Oakland legend Too $hort was a guest recently on the EDI Mean Podcast where he discussed his earliest Hip-Hop influences and what he thinks celebrations for Hip-Hop's 50th got wrong.

"I heard Hip-Hop for the first time when I heard 'Rappers Delight'," he revealed. "Of course New York had been runnin' with it for a few years, but only on a street level. I heard 'Rappers Delight' and not long after that Grandmaster Flash was droppin' somethin' on Sugar Hill Records, then Spoonie G and Kurtis Blow. It was a year later, maybe 1980 when I felt that I could do this."

$hort says that he found an instrumental jazz record in his mother's collection and purchased a microphone and recorder from Radio Shack and built "a little home lab". "By 1981 I was Hip-Hop," he said.

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