FEATURE:
Hip-Hop at Fifty
IN THIS PHOTO: Missy Elliott/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
The Best of the Genre from the '90s
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AN important anniversary….
IN THIS PHOTO: Disco fever/PHOTO CREDIT: Sophie Bramly
is coming on 11th August. That date, fifty years ago, was when Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) was credited as discovering Hip-Hop. It was a transformative moment that sparked a revolution and this exciting and powerful new phase for music. I am, going to dedicate this feature to celebrating the best Hip-Hop cuts of the'90s. Just before I get there, this fascinating article discusses Kool Herc’s background, and life leading up to a famous house party where he birthed Hip-Hop. I have split it so there is some lead-up to the 1970s and a lot of the tensions and racism that was engulfing America. A moment in 1973, lit a fuse that would react against the injustice and hatred many people in the Black community felt:
“Clive (“Kool Herc”) Campbell and his sister Cindy grew up with a varied musical soundtrack in their Bronx home at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. Their father, Keith, a trained mechanic in Jamaica before immigrating to the States and working at Clarks Equipment Company in Queens, raised them on an eclectic palate that included Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, and Jim Reeves. Herc specifically recalled singing Reeves’ country tunes to help “Americanize” his accent.
While it was Herc’s father who instilled in him the value of a genre-less appreciation, it was his mother, Nettie, who showed him how music could have an intoxicating effect on people when absorbed together in the late ’60s.
“I see different guys dancing, guys rapping to girls, I’m wonderin’ what the guy is whisperin’ in the girl’s ears about,” Herc recalled in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. “I’m green, but I’m checking out the scene. And I noticed a lot of the girls was complaining, ‘Why they not playing that record?’ ‘How come they don’t have that record?’
IN THIS PHOTO: Delancy Street/PHOTO CREDIT: Jane Dickson
These questions shaped Herc’s musical sensibilities moving forward. He knew firsthand that if a room was full of people, it was the DJ using four-on-the-floor disco rhythms who ultimately controlled the mood at Bronx venues like the Puzzle, the Tunnel, and Disco Fever.
“This guy John Brown used to play at the Tunnel,” Herc recalled in The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries. “Used to play music and I’m dancing with this girl trying to get my s*it off, and he used to [mess] up. And the whole party, they be like, ‘Y’ahhh, what the [heck] is that…? Why you took it off there? The s*it was about to explode. I was about to bust a nut.’ You know. And the girl be like, ‘Damn, what the [heck] is wrong?’ And I’m hearing his mistakes and I’m griping too. ’Cos he’s [messing] my groove up.”
When Herc was 23-years-old, he contemplated how he could leave his mark on American society in the same way figures like U-Roy had shaped Jamaican culture. However, the influx of gang activity caused these musical venues to become much more dangerous.
By 1970, police estimated that there were 11,000 active gang members in the Bronx alone. “The Savage Seven” would enter clubs around the Bronxdale Project on Bruckner Boulevard under the cover of pulsating strobe lights. Regardless of a person’s age or gender, the Savages were primed to inflict bodily harm. Eventually the Savage Seven’s ranks swelled to several dozens — prompting a name change to “the Black Spades.”
The surge of energy was palpable. The Campbells’ friend Mike began using Herc’s own vocal cues to turn the fluorescent lights on and off. Herc’s ability to highlight nothing but the record’s “break” and his pioneering “Merry-Go-Round” technique — where he matched two identical records to form one continuous loop — turned the tiny recreation room into a sweatbox as bodies jostled against one another.
Another friend, Coke La Rock — whose moniker stemmed from his love of chocolate milk (Coco) — added to the atmosphere by injecting a touch of Jamaica’s toasting traditions.
La Rock was born in the Bronx. Prior to the party, he had earned a reputation for his agile dance moves, like James Brown. He and Herc became friends as teenagers, attending “night centers” together — a quasi after-school program for older students who could play basketball and shoot pool instead of wandering the streets. But in this precise moment, it was his vocal qualities using the echo chamber that really struck people.
“I was just calling out my friends’ names,” La Rock recalled to journalist Steven Hager.
“The first one was like, ‘There’s not a man who can’t be thrown, a horse that can’t be rode, a bull that can’t be stopped, there’s no disco that I Coke La Rock can’t rock.”
While Herc played his records in the same room where people were dancing, La Rock was by himself in another room with the microphone. He was the Master of Ceremonies meets The Wizard of Oz.
The next day, the party had resonated all over the city. Like so many other young people had done before, Clive and Cindy Campbell had simply thrown a back-to-school party. But this was different. With the ability to move the crowd with groundbreaking techniques, and the experiences he gained while attending parties with his parents, Herc thought differently on August 11, 1973”.
I might have time for one more Hip-Hop feature before its fiftieth anniversary on 11th August. I wanted to tip a hat to the 1990s. A decade where Pop and Rock were flourishing, it was also an amazing time for Hip-Hop. Below are some of the best cuts and jams from the kings and queens of the genre. I am sure there is something in the playlist that will…
PHOTO CREDIT: Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels
TAKE your fancy.