The birth of rap as we know it can be directly traced back to the
concrete jungles of the Bronx in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, an
era now fondly remembered as the old school. No man deserves more
credit for planting the seeds of hip hop than DJ Kool Herc. Herc
modeled his sound system, the Herculoids-the loudest and most
powerful sound around-after the massive mobile sound systems in his
native Jamaica, but his playlist was something else entirely.
Popular club DJs kept Manhattan crowds moving to a nonstop mix of
trendy disco hits, cleverly blended from one song to the next.
While these DJs did the same old thing with the newest records,
Herc was creating something completely new out of old and obscure
records. He noticed that funk, the era’s quintessential black
sound, elicited a much greater crowd reaction in the predominantly
black and Hispanic Bronx. Not only that, but Herc noticed that when
he played, for example, James Brown’s “Give It Up or Turnit A
Loose,” people went especially wild during the “break” segment of
the song, when just the drums or percussion took over. Herc wondred
what would happen if he got two copies of the same record and cut
back and forth between them in order to prolong the break or sonic
climax. Unwittingly, Herc had stumbled upon the breakbeat, the
starting point for much hip hop, dance, techno, and jungle (drum
‘n’ bass) today.
SOURCE:
Vibe History of Hip Hop
edited by Alan Light
$19.25
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