South Bronx, New York City – 1982 (no audio)
South Bronx, New York City – 1982 (no audio)
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The Roots of Hip Hop
What are the roots of Hip Hop?
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Afrika Bambaataa
(b. 1957) Born Keith Donovan, the pioneering Hip-Hop DJ Afrika Bambaataa grew up in the Bronx in the infamous Bronx River Projects, getting involved in gang culture and rising to the position of "warlord" in the Black Spades. If fully absorbed into gang life, Bambaataa was also the child of an activist mother and well aware of the Black Power movement and the radical thinking in the Black community that came on the heels of the Civil Rights era. After a trip to Africa and influenced by the emerging Hip Hop scene, Bambaataa formed the Universal Zulu Nation. Shifting his world view...
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DJ Kool Herc
(b. 1955) A Jamaican native who moved to New York City’s Bronx borough at the age of 12, Kool Herc is widely credited as the originator of Hip Hop. Herc (given name Clive Campbell) came to prominence in the early 1970s, when he began throwing dance parties in the rec room at his family’s apartment complex in the South Bronx – at the time a blighted, crime-ridden neighborhood. Noting a spike in crowd energy during the instrumental breaks on the Funk and Soul records he spun, Herc came up with the technique of extending the break by playing two copies of...
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Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Emerging in New York in the late 1970s, Grandmaster Flash is credited as one of the foremost innovators of Hip Hop DJing as an art form. By backspinning, scratching, mixing and otherwise manipulating vinyl records in search of the “perfect beat,” Flash helped pioneer using the turntable as a musical instrument to create breakbeats, the backbone of any Hip Hop song. Along with the group the Furious Five, Flash came to national prominence in 1982 with the seminal Rap hit “The Message” – a track that with its chilling social commentary changed Hip Hop forever, retooling its image as good-time “party...