03/08/2023
Happy 50th Hip Hop.
To quote Rakim , “its been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you “ , this blog hasn’t been updated in many many moons but since it is the 50th Anniversary since the birth of this culture , one that’s been a huge part of my life I thought why not resurrect this thing with the story of my hip hop life. There will be lots to read here as I dig into my history in this culture.
Chapter 1 - Delight and Rapture
The Sugarhill Gang - Rappers Delight
Released: September 16, 1979
For as long as I could remember I loved listening to the radio , American Top 40 on Sunday mornings , Rock radio on WPLJ , R&B and Soul on KISS FM or WBLS even oldies on CBS FM.
I cannot say I know the exact day that Hip Hop, which wasn’t even what the culture was called at the time came into my life but I remember where I was. It was in my living room a small radio on the floor next to me as I was drawing one afternoon. I was listening to 92.KTU which was a Disco station in NYC at the time and every afternoon I believe around 4 -5 PM there was a DJ named Paco who would play his Supermix
This was one of the first places I heard the art of the Dj. Mixing records. See I didn’t grow up in an area where people had jams in the park, or a dj for a house party. I did not really know how a mix was created, I saw dj’s in movies like Saturday Night Fever but never saw a live dj up to this point but I loved how songs were blended into one another without a pause break or dead air . On this day Paco played what I though was going to be “Good Times” by Chic instead I heard,
I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie
To the hip hip hop-a you don't stop the rock It
to the bang-bang boogie, say up jump the boogie
To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
Now what you hear is not a test: I'm rappin' to the beat
And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet
See, I am Wonder Mike, and I'd like to say hello
To the black, to the white, the red
And the brown, the purple and yellow
My 9 year old brain was blown! What was this? I’d never heard of rapping before, it was different , fun.I kept listening. Good Times was a huge record that crossed over into the mainstream even as Disco faced its backlash , the once groove was undeniable. Years later I would find out this was actually another band playing a version of the song to get around copyright laws . I also found out not long after that this song was called “Rappers Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang. It wouldn’t be long before this song was everywhere, on the radio, on TV Soul Train and eventually via a 12” single in my collection.
At first it seemed to be treated as a novelty , like the Monster Mash. No one really took this rap thing seriously but It was catchy and heavily requested so it took on a life of its own.
I was not very popular in school, I was kind of shy and introverted, I had friends but nothing that made me stand out in the crowd until this song came out. I memorized every line of it . Eventually one day at school a music discussion came up and the subject of this song . I never had much to brag about but I spoke up and said , I know all the words , eventually someone challenged me on it and I went straight for it . After that on random occasions I would be asked by random classmates to “do rappers delight “ my 5 min of elementary school fame . I remember having battles with other kids to see if they could do the whole song and won most of the time. It’s funny to think that I had no clue at this point that real rap battles were happening a few miles north in the Bronx by the pioneers of this art from. It was still a novelty at time
Shortly after this other rappers records would come seemingly out of nowhere into the collective conciseness .
The next 4 would solidify my love for and change my view that this was no novelty but a new form of music which at the time was called Rappin’
Kurtis Blow – The Breaks
Released: June 14, 1980
I don’t remember exactly on this one where I was but it was either on the radio or at United Skates. I loved when they played this at the skating rink because of the way it sounded on their system. This was my first exposure to a nightclub experience. The roller rink was the first place I saw other people Breakdance, but that was at a later date.
At the time I didn’t know that “ The Breaks” not only referred to the subject matter Kurtis was rhyming about but about the break beats which they were rhyming over up in the Bronx, that Break dancing was another new element to the culture which was in its infancy.
Its crazy to think back that I was there in the formative years of a culture that would one day go global when so many people were saying “ this isn’t music “ ,” what is this ghetto sh*t” , “rap is a fad” . The backlash against “rap” seemed even more harsh than it was against Disco, A lot of it was racism at the time. It was the second time in my life I felt I had to defend something I liked, the first being KISS.I really liked The Breaks, the second rap record I ever bought.
If your woman steps out with another man
[That's the breaks, that's the breaks)
And she runs off with him to Japan
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)
And the IRS says they wanna chat
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)
And you can't explain why you claimed your cat
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)
And Ma Bell sends you a whoppin' bill
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)
With eighteen phone calls to Brazil
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)
And you borrowed money from the mob
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)
And yesterday you lost your job
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)
Well, these are the breaks Break it up, break it up, break it up
Blondie Rapture
Released: January 12, 1981
Debbie Harry was one of my first celebrity crushes, she is the reason I chased and fawned over “rocker chicks” my whole life. She was cool, she was beautiful, she had a killer voice, an attitude! I loved their music, much of which I first heard on American Top 40 Radio with the Iconic Casey Casem. Im pretty sure this is where I first heard “Rapture “ .What can I say about this record ? Its a certified classic.
This is the first time I heard the names Flash and Fab 5 Freddy .
Fab Five Freddy told me everybody's fly
DJ spinnin' I said, "My my"
Flash is fast, Flash is cool
François c'est pas, Flash ain't no dude
I had no idea what she was rappin about. There were aliens eating cars and bars and guitars . It wasn’t the best rap in the world but even at that age I realized that wasn’t the point. She was showing an appreciation for this thing called Rap.
Years later when I found out the background of how punk and hip hop intersected with Blondie and the Clash it made sense. Punk was essentially the sibling, the white Hip Hop, a culture a movement made by the mostly disenfranchised white youth .
I say it all the time, thank god I was born Gen X , we lived through the creation of the best movements in Music and Culture
To wrap up this introduction to my world of hip hop are 2 records coming from the same origin but dramatically different in sound and style but their impact on me and my love for hip hop can not be understated. The reason I have them in reverse order of their release is I know for a fact that I didn’t discover the “Adventures” until later because at the time I heard it I had discovered breakin and that wasn’t until after the moment my life changed forever in 1982 (more to come on that )
Grand Master Flash and The Furious 5 – The Message
Released: July 1, 1982
Grandmaster Flash – The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel
Released 1981
“The Message” which is considered the first conscious hip hop record which wasn’t about partying or how much money or clothes you had or how “fly” you were . It was the story of growing up poor in the ghetto. To this day I love the production of this record. The beat , the synth the baseline are just killer.It sounds amazing in headphones or on a booming system. Its been sampled in just about every era of hip hop until today. What really got me was that I felt something while listening to this song, it made me think about how people live and their day to day struggles. Even though I wasn’t living in the so called ghetto we were still poor, my family was on welfare and food stamps, I experienced and saw firsthand some of the uglier sides of life by this point, drug addiction and alcoholism. The hook really spoke to me
“Don’t push me cuz I’m close to the edge ,
Im trying not to lose my heed
Its like a jungle sometimes
it makes me wonder how I keep from going under “
My mom wrote poetry and I always had an appreciation for poetry , I read Poe and others ,so rap was not hard for me to understand particularly paired with rhythm. The Message was the blueprint for conscious hip hop and Melle Mel the storytellers to follow. I realize to this day The Message influenced the type of Hip Hop I would come to love. Yeah I like to party and dance but I looked for a rapper that could paint a mental picture and make me think! To me this verse hits like a baseball bat to the forehead
A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smiling on you, but he's frowning too
Because only God knows what you'll go through
You'll grow in the ghetto living second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
Listen to The Message !
The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel is a song so important to me in terms of hip hop. It is the first “Dj “ cut I ever heard. In the early days of Hip hop a lot of crews, groups would have track dedicated to the DJ. One thing people forget is the DJ is the one who put the MC on, not the other way around. The DJ was first, the DJ was king. Although i didn’t discover it until after I learned what the DJ did , I analyzed this track for hours , which records were used , the scratch and cut patterns listening in amazement at the first DJ who took me on a journey with 2 turntables and some records.
