used to be a spot, and
this is before I ever went to a Herc jam,

and it was called Chuck
Senna, and it was in

Manhattan. And they
was playing beat books.

There was people that
was doing it. But the

difference between
that and what Herc did,

you know, he revolutionized
it. I guess he was

the first guy that had
the full collection,

a full collection of break beats.
When it comes to the break beat,

the break beat is something that's
always been around in our music.

Go back and listen to the blues. Listen
to Rolling Stone by Muddy Waters.

The whole song is a break beat. It doesn't
change. The blues was a break beat,

the whole song was. But when you put
that rhythm and blues aspect on it,

it just got flowered into a bigger song.
And then at some point within the song,

there was always a breakdown back
to the meat and bones of the song,

and then it gets flowered back up again.

Pete DJ Jones was a man
DJing. See, we was kids

and teenagers. Hollywood,
Flash, teenagers,

we was kids. High school men, teenagers.
Pete DJ Jones was a grown man.

So Pete DJ Jones, he
was down with Rocky from

Rocky McConnell from the
Universal Hip Hop Museum

in the Bronx. And I
think he had an MC, KC,

the King of Disco or something like that,

might've been his name.
So he did roll with MCs.

He was, again, an older
gentleman who played

for a hip hop crowd. I
think he had a battle

with Grandmaster Flash
at one point. I don't

know him to touch the
tables and do tricks like

Flash, but he did claim
to extend break beats.

A lot of guys played
disco records, and perhaps

maybe they extended the beats. You know,

Pete DJ Jones, Hollywood, Eddie Cheeba,
all them guys, they extended the breaks,

but not for a long period of
time like hip hop DJs would do.

You can't talk about the beginning of
hip hop like you know it and not mention

a Disco King Mario. And DJ
Smokey is another person.

It was three major DJs, Herc, Bam, and
Flash. So those are the three major DJs.

But like I said, the
first DJ that I ever went

to was Smokey, but Smokey
wasn't established.

He was in the side of the
project, the pomulated

room or whatever the hell they called it.

And Mario, he did do
jams, but you know, his

jams was, it was nothing
like how Herc jams was.

And Smokey is a DJ that played in
a certain section of the Bronx.

Some people say that,
that Flash used to carry

records for him. Don't
know how true that is,

but there are people who say, if you go
through Smokey's records that, you know,

you'll see some of
Flash's records in there.

My man Smokey, Smokey in the smoking
truck. Smokey was a DJ that came up,

I think around the same time as, or
a little after the same time as Herc,

on the other side of the Bronx. And
he had a crew called the Smokertrons.

And he was doing his
thing for quite a while,

a person that should be
acknowledged very much,

because he also had his hand in
the beginning of the culture.

Smokey was playing breaks. Smokey
introduced a lot of breaks.

Okay, Smokey, you know, a lot of
joints, you heard Smokey play first,

and then you heard Herc get it,
and then you heard Flash get it,

or somebody, but Smokey
was, yeah, was that dude.

A DJ called Smokey, and he did, he used to
do parties, and like, it was like a room

on the side of where the
project building was,

like a, like, I guess
it was like a little

office. And he did a jam
in there, and that was

the first actual B-Boy
party that I ever went to.

Smokey and the Smokertrons. DJ
Smokey is also a West Bronx DJ,

and according to him,
he's Kool Herc's nemesis.

He says that specifically
in the video on YouTube,

but he was also a very popular DJ
on par with Herc at the same time.

Smokey went to the service early on, and
his name got left out of the narrative.

We hear Bam, Herc, and
Flash, but Smokey, he

may have stopped too
early to be part of that

narrative. And he had
his own thing. Smokey had

his own equipment, and
Herc had his own equipment.

Smokey had come out more
than Herc, so that's

how Smokey built up.
Now, Smokey never had a

known MC to carry his
name, to keep it going.

Disco King Mario is from
the side of the Bronx

where I live now, the
Soundview, Rosedale section

of the Bronx, and he
was the man over there.

What Kool Herc is to the
west side of the Bronx,

Disco King Mario was to
that side of the Bronx.

Mario was basically in
the southeast on the side

where Bambada was, and
he was one of the earlier

disco DJs, because
that's why you have disco

in his name. But like a lot of early DJs,

he eventually started
playing break beats and

hip-hop music and
different things like that.

Disco King Mario was a
pioneer of our culture,

and is a pioneer of our culture, because

of what he did in the
beginning. It was Mario,

Bambada, and Grandmaster
Flash. But you know,

I mean, dude, rest in peace. And he just
passed away. Or he would be with us right

now because he wouldn't have allowed them
not to put him down. I'm DJ Kool Clyde,

first DJ along with DJ
Lightning Lance, which

is my cousin, to record
live scratch on wax.

Not the inventor of
scratch, but to actually

go into the studio and
record it. The unique

thing about Mario was,
because he was one of

the Black Spades, they
were able to go all over

the Bronx and play in
other people's areas.

Not many people can do
that. A lot of the gangs

were fading out by the
time hip-hop came in. Or

came to be known as hip
-hop, let's put it that

way. A lot of those gangs
turned into crews. Like

Mario's, that's the
first division of Spades.

He came up with the
Chuck City Crew. For the

early hip-hop DJs to do
what they did and get

the respect that they
needed to get, they had to

have street connections.
They had to know about

the gangs and where to
move and where to shake

around the city. Mario
was connected with the

Black Spades, so he had
that street respect.

You couldn't go around
the Bronx in the 70s at

that time with a lot
of equipment trying to

set up somewhere and
you didn't have street

connections. You had
to be somebody who had

some kind of respect or
some kind of connections

in the streets. There
was a lot of DJs that was

out there. Of course,
you had Disco King Mario.

You had DJ Hollywood that I heard of.
Mario was well known. He had a reputation

already around the
neighborhood that I was playing

at, so everybody knew
him. Mario, for instance,

and even when I would
go to Mario parties,

Mario would mix certain
disco songs that I

would rhyme to. Disco
King Mario was another

early pioneer that a lot
of people tried to erase

out of hip-hop. He's now getting the
recognition he's supposed to get.

He was an early pioneer
of hip-hop. A brother

from North Carolina went
up there to the Bronx,

very well respected.
For some reason, Disco

King Mario was phased
out. He, unfortunately,

he passed away and he
had substance problems.

He struggled with that.
His last few years

here, a lot of people
kind of dismissed him

because they seen him
in the street looking,

you know, a certain way.
Me, I embraced him. I

told him, y'all, come
over to the sound system.

Come over here and hang
out with me because

I don't forget my culture.
I don't forget who

laid it down for me. I
think hurt parties took

off with the underground
audience. It's a youth

thing. I believe that the
people who were partying

to Hollywood in a more
sophisticated crowd,

were just coming to hear
music. And, you know,

if they heard somebody
talking over the record,

it was more like what
they were used to with

the job talking DJs.
I think hurt was doing

something more unique
and something that was

catered to young people.
Another long-standing

debate in hip-hop history
revolves around the

identity of a hip-hop
DJ and their distinction

from disco DJs. There
were pioneering DJs who

significantly influenced
the formation of hip-hop,

yet they're often dismissed as just
being disco DJs. So the question is,

what distinguishes a disco
DJ from a hip-hop DJ?

It is a distinction
because like, like I said,

coming off the end of
disco, like you had a,

it was a DJ called Pete
DJ Jones, right? So he

was like the big DJ around
that time, but he was

disco. And then, you
know, a little bit after

Pete in Hollywood comes
in and I considered

Hollywood a disco DJ,
even though after a while,

he did play the break piece, but that
was after hip-hop eclipsed disco.

There's a difference between the hip-hop
DJ and the disco DJ. They were playing,

the hip-hop DJs were
playing records that b

-boys could go off to.
The disco DJ played,

you know, more black
disco. He didn't cater

to our crowd. Grandmaster
Flowers, may he rest

in peace from what I
learned, is a legendary

DJ, which I have witnessed
him play, come from

Brooklyn. And he was the
man when he was at his

present time. Grandmaster
Flowers was a Brooklyn

DJ, very good blender
from what I heard. I've

seen flyers of Grandmaster
Flowers, reportedly

Grandmaster Flash, you know, got the name

Grandmaster from Flowers.
But to be able to do

what Flash was doing,
if a, if a disco DJ did

that, then the people in
the party couldn't dance.

We weren't necessarily
concerned about dancing.

We were more concerned
about either being a DJ,

being a break dancer, or being an emcee.
So that's why the demarcation between the

disco DJ and the hip-hop DJ is much
different because of the way they're playing

the music. So Flash and
Bam and Herc and all of

them, it's just basically
focusing in on that

one part and keeping that going. And the
disco DJs, they may do the same thing,

but not for a long period of
time. That wasn't their forte.

That was Flash claiming
the fame to actually

have a clean cut. Like Herc used to just,

it would be a blend, but it wouldn't
even be an on-time blend and it just,

everything would be
all over the place. And

then the next record
comes in, but Flash would

have the clean cuts. And then, you know,
that gave us the ability to actually rap.

You're sneaking downtown
to the discos to listen

to the sounds of what
was going on playing

between RandB, disco,
and dance music. Coming

up to a cohort affair,
which I always heard

so much about him through high school, I
started seeing it was a whole different

vibe. Number one, you
didn't have to be dressed.

You could be as you are.
The age was younger.

Because the first DJ,
the first hip hop DJ

played disco music too. I remember clubs,

I had to play disco. They wouldn't let me
cut up record, play break beats in there.

Hey, don't come up in here with that shit,
Joe. All right. And so just to get in,

you know, we had to
go in. I didn't have a

problem with it cause
I played, I blended.

You know what I mean? I danced disco. I
hustled. I did all that. So I was with it.

But my, you know, my
main thing was cutting

up breaks and breakdancing
and shit like that.

So, you know, I played a dual role in
the beginning. When we're in the park,

I could do what I want. We, you know,
all day. But if I go in this club,

I got to play what they want me to play,

play for older crowd
and all that. So that's

how I got, you know,
all the DJs had to do

that. I mentioned
earlier, Brooklyn and Love

is the Message. That's
like the Brooklyn Anthem

to this day. They were rhyme off of that.

And the way they rhymed
off, it was different

than how the Bronx
would rhyme. It was much

more of a Hollywood type of cadence.
Where the Bronx thing was a little slower,

and the breaks were a
little more rugged. They

were doing the same
thing, but stylistically,

it was delivered in a different way. But
the people who called disco DJs disco,

they are definitely doing it
in a derogatory way of saying,

that's not as authentically
hip hop as what we're doing.

If your go-to song was
Love is a Message, you're

a disco DJ. But if your
go-to song was Apache,

you're a hip hop DJ. And that's
the distinction right there.

I think the disdain
came from the fact that

the disco DJs separated
themselves from us.

Okay. We were the next generation coming
up with this thing and they was like,

what's this little
hippity hop thing and this

and that. They, you
know, they shunned us.

All right. Don't come in
here with that breakdancing

shit and all that.
Take that shit outside.

Every flyer up until
the early 80s said disco

on. They said discothon,
spankathon. They would

advertise the party as
that. Early DJs, Disco

B, Disco King Mario.
Disco was in a lot of,

you know, a lot of
rhymes in the early days.

DJ Hollywood was a very important DJ. And

there's been a lot of
debate about DJ Hollywood,

whether he was a hip
hop DJ or a disco DJ.

Hollywood was basically
the liaison between the

60s, early 70s, Dolomite type
of rhymer and the modern MC.

Hollywood's claim to
fame is that he calls

himself like the godfather
of the modern day

rhyme. And one of the first to
speak and DJ simultaneously.

He was not a hip hop DJ. And there's
nothing to say about that. He gets angry

when you say he wasn't
a hip hop DJ. I started

this. You may have, you
were, I know you as a

disco DJ, 371. You pointedly said loud,
loudly, get that hip hop stuff out of here.

There's guys who play
music and occasionally

stuck a break in. But
we knew what the breaks

were. We just didn't make them the
focal point of the whole entire evening.

We all had those breaks in our crepes, but
we played them when we felt necessary to

put that break in. A
lot of people say that

Hollywood wasn't hip
hop because mainly the

places he played, you
know, Hollywood wasn't

playing at, you know, P
.S. whatever, you know,

school school yard or some of the more
kind of rudimentary block parties.

Hollywood was playing
for a very upscale crowd

hustlers. You know, you had to get into a

Hollywood party. You have
to have a college shirt

and high bottom shoes.
I was doing this same

form of entertainment
long before it had a

name. So they discredit
me and that particular

fact. But I am what you
became. He would get

popular records and kind
of rap at the beginning

or rap in the middle
over the break or at the

end of the break. But
he wasn't looping back

and forth. He just kind
of rhymed on top of

records like a lot of
radio DJs did. But the

style of rhyming he did
was utilized by other

rappers to come after him. So he is very

important in the hip hop genre. I got
the incentive for crowd participation

from a guy named Casey to Princess Soul.
Casey was the vocal spoke for DJ Jones.

I was able to get into
some Hollywood parties

because I would dress
up as if I was a mature

adult. Right. But a lot
of other kids, you know,

young kids couldn't
get into that party and

you couldn't go into a
Hollywood party and start

breakdancing, you know,
on the floor because he

didn't play that type of
music. Herc provided the

music, you know, for that
B-girl and that B-boy.

I'm playing in clubs
that require shoes, that

clubs that requires
neatness. And what you're

talking about is me not
dancing with you on that

particular level, but
the same thing that you

did in sneakers, dungarees,
whatever, was the same

style you took from the
guy in the suit and tie.

I've heard Hollywood
say on one occasion that

he never even went to
hip hop parties because

there was no money
there, which it wasn't.

He was a hip, he was a
disco DJ. Oftentimes,

he was booked three
times a night, made like

fifteen hundred dollars
just at one particular

party. If you went to a
hip hop, if you went to

a jam, you got no money
because that's outside.

And if you went to a party, for the most

part, if you look at
our old flyers, we only

charged them two dollars
for people to get

in. And everybody in there is a teenager.

When it comes to this
lyrical content, I didn't

invent it, but I took
it and made it work.

And then that everybody that's doing any
rhyming or any rapping is my disciples.

Now that we have an understanding
of who the early hip hop DJs were,

where did rapping as we
know it originate? And

who were the first MCs
to get on the mic at a

jam in hip hop? When
we look at rhyming or

rapping, rapping
basically is rhyming in a

syncopated manner over
beats in an atonal fashion.

You're not committing
to any type of note.

So everything is atonal,
but you're rhyming

on beat. So that goes back to the 1920s.

Before you had hip hop,
you had hip cats. You

had jive, where you
were rapping and doing

this stuff. Cab Calloway, the first
million-selling record, Minnie the Moocher.

We don't know the
beginnings of rap, because

as long as our music has been recording,

people have been rapping. The father of
American music, Louis Armstrong, rapped.

You know, he's rapping in the 40s and he

don't know when. Rap
is just something that,

it's a way that we speak. It's a rhythmic

form of expression,
you know? And so like,

you'll hear, even if
you listen to a lot of

rhythm and blues, you'll
hear something like,

let me rap to you real
fast, right? It's just

a way, it's just a slick way that we talk

musically. Even rap,
as we know it, people

rapped before. The word
rap means to talk to

somebody. Yo, let me
rap to you real quick. I

mean, it means to talk,
it means to converse,

okay? The term MC, all
right, comes from the

master of ceremony, the
guy that comes up on

the mic and makes the
announcements, okay?

Melly Mel flipped it for
hip-hop to E-M-C-E-E.

We're not just the announcers,
we rap and rhyme. We're MCs.

Most of the first MCs were poets in the
beginning. They wrote poetry and then they

graduated at rhymes. Believe it or
not, you had to be a pretty intelligent

young man or woman at the time to put
these rhymes together. Sam on beat,

if the DJ messed up, you didn't throw
nothing at the DJ, you had to improvise.

If you listen to any
of those old tapes of

Charlie Chase messed
up or Flash messed up

or Theodore or whoever's manning the
turntables, the MCs didn't cuss the DJ out.

They adjusted and they fell back on beat.

See, this whole DJ
culture thing that they

were talking about, that comes out
of what we were doing in the studios.

Disco King, Mario, these guys, they were

listening to what was
going on on the radio

and these things that we see happening
in parks, the rapping over a break beat.

Jaco Henderson was doing
that in studio in New York.

Because in the beginning,
it was no MC, so we kind

of pioneered that. So either
you was a DJ or a B-boy.

As a DJ, every DJ got to
have a microphone. The

microphone was mainly
used to make announcements

and to shout out people in the crowd. And
just to big up yourself, let them know,

I'm DJ so-and-so, this and that, woo
woo. And now you got a side man who,

he's standing there and he's saying
that while you're DJing for you.

So he's your hype man. He's the one,
yeah, this is DJ so-and-so, this and that.

We the search and search crew and my
man so-and-so's in the house like that.

Rap evolved from just that.

Flash, who's one of the
earliest hip hop DJs,

sees this as he begins to go inside the
clubs because he's a little older as well.

And as he tells the story
in his book, he decided,

I need somebody to do that for me
because he couldn't do them both.

Which makes sense because what Flash is
doing on the turntables, happening so fast,

it would be impossible for
him to be able to rhyme

and catch a break beat that's
only two seconds long so quickly.

So that's when he
incorporates Cowboy and then

he gets Mel and he gets
his brother Creole.

When 77 comes along,
everything is basically

on track to where you
can't change the story.

You know, Herc was on his way out,
kind of. We was on our way up.

You know, Kaz and them was waiting
in the wings and Theodore and them,

they was all waiting in the wings.

And you had the New York City Blackout.

And in 1977, kids running into the
stores, getting turntables and,

you know, mixers or
whatever they could get.

And that's one of the reasons why the
Bronx is called the Boogie Down Bronx,

because on the hills
of the Blackout, there

was so much music on every street corner.

They just was like, they
boogieing everywhere.

The person who came up with the
term hip hop was Keith Cowboy.

All right, Keith Cowboy on Grandmaster
Flash and the Furious Five.

At the time, there was only three of
them, three MCs, Flash, Mel and Creole.

There was a party, it was a purported
party, probably at the Black Door.

And a friend of Cowboy's was going
into the service the next day.

And he was kidding him when
he was on the mic, like, yo,

you hanging out tonight,
but you got to get up.

You're going to start getting up
at six o'clock in the morning,

talking about hip hop, hip hop, hip,
the cadence that they use in marching.

And it just caught on.

Another myth that they put out was that
rap music came from Jamaican toasting.

And if you listen to
many of the pioneers,

nobody has ever heard of this
Jamaican toasting record.

There was no way for our people to
hear a Jamaican toasting record.

They weren't playing
that on the radio here.

Kool Herc wasn't playing
Jamaican records.

We didn't have access to
Jamaican toasting radio stations.

So there would be no way for us to
hear a Jamaican toasting record.

Jamaican toasting wasn't even thought
of when we started in the 70s.

One of the things I often like to say to

people whenever I'm
teaching hip hop history

is that you have to
keep in mind that when

Herc, Cindy and their
family came over from

Jamaica, from Kingston, Jamaica
specifically, they were teenagers.

So it wasn't like they
came with the concept of

I'm going to introduce these
people to our music or our culture.

You know, Cindy just decided, hey,
I'm going to try to raise some money

for some back to school clothes.

That's what really is
what sparked the party.

When we was rapping, we wasn't
toasting like we was just rhyming.

What would you get out
of some Jamaican toast?

What is that?

I've never heard of a rapper use a Jamaican
toast or a Jamaican flow as a rhyme.

I never heard of it.

And I don't know where
that myth came from.

I know Jamaicans did toast and
there are some similarities.

They will play the dub
plates and things like that.

And they talk over the records.

But I don't necessarily
believe again from my research

that the early emcees
saw that and mimic that.

Jamaica doesn't really ring a bell because
of the language they speak, number one.

And how do I copy a
language I don't speak?

You know, I mean, they speak English,

but it's not our English.

It's impossible that we got
it from Jamaican toasting

because it was in our music before we
knew there was making music in Jamaica.

Look, we couldn't hear music
and radio going on in Jamaica.

There was no internet back then.

There was no satellite radio.

We didn't know what they
were doing back then.

What's interesting about Coke La Rock is
that a lot of early books about hip hop

and not just early books, but
a lot of modern books, too,

like the book Can't Stop Won't
Stop and books by other people,

they would actually list Coke
La Rock as being an immigrant.

Many books said that he was an immigrant.

Many books said that he was Caribbean.

Many books said that he was Jamaican.

So that lie was very deliberate.

Toasting was not directly
from Jamaica, okay?

I never heard of Jamaican toast
before I started writing rhymes, okay?

And most other people
probably didn't either.

So Herc isn't thinking,
I'm playing Jamaican music.

And if he did, then I don't
know what all the kids...

He's not going to have anybody at that
party because these are black kids.

Everybody at that party,
for the most part, is black.

And so we're listening to James Brown.

Y'all made hip hop.

Okay, make another one.

Because we was making hip hop
and House at the same time,

both of them are a result of
instrumentation being taken from us.

So since we can't have no instruments,
we're going to remix this.

We're going to remix that.

House said, okay, we're
going to remix this though.

Hip hop said we're going to remix funk.

But it's still black American
culture at the end of the day.

Coke La Rock has never said any of this.

So I think some of these media
outlets were putting these books out,

deliberately putting lies out there to
give the impression that he was Caribbean,

so that the whole narrative
that we got hip hop

from Caribbean culture
would be further fueled.

But when we started learning
the truth about his origin,

that his family, they
came from North Carolina,

that made a lot of people say, okay, why
are we being lied to about the culture?

While many have attempted to trace
hip hop's influences to the Caribbean,

it's fascinating to observe that
early influencers like James Brown and

Pigmeat Markham and many
of the direct pioneers

of hip hop all have
roots in the Carolinas.

See the Carolinas, a lot of the
Carolinas, especially South Carolina,

you don't see too much
mixing going on right there.

It's very, you go down
there and no disrespect,

but you see the purest
of the purest uncut.

My family tree starts in the Carolinas.

Well, my father and mother's
from the South Carolinas.

My mother's from Georgia, my
father's from South Carolina.

My family's from North Carolina.

My people from the South, you know
what I mean? The people that raised me.

And most people, it's from South period.

But yeah, my mother,
she's from New Orleans

and my father was from
Georgia, making Georgia.

I was born in Wilmington, North Carolina.

You know, my mother's whole
family, you know, lived down there.

Jaco Henderson, Pigmeat Markham.

Numerous amounts of people were
rapping to tracks created by bands.

Nobody was doing it to a turntable.

What he was doing was very much
in line with what emcees did.

He would, Hollywood would
take a record and, you know,

just talk over the beginning much
like those radio DJs were doing.

He would talk all rhythmically, you know,

in sync all the way up until
the singer would start singing.

A lot of jailhouse toasts gave me formulas
for my conversation being what it is.

Rudy Ray Moore, who was a great toaster,

but he had a jazz band
playing behind his live shows.

But in 73, I was young, but you know, as
I started hearing about Kool Herc and,

you know, him giving the
jams and we going there.

So he had Kool Herc, he had Clark
Kent, Coke La Rock, Timmy Tim.

Coke La Rock was the
first actual mic rocker.

He didn't call himself MC because
that didn't start until we did.

Coke La Rock was not rhyming or
rapping to anything back in the days

because he was just a guy talking
about what was going on at the moment.

Yo, that's my man so and so and so.

Hey, this is blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.

But no lyrical content to make
other people say, I want to do that.

Nobody I know sounds like Coke
La Rock, except Coke La Rock.

So the influence of being an
MC doesn't come from this guy.

And no offense to nobody, but the
truth is the light and I am the truth.

Because I started calling out
cats names like everybody had AKAs

and, you know, I started giving
up people like cars and stuff.

We was doing stuff like that.

Like I would tell you,
you blocking my car.

So you'll go out and we'll
both go out together.

Then when we come back in, the
ladies think, oh, they got cars.

They ain't got no cars.

I first got involved with what would
eventually be known as hip hop.

And around 1974, I date
that as my official year,

because that's the year
when it piqued my interest.

And then I put full attention towards it.

It was Kool Herc and the Herculoids.

DJ Kool Herc, DJ Coke La Rock, DJ Clark
Kent, and then they had DJ Blackjack.

Where's the MC at?

He's a DJ that can MC.

And he probably was the
first one that I saw do that.

But he wasn't the first solo MC.

He was a DJ.

His name is DJ Coke La Rock.

So I never had a DJ put to my name.

The Melly Mel sound that you hear
today, I got that sound from Hollywood.

But the way we did it, see, and that
goes by the basic premise of hip hop.

You take something that's already there,

and then you go and then you
put your little flair to it.

Hotel Motel, that was Coke La Rock.

Hotel Motel, you don't
tell, I don't tell.

If a freak is your nigga,
that's the freak you seek.

I guess before you go,
the freak be on the boat.

As long as the music's not
stopping, the rocks are dropping,

the champagne is flowing,
the freaks will be going,

Hotel Motel, you don't
tell, I don't tell.

Oh, the first time I
heard somebody spit a

16 over a break beat
was probably Melly Mel.

He wasn't even Grandmaster
Melly Mel at the time.

And this was at 63 Park.

It was maybe about five
blocks from where I live.

And after going to a cool hurt
jam, probably like the day before,

I started hearing all these
kids talking about Flash.

And this was at the time
when in 77, hurt got stabbed.

So he kind of, you know, went on
the low and then he came back.

And when he came back, his jams
didn't really pick up as much

because Flash really
started coming into play.

He was doing all these tricks.

The dude was amazing.

And then he had MCs.

And so when I went up to the jam and
Mel is basically spitting these rhymes,

him and his brother Creole, Cowboy,
and Flash is playing these records

and they're going on and on.

I'm like, oh my God.

It was DJs that DJed.

It was guys, you know, that they
could say they rapped as long as me.

You know, back in the day,
we called a guy like that,

like he was a toy.

Like, yeah, I was there.

OK, but you was a toy.

No, I wasn't a toy then.

You a toy now.

OK, now prior to that, you had a DJ
Hollywood that would do these little,

you know, little raps
along with it, with his set

and to bring music in
and out on the turntable.

So he probably was the father
or the precursor to rappers.

You know, many people have told
me that when you came in a spot

where like Chiba or
Hollywood would be playing

and you tried to scratch or, you know,

any b-boys tried to
do anything like that,

they would say, hey, get
out of here with that.

In fact, some even said they would say,

get out of here with
that hippy hoppity stuff.

DJ Hollywood, for the
most part, gets dismissed

because he's not hip-hop, what he is.

He and Eddie Chiba and DJ Lil Bostarski,

which I've coined these three men,

as the forefathers of the MC.

I don't give them
credit for being hip-hop

because that means it would
be the totality of the culture

and they didn't take part in
the totality of the culture.

Because in the beginning,
we was like up there.

I went to see Hollywood one night.

He's down there, you know.

Yeah, come on.

You know, hotel.

And I came back to the fellas.

I'm like, listen, we gonna
have to step up our game

because this dude is, you know,

because Hollywood, he's a bad boy.

The early stages of hip-hop
wasn't just a boys' club.

There were several females
who were dynamic b-girls

and respected MCs.

And today, many women are
asserting their status

as pioneering MCs in the culture.

And this begs the question,

who was the first female MC of hip-hop?

And there were several
female rappers out here

who got early starts in the game.

If you look at some of the early flyers,

there was a sister named Queen Kenya.

She was down with the Zulu Nation

and there were a lot of other people.

But the first female MC
to really move the culture

and do it seriously,
that would be MC Shiraab.

My name is MC Shiraab.

I am a founding member of
the MC slash rap culture.

I'm the first female
MC of hip-hop culture.

I have influenced and
inspired many male and female.

Now I'm gonna tell you this,

you better keep this on air.

What I say, you better keep it.

The first solo MC for females,
they was Lisa Lee and Shiraab.

Those two was my girls, I
know, from the very beginning.

Now the Pebely Pools and
the Debbie Dees came after.

They was around, but their
recognition wasn't as strong

as the Shiraab and Lisa Lee.

Reasoned by, we allowed them
to be with the brothers.

You know, because a lot of
us was on the front line

ensuring that this culture moved forward

into the area that we are in right now.

But make no mistake, Shiraab
is the first female MC

of hip-hop culture, period.

And MC Shiraab was a phenomenal MC.

And what made her phenomenal
was that she was able

to hang toe to toe with the guys.

She was a real MC.

I think the Queen Kenyans
and people like that,

they would just kind of
do the yes, yes, y'all

and to the beat y'all.

I don't think they would do full rhymes.

Shiraab was the first to do full,

straight up and down rhymes.

The first female MC in
hip-hop was Shiraab.

There's no maybes about that.

She's the one.

And so they taught me
moves and all that stuff.

And that's where I met Keith and Kevin,

which was called the nigga twins.

Now they're called the legendary twins.

And they, you know, invited
me to a cool hurt party.

And so by the end of,
you know, 77, you know,

when my mother began
to start letting me go

to a cool hurt party, that's
how I really, really started,

you know, becoming that nomadic B-girl

when I used to travel all over, you know,

the Bronx in order to B-girl.

The girls who were your most mainstay

that you saw all the time,
who went the distance,

who were heard, whose names
were constantly on flyers

are the four girls who are the matriarchs

of this culture.

That is myself, Debbie
Dee, Lisa Lee, Shiraab,

and Peppley Poole.

People talk about, you know,
the way that, you know,

Mel rhymed, you know, in the baritones,

sort of like Hollywood or whatever.

The funky four never rhymed
in that baritone style.

We came out swinging.

And the funky four plus one.

And the new style of M singing.

So when you hear Sean Rock
or you hear the funky four,

we came out swinging in the new style

that you hear the Wu-Tang rhyming in.

The new style that you
hear Jay-Z rhyming in.

The new style that you hear
every MC rhyming in now.

We were a part of ushering in.

And I was the first female MC to usher

in that style of rhyming.

It might've been a female
that rapped before Sharaq,

but that was minor league, basically.

Sharaq was the first, you know,

she was with a certified group, you know,

DJ breakout, funky four plus one more.

And she did it on the
level of the same level

that we was on.

The interesting thing about that sister

is that she changed the
cadence of how MCs rhyme.

Because a lot of MCs at the time,

the mid 70s, 76, 77,

a lot of them would actually take on

the DJ Hollywood style of rhyming

in the deep baritone radio DJ voice.

Because Sharaq was a girl,

she couldn't emulate that baritone voice.

She would have to rap
in her natural voice

and it came off better

because it was more natural
and it wasn't forced.

Also, I must give credit to Milly Mel

because I pull from him as well,

the weight of his cadence.

Now, even though I didn't
do the baritone style,

you know, whatever, you know, like,

you know, that type of style,

I got a lot from Milly Mel,

you know, just by the performance,

just by the cadence.

Because to me at that time,

he was the best MC that
was out there at the time.

So I wanted to be just
as good as Milly Mel.

If you look at the early flyers,

the first girl on a flyer
that I've ever seen documented

having her name on a
flyer is Queen Kenya.

She shows up on Bambada's flyer

because she comes out of that camp

with the Zulu Kings and the Zulu Queens.

And so she's the first on flyers,

but Chirac is the one who basically

made the greatest impact.

And so she is heralded today

as the first female
MC in hip hop culture.

And we all stand behind that

because of the impact that she made.

Well, in 1976, that's
when I became a B-girl.

Pebbely Poole is actually,

was actually a dancer with DJ Smokey.

He had these dancers

and she was actually a
part of that as well.

As a B-girl.

And then Chirac also talks
about being a B-girl.

I was never a B-girl.

I was always a fly girl.

Another thing that we have to look at

when it comes to rap and rhyming

was the concept of the dozens.

The dozens was something that we did

as foundational black Americans

coming out of slavery,

where we would do this ritualistic

roasting of each other.

And sometimes the roasting would rhyme.

We would do them in rhymes.

But roasting and playing the dozens

is basically a ritualistic insult game

where people trade insults
against each other.

And the name of the game is to see

who gets emotionally flustered.

You're supposed to keep your composure

when you're roasting somebody

or playing the dozens with somebody

saying your mom is so fat,

your mom is so dumb.

I think 100% the culture of the dozens

and like I said, jail culture,

it all comes from the same thing.

Even going back and listening to like

Lawanda Page, who actually played Esther

on Sand from the Sun.

Like there was a whole record label

with like Red Fox and those people.

And they had, you know,
these dirty skits.

And sometimes they would
almost be in rhyme.

And Millie Jackson, you know,

she was a very spoke
in a rhyming cadence,

very, very dirty and humorous sometimes.

I think there's a
definite connection there.

The reason why we came up

with this ritualistic game

was that in the system
of white supremacy,

we understood once we
got out into society,

we would be insulted.

We would be denigrated.

People would call us names.

So we had to teach each other

how to emotionally stand up to that.

If somebody's saying
something crazy to you,

you have to learn how to keep your cool

and not jump out the window and jump bad

because people in the dominant society,

they had a power system
in which to punish you.

So as a black person,

you had to teach children early on,

hey, when you go out here,

learn how to brush an
insult off your shoulders.

If somebody says something to you,

somebody says something crazy,

you're going to have to learn

how to keep you cool about it.

So that was what the dozens was for.

It's like a cultural thing with us.

You know, the dozens,

something that comes out of slavery.

You know, we're going to talk about

whatever you got going on.

We're going to talk about your shoes,

your hair.

And if you look too good,

we're going to talk
about your pretty smile.

That's just what we do culturally.

A lot of the hand games

that we see in the hood,

on the neighborhood,

that's that we've been
playing for a long time.

The rhymes,

that again,

transformed into rap as well.

There were a lot of songs in the 60s,

like the name game,

and banana,

banana,

bofana,

all of these rhyming games

that kids would play.

The Mary Mack,

the Mary Mack game,

that comes out of

Foundation of Black American Culture too.

I think that the Mary Mack rhyme

comes out of the 1800s

and Mary Mack was the sister

who worked at a black circus

back in the 1800s.

So a lot of these rhyming games,

we've been doing that

since the mid to late 1800s.

What people don't
understand about our music,

stand-up comedy

comes out of the same juke joints

as the blues and jazz.

So when people see Richard Pryor,

the first documented stand-up comedian,

the first person credited in America

for being a stand-up comedian

was Miles Mazy.

Miles Mazy is the Foundation
of Black American Woman,

but she comes out of the same juke joints

as Pig meet Markham,

the person that we credit for

Here Comes the Judge.

Or like in battle rap,

when you look at battle rap,

a lot of the people get together

and just come off the top of their head

where they're insulting their opponent

and they're rhyming.

So we've always had this
dozens type of humor

within our rhyming skills

that was a ritualistic form of

toughening up our opponent.

I, once I got old enough,

I gravitated towards the Red Fox Records,

the Richard Pryor Records,

all of the comedy albums,

Miles Mabley, Pig meet Markham.

I gravitated towards that
comedy at a young age.

H. Rap Brown was an activist

who was very popular in the 1960s

and H. Rap Brown, interestingly,

he talked about playing the dozens

and that's kind of how he got his name.

He was known for playing the dozens

and snapping and roasting on people

and using these rhymes.

And also there was a movie called

Five on the Black Hand Side

where that H. Rap Brown rhyme was used.

And one of his books,

he wrote a book in 1969

called Die Nigga Die.

And he gives an example

of some of the rhymes that he used

while playing the dozens.

And one of the rhymes he used

was himp the demp, the ladies pimp,

the women fight for my delight.

That rhyme later on

became a rhyme in the first rap record

or the first hit rap record

by the Sugarhill Gang,

Rapper's Delight,

where Big Bang Hank used the rhyme,

I'm himp the demp, the ladies pimp,

the women fight for my delight.

So there were direct correlations

from what was going on in the 60s

to early hip-hop records

coming out in the late 70s.

These large black communities

where people moved to Chicago,

to Pittsburgh,

these are new maroon communities

but in your face.

We black, we here,

and we're not going anywhere.

And people brought their music with them.

And what made it a little different

is that in New York, in Harlem,

you've got a million people or more black

that can buy your record

versus someone out of
the trunk of your car

somewhere in the Mississippi Delta.

You've got the Apollo.

You have venues

where large numbers of people can hear.

And you also have something unique

that started in the 1930s,

radio stations with programs

formatted for black people.

Pigmy Markham was a comedian

who was big on the Chitlin' Circuit.

I think he started
around the 1930s or 40s,

got real big in the 1960s.

He would perform in New York a lot,

perform at the Apollo a lot.

And he would do rhymes.

And he did a record

that was a big popular record

called Here Comes the Judge.

And a lot of people say that

this record is the direct precursor

to modern rap

because he's rapping
over a live breakbeat.

Somebody's playing the drum

and they're playing a funk groove

in the background.

And he's rhyming over it

in the same 16-bar cadence

that a lot of rappers rhyme today.

Those cats got bits of meat

because I am the judge

and you can plainly see.

Lay down the law.

They better not judge

for I was the head

because I am the judge.

Pigmy Markham had a song called

Here Comes the Judge.

Okay, the beat,

even to this day,

you can rock that right now.

But he rapped on it.

He rapped on it

like anybody raps today.

Here Comes the Judge record

was a very popular record.

My mother had the

Here Comes the Judge record.

So you had a lot of these

early pioneers in hip-hop

whose families are from

North Carolina and South Carolina

where Pigmeat is from.

So they had access

to the Pigmeat record.

So it's not that big

of a leap of logic

to see that

this is where they got it from.

They got a lot of the influences

from Pigmeat and others like him.

Again, in 79,

there were at least

two dozen rap records.

Few of them were young ladies on them.

But they were people

who you never heard of before.

They almost were fly by night.

They showed up for that one record in 79.

You never heard of them again.

What's interesting about Pigmeat,

he did another record

that a lot of people don't talk about

called Who Got the Number.

And it's him and another guy.

This record came out in 1969.

And Pigmeat and this other guy

are not only rapping,

but they're trading bars

the same way rappers trade bars today.

Most of the early rhymes

were a lot of the early rhymes.

I go back to it again

to those 20 or so records

in May of 79.

There were definitely rap records.

A lot of them had a story to it.

Well, there's Wonder Mike

with the story about,

you know, Chicken or Hank

using Kaz's rhymes

about Superman and Lois Lane.

There was everybody had a Superman

or Spider-Man rhyme at one point.

They were always connected

to humorous stories.

And yeah, that's very much a part

of the Black American experience,

that storytelling.

The interesting thing about Pigmeat,

Pigmeat, again,

used to play in New York

all the time at the Apollo.

Pigmeat actually lived in the Bronx.

When he died,

he's actually buried in the Bronx.

So it's not a coincidence

that this brother, Pigmeat,

who was one of the first people

to have what we now hear

as rap on record,

he would be in the Bronx.

And again,

a lot of the people in the Bronx

had the Pigmeat record.

First rhyme that I ever learned

was Lightning Rod.

The full moon in the middle of June,

in the summer of 69.

I was young and cool,

we shot the Bay.

You know, he was one of the brothers

that was the last poet.

But that's not under the gods of hip-hop,

even though we did play

that song in the jam.

But that wasn't necessarily

under the gods of hip-hop.

Between the 1940s and the 1970s,

you had what was known

as a personality DJ.

The personality DJ had to have a rap,

had to have a rhyme,

had to do something

to make you interested

and listen to this radio station.

Yo, yo, 1287.

And then they would mix things

and do all kinds of things

to keep your attention

when you had the era

of the personality DJ.

It's just that when the 70s and 80s came,

the personality DJ sort of went away

because black radio

tried to appeal more mainstream.

When you look at some

of the first rap records,

well, King Tim III,

that was technically

the first rap record

that came out in 1979.

The record was Personality Jock

by King Tim III.

So that whole personality jock thing

transferred into the hip-hop culture

coming out of radio.

When you get to the 70s and 80s,

you get the more quiet storm,

the more sophisticated black DJ,

the one that had to play

the respectable music.

But hip-hop was like,

nah, if that respectability,

we're going to keep this culture.

We're just going to take it out.

Okay, I can't get a radio job.

We're just going to take this culture

that we had in the radio,

document it on the radio for decades.

We're going to take that same culture

and take it to a park.

We're going to take that same culture

and take it to a house party.

There were a lot of
early prototype records

coming out in the 60s and 70s,

early 70s,

where people were rapping in the records.

Billy Dee and Sugar Bear was one record

where everybody says

where they were actually
rapping in the record.

These were these little
underground records

that were coming out

and they were the prototype

of the modern hip-hop record.

There were a lot of records like that.

Creatively, Miss Sylvia Robinson

could smell that big hit.

And that's the beginning
of the recording era

as far as in hip-hop.

When she made Raps of the Light,

then we came through,

we made Freedom Happy Birthday,

then she made The Message.

Once you make The Message,

that changed the whole game.

And then everything is,

you know, rap is full blown now.

There was another record

by Bobby and Deborah Williams

called The Pusher's Thing.

Another record from the early 70s

that came out,

one of these little underground records

where they were rhyming over them.

They had a beat

and they were rhyming in the same cadence

as rappers.

There was another soundtrack

for stage play called The Runaways.

This came out in 1978.

And this was another early precursor

to the rap records that came out in 79,

where you had some people
rhyming over a beat.

They were doing almost
a spoken word thing,

but they were actually rhyming on beat

to a certain degree.

So again,

these are the early precursors

to the rap records that came out in 1979.

Another component that's often overlooked

is the influence of street gangs

on early hip-hop culture.

Some of the gangs,

as well as individual members,

transitioned into B-boy,
DJ, and graffiti crews.

What other ways were Bronx street gangs

instrumental in the formation of hip-hop?

The gangs would protect some of the DJs

and the MCs at their early parties.

A lot of the early MCs and DJs,

they would get these gangs

to do security for them.

So they were very, very

instrumental in early hip-hop.

Back then, some of the gangs

that was doing security for the culture

was the Black Spades

and the Savage Skulls

and the Peacemakers.

And they was our protection.

One time at one of the parties,

one of the leaders of the Casanovas,

his name was Peanut.

He was the smallest guy,

but he was the main guy,

one of the main guys.

He has an argument with a guy

from another crew named Joe Kidd.

It's the Boston Road crew,

where we at.

So they have an argument.

Another guy that's from the Casanova,

Bambi, he beats up Joe Kidd.

Joe Kidd comes back to the party

and shoots up the front of the party.

Just so happened to kill Peanut.

So now the main guy in
the Casanovas is dead.

And I want to say for
about a week and a half,

until they caught up to Joe Kidd,

nobody came outside.

We was the only ones

that could come outside in that area.

So when we went out,

we was the first to
have shore mics, right?

We were the first to have mic stands.

We were the first to have smoke machines.

We were the first to have,

you know, the security
that would protect us

from people coming into our parties

trying to rob us.

Kaz changed his name from Casanova Fly

to Kaz because of the Casanovas.

They didn't want him to rock that name.

They said he had to,

you know, he had to flip it.

So he flipped it.

But that name Casanova,

remember his name was Casanova Fly

in the beginning,

but the real Casanovas?

You can't run with that name.

That name was now changed

to Grandmaster Kaz.

Casanova Fly.

But the Casanovas,

there was a few of them

that walked up to him

and told him,

do he know?

They asked him,

did he know any of the Casanovas

from the gang?

And when he didn't,

they was asking him,

you know, about his name.

And they just respectfully told him to,

you know,

don't do that to yourself.

Really like,

really like,

don't do that.

You don't want to do that.

In the early 70s,

surprisingly,

between the hip-hop artists themselves,

there wasn't a lot of violence.

People kind of self-policed

in that time frame.

They had the gangs

to kind of look out for them.

Now that doesn't say that

there wasn't violence at these jams,

but among the hip-hop artists themselves,

they were basically codified

with each other to say,

hey, look,

let's just battle it out on the mic.

Let's battle it out on the turntables.

Whoever's the best,

that's going to be who's the best.

The emergence of hip-hop

saw marginalized individuals

using urban landscapes

and environments as platforms

for artistic expression and rebellion.

The simultaneous rise
of the graffiti movement

was a reflection of this phenomenon.

So how did the graffiti movement

become intertwined and associated

with hip-hop culture?

As far as the elements are concerned,

graffiti was the first thing

that really captured me

at a young age.

I watched the trains go by,

you know what I mean,

with all the pieces on them

and every wall you saw,

handball court,

had a piece on it.

Growing up,

there was graffiti

that was right in the mix.

That's really before breakdancing.

When we look at modern graffiti,

comes from many things.

One of the first people to use graffiti

as a form of art

was a brother named Ted Jones

out of New York.

He was the foundation of Black America

and I think Ted is from,

he's from the South somewhere,

but he was living in New York.

He was a jazz guy.

He was once roommates

with the jazz great Charlie Parker.

Charlie Parker's name is Bird.

His nickname is Bird.

When Charlie Parker died,

Ted Jones,

to pay homage to his brother,

his homie,

Ted Jones went around New York

and he used graffiti to write

Bird Lives all over the city.

So that was a form of art.

Because Earl Markle was out graffiti

from the West Side.

Earl Markle was the dude.

He was like,

Damn man,

what'd he do?

Paint the whole train?

With his name.

So that was our kind of hero

as a graffiti writer.

And everybody did it.

A lot of cats I know did it,

but they didn't do it big

like Earl Markle,

Phase 2.

Matter of fact,

Herb just tagged too.

There was a little graffiti movement

that happened

right around World War II.

The Kill Roy Was Here movement.

People thought that Kill Roy

might have been a person.

Kill Roy was like a meme

that the military,

the US military was doing.

They would write

Kill Roy was here

over in Europe

and all of these other places.

They would write

Kill Roy is here

and draw this little meme of a man

on some of the military weaponry.

And that was more of a

psychological warfare tactic

to kind of confuse the enemy.

Graffiti,

you know,

is essentially 68 in Philly, right?

It's cornbread.

But I can't,

I think his name is Taki 69,

Taki 76,

Taki 76 I think it is,

ended up being

one of the most famous

graffiti artists

in the early days of hip-hop.

And if you talk to

Ink 76

or you talk to different

pioneering graffiti artists,

at least out of New York City,

they hate hearing Taki

being the number one dude.

They were like,

how's this white boy from

Manhattan

getting all the credit?

Modern graffiti that we know now

comes from a brother

out of Philly named Cornbread.

Cornbread started

modern graffiti

in the mid-1960s,

around 65.

I am Darryl Cornbread McCray.

I am the youngest person ever

to establish an international

art movement.

I changed the historical course

of my generation

and gave birth

to a global phenomena.

I am the first element of hip-hop.

I'm the godfather of graffiti.

He was in

like a youth detention center.

He started doing it there.

He became known

for doing it in there

and he kind of got his

reputation for doing it in there.

He got the name Cornbread

because he liked to eat Cornbread

when he was in detention.

And once he got out of

the youth facility,

he started going all around Philadelphia

putting Cornbread

all over the place.

And he got a lot of notoriety

from tagging his name

all over the place.

And when I see the game member

names on the walls,

I would write Cornbread

next to theirs

real big.

And every game member I've seen

at this juvenile facility,

I would write Cornbread

next to it

real big.

I took it a step further.

I wrote my name in the cafeteria,

the gym,

the administration,

the visiting room,

in church,

in school.

I wrote my name in the hallways,

all in the units.

I really demolished this place

writing Cornbread

all over the place.

Modern graffiti as we know it now,

what makes it artistic

and connected to hip-hop

is if you are tagging your name

for notoriety

while remaining anonymous,

that's the art form

that we know as graffiti now.

The first person to do that

was Cornbread.

He did it out of Philadelphia.

The administration thought

that what I was doing,

there was an artist inside of me

who was trying to express himself.

I got special accolades,

I got special attention,

and a lot of people just

thought that I was an artist.

They made a recommendation

that I see the psychiatrist.

I went to see the psychiatrist.

He said,

why are you writing

Cornbread all over the place, man?

You got a problem?

I said, no, I don't have a problem.

But I knew that

in this controlled environment,

all the special attention

I got in YDC,

I could get better

and bigger attention in the street.

Cornbread got a lot of media attention

and he liked it.

This is a young kid

tagging your name everywhere now.

Media reports are about

what you're doing

and now you get notoriety.

You become infamous.

I came home in 1967,

but I came home in 1967

and I held true

to what I was doing, of course.

I came home,

a lot of guys

was like the gang one, killing it.

And I just wasn't about that.

And I start walking bus routes,

bus routes,

different directions

all over the city.

I spend days and days

and nights and nights.

I continue all my time

writing cornbread everywhere.

I had been writing cornbread

all over the city, everywhere.

Philadelphia was my campus.

I wrote cornbread.

I was out of order.

Just like what I did to YDC

is what I did to Philadelphia.

I started pairing in common scripts,

editorials,

magazine covers,

newspaper headlines.

They talked about me

like they talked about Jesus.

The teenagers

didn't catch on to what I was doing.

Until I started

appearing in the newspapers,

I caused a psychological effect

on the minds of the

teenage generation in Philadelphia.

When they seen all the publicity

and notoriety I was getting

from the media and newspapers

and magazines

and cartoon scripts

and editorials,

everybody wanted the same thing.

And the junior public

had read about my death.

And there's a rumor

that swept with Philadelphia,

cornbread shot to death.

I started writing the real

cornbread.

They had no impact.

So I knew that

I got to make the media

correct their mistake.

I had pondered countless possibilities

and I came to the conclusion

to go to the Philadelphia zoo

and bomb out the whole zoo.

In the early graffiti scene

of Philadelphia,

writers vied for recognition

through increasingly daring feats.

As competition intensified,

false reports of cornbread's demise

prompted him to make a bold move.

Spray painting an elephant

at the Philly zoo.

I went to the back of the zoo

and moved the fence,

came down to close where we was at,

hopped into the pit,

took the spray paint top off,

elephant turns around,

looks at me and pay my attention.

I don't just don't forget nothing.

I walked the tour.

I wrote cornbread lives.

You had a brother out there

in Philadelphia named Top Cat

who was a protege

of our brother cornbread.

And Top Cat went to New York

using the same style as cornbread.

There were other people

like Julio and Taki

and some of these other New Yorkers

who saw what Top Cat was doing

by way of Philly,

by way of cornbread.

So you had some of these people

in New York who started tagging

based on what the Philly guys were doing.

And that's how graffiti

started to grow in New York.

I am certain that influenced Top Cat

because I am the world's

first modern day graffiti artist.

And graffiti artists

just start coming

to cracks and walls

by the tens of thousands.

Philadelphia became

the graffiti capital of the world

before we reached New York.

When it got to New York,

New York had money waiting for them.

Well, a lot of the times

when DJs were doing parties,

they would hire graffiti artists

to do the flyers.

People such as Phase 2,

Buddy Esquire,

Anthony Riley,

Cisco Kid,

a lot of other people.

But for the most part,

graffiti stands on its own.

It was an entity

separate and apart from hip-hop

before hip-hop even came into play.

Buddy Esquire was a graffiti artist

who turned into one of the most

thorough and respected brothers

who made some of the hip-hop flyers.

He made a lot of the flyers

for a lot of the hip-hop parties.

Buddy Esquire came out of my camp.

He was the first to
generate those flyers.

And every MC and every group

used Buddy Esquire after us.

You had another graffiti artist

called Phase 2,

who is very well known

for making a lot of the
hip-hop party flyers.

And those flyers have become icons

within themselves.

But again,

people like Kool Herc,

who actually started off,

he and his sister Cindy,

started off being graffiti artists

and tagging on different
things in the street.

What happened was,

when he started DJing

and he wanted somebody
to create his flyers,

he would basically ask his friends,

hey, could you make a flyer?

This is after Cindy

basically did the first parties,

because the first parties,

she actually hand wrote

all of Kool Herc's flyers on index cards.

Breakdancing,

also known as b-boying,

is a cherished component
of hip-hop culture,

often imitated in practice by enthusiasts

who respect the progenitors
of the art form,

and by others

eager to claim credit for its creation.

With various groups asserting their claim

as the originators,

the question remains,

where did hip-hop
breakdancing truly originate?

You can look at footage from the 1890s

and you see brothers dancing

and hitting the floor

and getting back up.

A lot of the tap dancers

would do dance moves,

hit the floor and get back up.

A lot of brothers in the 50s and 60s,

Peg Leg Bates,

a brother named Little Bucks,

so many other people

would do these tap dance moves

and they'd get on these variety shows

and they would get on the floor

and do floor work.

My name is Legendary King Trixie

from the Bronx,

BX from the West Side,

because I am the first breakdancer.

Like I said,

I gave most of them their name.

Trixie,

Dancing Dove,

you know,

Wallace D,

you know,

different cats.

I gave them,

the b-boys,

their name.

I'm still giving names to cats.

It's kind of a thing,

but if you can't talk cool hurt party,

you getting your name called

made you feel like you was the champ.

I put on the music

and the music ran right through me.

Actually,

you know,

I'm dancing against Wallace D.

Me and Wallace,

he's from Bronx River

on my side of town.

I instantly,

we just smacked that at it.

Place wasn't no bigger than,

it was that little.

And I decided,

well,

to give it to him,

I just jumped over his head.

I jumped over his head,

Coco Rock says,

Trixie.

And that's how I got that name.

A1B Boy Sasa,

the phenomenon from the world beyond,

breaking down the pros and cons,

word is born,

moving like the Dapper Dog.

So what I wanted to do,

I wanted my identity.

I wanted my identity

and the identity I came up with

was S-A-S-A,

which is Sasa.

And then some people say,

you know,

hey, man,

that's a Spanish name.

I was like,

oh, okay, all right.

So it was a Spanish name.

And so I asked some Spanish people,

they say, yeah, it means source

in Spanish, you know?

But I liked it

and I went with it.

We created a lot of dance crazes

as foundation of Black Americans,

not just breakdancing.

A lot of the early dance crazes

came out of South Carolina.

In fact,

one of the first
international dance crazes

was a dance called the Cakewalk,

where people who were former slaves,

even the enslaved people,

would emulate slave masters

by doing a certain mocking dance.

My mother used to dance.

She was,

she danced African ballet.

I watched a lot of TV

and a lot of people don't understand

tap dancers were more breaking then,

but they were tapping.

I had some phenomenal moves

on the floor,

you know,

and was where that,

the reason I was able to develop

and it would be so unique

because I was double joining.

So I would be in awkward positions,

come up in awkward positions,

where some people who
wasn't double joining,

they couldn't get into the position.

Charlie Rock,

you know,

he was a part of the Zulu Kings,

the Zulu Nation down
where African Bambaataa,

you know,

I watched him a lot.

I started breakdancing in 70,

70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75.

I stopped.

The second time I danced against

Wallace D,

I jumped over his head again

and I did a roll on the floor.

So I rolled back

and I spent on my back,

came up and shook it off a little.

So we was doing floor moves.

That's where the breaking comes from.

Other dances that became

internationally known

came out of the South too.

The Charleston dance

named after Charleston, South Carolina.

That was a big dance in the 1920s.

Another foundation of
Black American creation.

Another version of the Charleston

was the Lindsey Hop.

That became big in New York.

So we created all of these
different dance crazes

going all the way back
to the early 1900s.

The Legendary Twins,

but back then they called
them the Nigga Twins.

And they was like the A1B boys back then.

James Bond,

El Dorado Mike.

These is all the Hurks people,

El Dorado Mike,

Salsa,

Jazzy Janet.

You know, those was all Hurks crew.

Salsa and them is younger than me.

They watched me dance.

The Twins,

James Bond,

El Dorado Mike,

all these guys watched me dance.

I started hitting the
floor major in late 73.

In the early 1970s,

there was a song called The
Breakdown by Rufus Thomas.

And that song was a favorite
for a lot of B-boys.

The song had a cool break beat on it.

And it was a national dance
craze called The Breakdown.

And The Breakdown dance is basically

at a certain part of the record

when the music breaks down a little bit,

people really get on the
floor and do their thing.

Anybody that like really was unique,

I admired them because
that's what I wanted to be

on the dance floor was unique.

The Hines brothers and some
of the tap dancers way back

and definitely was a big
influence was James Brown.

James Brown would do floor work,

do a lot of leg movements
and come back up

and get in the groove.

And a lot of the early
B-boys were influenced

by the Hines brothers, the Little Bucks,

some of these other early dancers

that would be on these variety shows

in the 50s and 60s.

First Trixie was the number one guy.

I defeated Trixie and I
became the number one guy

from actually 74 to 77.

There has been significant controversy

surrounding the narrative that hip hop

was equally created
by blacks and Latinos.

While this narrative is frequently echoed

by the corporate media,

when we look at historic facts,

we have to ask the question,

was hip hop created by
blacks and Latinos 50-50?

Well, now that hip hop is a positive

in everybody's mind,

a lot of people do want to step in,

take claim, partial ownership or whatever

of the culture, claim contributions.

Well, we was there.

We helped do it.

The Hispanic community,
Puerto Ricans in particular.

Yo, we helped build hip hop.

We was there from the beginning.

This narrative that hip hop was created

by blacks and Latinos,

that got started relatively recently

within I would say the
last about 15 years.

A lot of the dominant society's media

started that narrative as a way to erase

the foundational black
American input of it.

Now, first I just want to say shout out

to my power rule brothers,

my Puerto Rican brothers.

Nothing against my Puerto Ricans.

But as far as influence,

I saw a lot of participation

with Puerto Ricans in hip hop

and not an influx of Puerto Ricans.

It was almost like the
rebellious Puerto Ricans.

There shouldn't be this need

to try to falsely claim
you created something

when you weren't there
from the beginning.

You had some of the Latino
brothers and sisters

who came in the 80s,

who did some phenomenal
things with breakdancing,

some phenomenal things with b-boying,

but they were students of the

foundational black American
early hip hop pioneers.

The narrative of blacks and Latinos

being 50-50 in creating hip hop

is the furthest thing from the truth.

Absolutely not.

They want to come in the mix,

they want to say,

I was restarted.

No, no you didn't.

No you didn't.

No you didn't.

What can't be known as hip hop

was solely an African American
creation of urban youth.

In the 1970s when people talk about

some of the early pioneers of hip hop

and the blacks and Latinos

being 50-50 creators,

if that were the case,

how come you don't see any female MCs

who were Latino who were around early on?

The female MCs who were Puerto Rican

came way later,

I'm talking about in the 80s.

Even in the 70s,

you don't see a lot of the Latino b-boys,

you don't see their names on flyers.

So these guys again came very late 70s,

early 80s after hip hop was established

and they were some of the
first students of hip hop

and they were great students of hip hop,

but we have to put it
in the correct context.

As far as influencing hip hop,

I saw no Puerto Rican or
Jamaican influences whatsoever.

I don't see how you could
be 50-50 creating something

when you don't have any initial producers

that created any new
wrinkles in the sound,

any dancers that created a new dance

that wasn't around before you got there,

how can it be 50-50

if you're doing things that
was already in the sauce?

You know what I mean?

The sauce was already created,

the rule was done,

you just added a couple of crawfish,

that's about it.

Latinos didn't create anything.

They was there,

they saw and then later on
they started participating

because I used to play music

and you see the Latinos
over there doing the hustle

and then you see the b-boys over here

doing, you know, on the floor,

spinning and doing what they're doing.

So no, they started
participating later on.

We always had the up rock,

but it was weird that the
Spanish named it up rock.

We always said,

up rock ain't nothing but up dancing,

standing, you know, up,

and then, you know, down
rocking is the floor.

The Spanish people had
implemented that terminology,

but other than that, we always did it.

It's the same thing,
but a different name.

The creation of hip-hop,

in the beginning, in the creation,

I'm willing to say there were no Spanish.

There were no Spanish in the creation.

I'm not talking about gradually
as it became later on,

but in the beginning,

there was absolutely no Spanish at all.

I'm not saying y'all wasn't there.

Y'all were early adapters,

y'all were early participants
in what we were doing,

but what I'm saying is,

y'all were not creators.

So being a creator and a participant

are two different things.

Disco Wiz was my first DJ partner,

but when you think about it,

he didn't put me into hip-hop.

I put him into hip-hop.

I put him down with me.

He was boxing.

He was a boxer at the PAL,

you know what I mean?

But he took to the culture.

Historically, with black
Americans specifically,

when we create, we usually
don't get the credit.

We never get the credit for creating.

That's why I do what I do,

because I don't want
somebody to tell my grandkids

that, hey, this was the
first people to do this

when I know otherwise.

And a lot of Spanish people
thought I was Spanish

who'd never seen me.

And some of them wind up dancing

behind me being salsa,

because they thought salsa
was, oh, salsa's a B-boy.

Hip-hop is created in the
African-American community

by young black teenagers.

We really didn't have a lot
of Puerto Ricans around us.

There were some, you know,

sprinkled here and there,

but they were nowhere
near the diamond forest

they became later, in the 80s.

Hip-hop is the foundation
of black American creation.

And there were some
Latinos who came later.

The Latinos were great
students of hip-hop,

but the reality is they came later.

And that's okay.

Hip-hop is black culture.

Yes, it is indeed.

But we shared culture.

And if you lived in the same neighborhood

with black people, you gonna
do what black people do,

essentially, you know what I mean?

And even not so much vice versa.

It's not like black people do a lot

of Puerto Rican shit, okay?

But Puerto Ricans do a lot of black shit.

Prince Whip-a-Whip, Ruby D,

Disco Wiz, who was down with C.A.S.C.

at one particular time, Charlie Chase.

There was just a few of them.

And so I often give them credit

because they actually stepped
out of their comfort zone

or the comfort zone of their families,

mingling with black culture,

because that wasn't
something that was acceptable

in their households.

And there are interviews where
those questions were asked

and they share their experiences,

how their family members felt,

why are you hanging out
with these black kids?

You know what I'm saying?

A certain portion of it, as time goes by,

Latinos had influence,

but that's in the
established portion of it.

When they stopped up rocking

and when they start
spinning on their heads,

a lot of Latinos was involved in that.

But in the beginning, it was all niggas.

In the beginning, the Spanish,

if they were gonna be with
us or anything with us,

they did not identify with being Spanish.

They identified as being us.

And back in those days,

you couldn't call them Spanish.

A lot of them didn't even know Spanish.

They wore their afros out.

If we wore our afros,

so they didn't identify as being Spanish.

So a lot of them,

if they were basically
our color, whatever,

our skin complexion,

we didn't know that they were Spanish.

Some of the Latino brothers

who were actually there in the 70s

they have no problem giving props

to the people they learned it from.

When you talk to some of
those Puerto Rican brothers

who were around in the 70s,

they'll say, yeah,

we got our moves from those
black guys over there.

We learned how to DJ from
that black guy over there.

We were students of those black guys.

When you heard a Puerto Rican on the mic,

like you could literally
count on one hand

how many Puerto Rican rappers
there were at that time.

And it was like, it was a thing.

It was like,

oh shit, he's Puerto Rican and he rap.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like whip and whip,

Ruby D,

Tito from the Fearless Four.

Those three guys right there

are the main,

like the only ones that
I could really think of.

I myself have not witnessed

during going to Ku Klux Fairs.

I have not witnessed any Latinos.

I will admit that.

You know, I want to say

respect to the Latino community, right?

And you know,

and at some point they
did come into the game,

you know,

and help move this culture forward.

But back when I used
to be a nomadic B girl,

I didn't see Latinos.

This narrative to erase
us is very interesting

because when you say it was
created by blacks and Latinos,

and now that there's a
corporate push for hip hop,

hip hop is going to the Olympics.

It's being corporatized.

There's a lot of corporate
money coming through.

So when the corporate money comes down,

the money is going to
go to the Latinos now,

because they justified by saying,

hey, look at us.

We were there in the beginning.

We helped create it.

So we need to get some
of those resources.

So now when you look at hip hop radio,

you go to hip hop radio stations,

the program director is Latino.

Most of the DJs are Latino

in some of the coastal cities

and black people are completely shut out.

I love, you know,

Code Crush, Booby Dee.

But nah, man.

Nah, we started that and they came

and added the extra flavor to it.

You know what I mean?

Just that's what it was.

I was in a circle one time, right?

And I was dancing.

And one of the Latino young men,

he was looking, watching
people break dance

and his mother came and got him.

And I forgot word that she used,

but she snatched him from the crowd

and told him to leave.

But I saw that he was very interested

in what was going on at that time.

But his mother took him away from it.

Hip hop is a black culture, period.

If you went to a hip hop party,

you're going to see black
people in that party.

Now, granted, we are teenagers.

And for the most part,

with hip hop being in the
Bronx in particularly,

you're going to have

and you're going to see
sprinkles of Hispanics.

However, if you did see them,

at least 99% of them is in the audience.

They're in the crowd.

They are not on the stage performing.

Their names are not on the flyers.

And this is early hip hop.

In 77, 78, 79, the Puerto
Ricans started dancing.

There wasn't no Puerto
Ricans in my circle.

So I looked Puerto Rican.

I'm going to show you
a picture of me too.

So when I moved to Afro,

it made me look more
Puerto Rican, you know?

But I'm not.

I'm not Puerto Rican.

The first Puerto Rican crew that I saw

really going for and emulating us,

where I say, hey, that's B-boys,

was Rocksteady.

And that was the early 80s.

They got it in 77, 78, 79, 80s.

They was nowhere near
when I first started it.

Nah, nah.

And I'm down for the early days of it.

There were no Puerto Ricans.

And when they were doing
that up rock thing,

they'd be in line doing
that up rock thing.

I personally, my thought process,

I think they were making fun of us.

So I remember talking to Charlie Ahern,

the director of Wild Style.

He said that in 81 or so,

when he started casting for Wild Style,

he was telling people in the Bronx,

young kids in the Bronx,

we're doing this movie.

We're going to have B-boys in it.

He was laughed at.

They were like, oh, that's played out.

Nobody does that anymore.

So this was as of 81.

So you had this elite group
of cats who were doing this

and they might've fell back from it.

Then you had people
like the Rocksteady crew

and other crews that
they put it on their back

and they resurrected it in
that part of the early 80s.

But this had been going on for,

you know, more than
half a decade previous.

You know, when I talk to
a lot of Puerto Ricans,

I say, listen, if you
considered yourself black,

like a lot of y'all say you do,

this wouldn't even be an issue.

What's with the wanting
special recognition

if you say that you're black?

The Hispanic people was
in the park on the gongos

early in the mornings,

seven o'clock in the morning or before,

and when you were here would wake us up.

That's what they will be playing.

But we had hardcore hip hop.

We used to call Puerto
Ricans in New York Nazis

because they used to be down with a gang

that they would wear these vests

and they would have these
SWAT stickers on the back.

I forget the name of
the gang or whatever.

See, they try to make it seem like

the Bronx, New York
was like a Benetton ad.

Everybody was sitting
around holding hands,

sharing these different
multiracial cultures.

And that wasn't the case necessarily.

We've got to be very honest about that.

There was a lot of racial tension.

There was a lot of territorial beefs.

The gangs there had their
beefs along racial lines.

It's more important than ever

that we are louder than
ever and organize this ever

and claiming and clearing
the air on things

that categorically have nothing
to do with anybody else.

Categorically, because
we welcome everybody.

But that doesn't mean
you get to come over here

and be like, mine's now.

I used to have a lot of
Puerto Rican girlfriends

and all this type of
shit when I was young.

I used to have the waves.

Sometimes I would be
mistaken as Puerto Rican,

as a darker Puerto Rican.

And I know for a fact

that especially in
Puerto Rican household,

they didn't fuck with morenos or cocolos.

That's what they called us, okay?

They would get on Puerto
Ricans for being with us.

Okay, why are you doing a cocolo dance?

Cocolo is a more
derogatory term for blacks.

You have a lot of the
Hispanic gangs out there

and just the Hispanic citizens

who were cool and cordial
with a lot of black people.

But the Latinos were kind
of doing their thing.

They weren't really a
part of hip hop culture.

In fact, many people say
they looked down on it

in the Bronx.

The whole narrative was like,

hey, you guys stay away from
those blacks over there.

It was that kind of mentality.

It was like that then, truth be told,

you go to the Bronx now, it's like that.

It's not really different.

You go to Puerto Rican parties

and it's just all Puerto Ricans.

You try to talk to a
Puerto Rican girl there

and she don't want to fuck with you.

You know what I mean?

Around the Puerto Ricans.

And I've actually experienced
that at Jamaican parties too.

Where Jamaicans, if they
come to a hip hop party,

a Jamaican girl, she'll
fuck with you there.

But if you go to an all Jamaican party,

and this is just a New York experience,

man, they will only fuck
with the Jamaican dudes

and act like, you know,

looking down on the
American dudes type of shit.

Look, I grew up in the South Bronx.

It's Puerto Rican.

It's more Puerto Ricans than blacks.

And so most of those guys
are like tight friends,

like family, you know what I mean?

So I would never want to
say nothing to offend them

because they love hip
hop just as much as I do.

They contributed to it,

but they know who started that shit.

They know what that shit is.

So I don't even feel like I should have

a conversation about that.

If we were being influenced
by other cultures,

well, damn it, you'd be hearing,

you'd be hearing Spanish
slang inside of hip hop.

You'd be hearing, you know,
instead of saying fresh,

we'd be, oh, that's fresh guy.

Or, you know, we don't say none of that.

One of the things that
I often think to myself

whenever people talk about
the narrative of hip hop

being split between blacks and Hispanics

is considering the fact that
I've been here since 1977,

if that is the case,
then who is the girl?

Because I don't know any
female prior to 1983,

from 73 to 83, who is
a Hispanic female MC,

who rose to some level of prominence.

Like everybody had to talk like us,

dress like us, you know what I mean?

Move like us.

And if you didn't, you
couldn't come in with that,

you know, you couldn't
come to a hip hop show,

dancing like this.

If you wasn't moving like,

that's, you know what I mean?

That's black movement.

And y'all adopt all of
this that y'all was,

that up rock?

Come on, let's stop playing these games.

The corporate media is
aggressively attempting

to manufacture a co
-creation myth for hip hop,

reshaping narratives and revising history

to involve other groups,
particularly Latinos.

For example, in a recent press run,

Puerto Rican b-boy Crazy Legs

from the legendary Rock Steady Crew

claimed on the Drink Champs podcast

that hip hop pioneer Disco King Mario

was part Puerto Rican.

Disco King Mario, black and Puerto Rican.

Attacks Hollywood, Puerto Rican,

but they look like you.

I'm Demena Hilliard,

and I'm the oldest daughter
of Disco King Mario.

Mario was born in
Edenton, North Carolina.

Mario, my father, is not Puerto Rican.

He is African American.

I am African American.

My second sister is African American.

My third sister is mixed.

I don't know why people
say he is Puerto Rican,

but he is not.

No Hispanic speaking people.

They are African American from the South.

My mother is from the Bronx.

Her mother is from Baltimore,

but my mother's father,

my grandfather is from South Carolina.

So we still have Southern in there,

very early in there on
both sides of my family.

Just because someone shares your address

and your zip code,

doesn't mean you help them create the art

that they built inside
of their own walls.

Another often overlooked
aspect of early hip hop

was the profound influence
of a youth-driven movement

that emerged as an offshoot
of the Nation of Islam.

This movement gained traction alongside

the burgeoning hip hop scene,

revealing itself as the 5% nation.

Once hip hop came out and
became a cultural movement

and encompassed the planet, everything,

it affected everything.

Okay, it became a conduit
for different beliefs,

different cultural exercises,

different sets of
opinions and everything.

It's through hip hop, okay?

We're aware of the movement
of the gods and earths

and the papa centers and stuff

because of hip hop.

Well, I know for a fact
that the B-Boy's dance

started from the gods,

the five percenters that
would be at the jams

back in the days who
were acting as security.

You have some people
now trying to say that

the Puerto Ricans actually
created certain things

about hip hop on their own

and we actually got it from them.

So now the narrative
is getting real crazy,

just like with a lot
of the Caribbean cats.

The gods would be doing
security at these jams,

because this is New York City in the 70s,

like, you know what I mean?

In the roughest, toughest,

the rats had knives and shit back then,

you understand?

So these dudes was staying in security.

We got equipment out here.

We got speakers.

We got to make sure
nobody passes the line

and all of that.

When the hip hop movement was on the rise

in the early 70s,

you had the rise of the
five percenters movement

and the five percenters,

there were an offshoot
of the Nation of Islam.

You had a brother from the
South named Clarence 13X,

who was the leader of the five percenters

and they had a lot of
different rituals and customs

that were used to empower
a lot of the Black youth.

Like when Zulu Nation started
giving out lessons and stuff,

they took a lot of things from the gods.

You know, they had alphabets like we did

and little stuff that
made the gods be like,

hold up now and to be honest,

the five percent in Zulu Nation

used to have a little
beef back in the days

because of that.

In fact, DJ Kool Herc was rocking

with a lot of the five percenters

when he was in high school.

Early on, he was around
a lot of five percenters

and he talks about this
in several interviews.

The fact that you talk
about a rhyme cypher,

that's directly out of
the five percent nation.

When we would have cyphers,

we would stand in a circle

and that's where everybody
one by one would go around

and you'd see who knows their
lessons and who doesn't.

People would start standing
in the circle to rhyme.

And so, of course, you got gods

that would be in these circles

and so they would be the ones
that would call it a cypher

and somehow the 85s,

you know, we call the 85s people

that are not in the five percent nation,

they just started calling it a cypher.

Like everything else we do,

we move on to the next

and other cultures come
back and resurrect it.

And honestly, I have
appreciation for other cultures

because we be leaving
behind some dope stuff.

I have no issues with
them coming back behind us

and picking it back up.

Just give credit where credit is due.

In summary, hip-hop,

like every other major
American music genre,

is a foundational Black
American creation.

Hip-hop did not come from Jamaica,

nor did it come from the diaspora.

Yet our Caribbean brother, Kool Herp,

is the undisputed godfather of hip-hop,

not the creator of hip-hop,

just like James Brown is
the godfather of soul,

but not the creator of soul.

A godfather by definition
is not a birth parent,

but someone who influences and shapes

the trajectory of a child's life.

The elements of hip-hop were here,

but Kool Herp shaped the
direction of the culture.

Hip-hop, like foundational
Black American culture,

stands as a dynamic and
ever-evolving phenomenon

deeply rooted in the principles
of evolution and change.

At its core, hip-hop thrives
on innovation, adaptation,

and the continuous reimagining
of artistic expression.

From its humble beginnings in the Bronx

to its global impact today,

hip-hop has consistently
pushed boundaries,

defied norms, and
embraced transformation.

It was all about a party.

In the Bronx, there was nothing there.

So for us to have them jams to go to,

that was the only thing that was normal

about being out there.

Other than that, it
was a bunch of junkies,

you know, abandoned buildings,

landlords burning the building down

to get the insurance money.

There's no play streets.

There's no after-school centers.

It was just, there was nothing.

And then we took that, started partying,

and then that's how the
whole thing, you know,

that's how it all kicked off

because we had nothing to do.

So hip-hop was like our normal.

But I say, first, we gotta
get the main narrative.

We gotta get the narrative

of the people who actually created this.

And we gotta get to the
bottom of why they created it.

What were the socioeconomic conditions

that caused them to take two copies

of a beat-up record and
spin it and talk over it?

That's very much a part of
the Black American experience.

So I said, we need to
chronicle that first.

We as Black Americans
have been the progenitors

and the influencers of
culture all around the world.

Everybody's wanna be like
the Black man from America.

Rock and roll.

Rock and roll was looked
at as negative early on.

It was nigger music.

It was satanic music.

Stay away from it.

They didn't wanna play it on radio.

Once white artists started
to do cover versions

of Black rock and roll music,

then they said, well, hell,

Elvis is the king of rock and roll.

We gotta make our people
the kings and queens of it.

So there's always been this need

to denigrate our music,
denigrate our culture,

but when it becomes successful,

then people wanna take it away from us

and then give other people the credit.

Hip-hop is the same way.

When hip-hop got started, it
was looked at as negative.

Again, we're really the
only group of people

who were so inclusive
that we almost think that,

oh, it's racist to say
that this is a Black thing

or whatever.

I want the world to know

that these were young Black people

who in the tradition of
what our ancestors do,

they always make lemonade out of lemons.

If you give us the worst part of the hog,

we make a delicacy out of it.

If you give us anything
terrible, we survive it

and then we conquer it.

That's what hip-hop was.

It needs to be appreciated

because we have to be credited

for what we've done and created it.

They appreciate the origin of our crime.

They appreciate us talking
about the fatherlessness

and all these other
things that we do wrong.

They need to appreciate what we do right

and what we bring in

and show that, yes, this
is yet another thing

that we created that
you guys love and like.

I saw something recently online.

Somebody said that we should
have more Asians involved

because tech companies
that made the turntables,

techniques and all of these people.

So, you know, it gets to a point

where then it's a big kumbaya
of everybody did this.

Once jazz started to become popular,

you had white people trying
to claim they created jazz.

There was a narrative that
the Italians created jazz

because there was a white Italian group

who came out with an early jazz record

and they tried to take
credit for it at first.

So, there's always been this need

to take credit for something

that foundational Black Americans created

once it become popular.

At the end of the day,
the fashion came into it.

The way we wore our clothes came into it.

The way we talked to our
friends came into it.

The slang talk and
conversation now came into it.

To have built the whole culture,

the corporations came into it.

So, I think for me, the
way I was growing up,

that was my scapegoat

and it made me save my life
and some of my friends' lives.

And whoever saw me dance
went home to go practice,

you know?

So, hip-hop was saving lives
and loving one another.

Let's just say the first
10 years of hip-hop,

it started like a revolution

that changed the way people
dress, style of music,

the way they talk,

where they thought about Black people,

the way they dance,

and none of us fired a shot.

And for anybody to
accomplish that same thing

in any other time,

millions of people would
have had to get killed.

Millions.

A lot of American
imperialism came with a gun.

It came with brute and might.

We're the part of America that
ingratiates itself to the world

without a gun, without
the threat of violence,

without any harm being done to anyone.

All we do is when we come in,

we just create cultural rifts.

That's all we do.

The parents don't like
it and the kids say,

I don't like what you guys played.

I like what these Black people done did.

We survive it and then we conquer.

That's what hip-hop was.

We took, again, two copies of a record

that was 10, 15, 20 years old.

We talked over it.

We put all these elements together.

And not only did we make a billion dollar

music industry out of it,

it's the dominant world
culture right now.

You can't go anywhere.

If you look at Bollywood
movies from India,

rap is in that.

Hip-hop elements are in that.

Any product you want to sell these days,

you got to insert hip
-hop into those products.

And that's beautiful.

But you got to remember this is something

that was created by Black Americans

in which a tradition of
making something incredible

out of nothing.

It's true.

Everybody, they can eat.

They can raise their
families off it, you know.

Yeah, I'm happy.

And it's going to the Olympics.

Yo, it's going to Paris.

You know I'm going.

They got to have Trixie there

because it's my dance, you know.

That is the most biggest thing ever.

A dance that a kid made
up going to the Olympics.

On one hand, people want
credit for a struggle

that they're not participating
in, not in a real way.

And at the same time, they
don't want to carry our cross.

And yet they want the glory
when we carry the cross.

At the end of the day,

the creation and the foundation
of who laid the bricks

for hip-hop is absolutely
100% Black culture.

So everything that we've
done so far has been stolen.

Our knowledge, our wisdom,
all of that has been stolen.

So what are we going to be
left with if they continue

and then go ahead and
they steal our history?

What are we going to be left with?

On the 50th anniversary of hip-hop,

Disco King Mario had a
street officially codenamed

after him in the Bronx,
paying homage to his role

as one of the founding
pioneers of the culture.

These hip-hop lovers say
it was at the Rosedale Park

here in the Bronx, directly
across from the Sotomayor houses,

formerly known as Bronxdale houses,

where Disco King Mario
hosted shows, block parties,

and helped sculpt hip-hop.

If he was alive today and things
were going as they should,

he would be more like a mogul.

He brought people together.

He allowed people to use
his equipment for exposure.

He got venues that no one else could get.

So he was not just a DJ.

I think he would have transitioned

to a record label manager
or events planner,

someone that was huge that
everybody had to go to.

Rap is the most exploitable.

It's the most easily exploitable
out of all the elements.

So rap rose to the top
because graffiti was illegal.

The DJ got left behind at some point

because he wasn't as
marketable as the MC.

The MC is the closest thing to a singer

or an instrumentalist.

And the B-Boy was the B-Boy.

Once they sucked all
the money out of that,

with the movies breaking and
all that stuff in the 80s,

the MC was the only thing left
that was still exportable.

People gonna say, okay, well,

I got on the mic at a house party

or I got on the mic in the basement.

So if we gonna start
using that, well, hell,

I'm gonna go back on that shit too.

I'm gonna be like, yeah,
I was in the house too.

But I don't do that.

I don't do that because I go on facts.

I go on artifacts.

I go on proof.

I go on receipts.

So we wanna start saying, well, fuck it,

I'll take it back to 75
then if that's the case,

because I was on the
mic at my daddy's house

at my mama house with Keith Cowboy.

So stop playing with me.

Just alone, the name of the groups

always kinda gave me something.

Kinda like Berry Gordy.

Berry Gordy said when he did Motown,

he purposely named those groups,

these like majestic names,

like the Temptations and the Miracles

because of the way that black Americans

were perceived at the time.

He wanted to bring people
on that looked good,

sounded good, presented good

and had these magic
names or magical names.

I don't think the MCs necessarily knew

that they were doing this,

but like the treacherous three,

I didn't even know what
the word treacherous,

man, I had to look that up.

Early rap was a great educator for me.

The funky four plus
one, the furious five,

the fearless four, grandmaster, whoever,

anybody with the word grandmaster,

these were all very elevated things

that made these people
like superheroes to me.

So hip hop was like I'm normal.

So I'm looking forward to the weekend,

go do a gig and make some money.

We were dirt poor so
I could buy my clothes

and that was normal.

That was like me having a paper route.

It was doing the jams, hip hop.

Although, yes, we were enslaved,

yes, we deal with Jim Crow

and we dealing with all this stuff

that we're dealing with in the world,

what we took from that wasn't,

oh, woe is me, me's just
the worst thing ever.

We didn't do that.

We took it and flipped it into a culture

that the world now loves.

So if you love the music,

all we ask is that you
just show some respect.

Just show some respect.

That's what I want people to know.

Just have some respect
because you in our house

and have some respect for your house

and make sure you wipe your feet

before you enter the door.

I mean, the way hip hop
even got his name was

in 1982, Steven Hager
asked Africa Bambaataa,

what do you call this?

He just rattled off,
we called it hip hop.

Village Eye was the name of the magazine.

And from there, we got the name hip hop.

Some of these things were
just happening in the moment.

When rap and hip hop was
all black, it was negative.

Now that it became a big phenomenon

and corporately acceptable,

now there's this need to take foundation

of black Americans out
of the creation of it

and give it away to other people.

And it's important for us
to set the record straight

to let people know this is our culture.

This is where it came from.

And it's important for
us to gate keep it.

Everybody can enjoy it,

but never forget the origins of it

because the truth is power.

Transcribed by whisperAI with faster-whisper (medium.en) on 23 Aug 2025 - 05:37:19