The only issue that I have with it is that everybody is profiting off of hip-hop but the pioneers, those of us that really laid the foundation to it. I mean, people have to get a living any way that they can get a living. Now, we should say that has obviously changed, but it's left some of these original pioneers with some bittersweet feelings about it all. And she told us, at the time, nobody was thinking about this music they were creating as lucrative. She went out on her own as a solo female rapper in the '80s. I mean, we met someone named MC Debbie D. And I think the thing that stuck with me the most is that some of the early voices and names that were involved in the earliest days of hip-hop story, they didn't profit in the same ways that today the megawatt artists who are all household names in hip-hop did. SUMMERS: I mean, this is a project we've worked on for the last five months. I go right to the yolk.ĭETROW: As you reported this, as you reported the other stories in this series, what surprised you? He was 18 the day of that infamous party, but he's 68 years old now, and he called that technique the merry go round.ĭJ KOOL HERC: The best part of the records, I went to it. SUMMERS: I actually got a chance to talk with DJ Kool Herc over the phone earlier this year.
I mean, you can kind of imagine what this might sound like. And he and his friends could get on the mic over these beats and make announcements like stage banter or these funny little rhymes and link them up. SUMMERS: And, I mean, Scott, you can almost think of this as like a predecessor to sampling, though, back in Kool Herc's day, it let the dancers just get crazy for a long time.
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He also figured out how to use his two turntables simultaneously to loop a single break with two copies of the same record. And he was really known as something of an innovator. And then he'd queue up another break on his first turntable. SUMMERS: So he developed this technique where he'd play the break from one record, then play just the break from another record on his other turntable. But Kool Herc also noticed that dancers who were at these parties that he was deejaying, they loved the parts of the records where the vocals dropped out and you just had the percussive breakdowns or the breaks. SUMMERS: Well, I mean, like any deejay, DJ Kool Herc prided himself on the tunes he selected and the size and the power of his sound system, which, back in his day, he was often setting up outdoors, literally plugging into city lights to get power to power up a sound system. What made what Kool Herc was doing so different, and why does that moment get credit for the birth of it all? Let's talk about that party for a minute. You've visited many of the key places like this apartment building that's still there that you can still go into. And we also just wanted to look back and talk to some of the people who were influential in its rise who maybe don't always get their say and others who have built their careers on documenting it.ĭETROW: I feel like 50 years is one of those milestones that feels like a very long time, but when you stop and think about it, it's actually not that long.ĭETROW: And you have talked to a lot of the key people who were there in that moment. So, first of all, I just thought marking that was significant. It impacts every element of our culture from sports to fashion, everything we do, really. SUMMERS: Well, I mean, first of all, can you believe it has only been 50 years since the date that we credit for the birth of hip-hop? I mean, hip-hop is everywhere right now. Hey, Juana.ĭETROW: So what made you want to make hip-hop's 50th birthday? SUGARHILL GANG: I said a hip-hop, the hippie, the hippie to the hip, hip-hop and you don't stop.ĭETROW: My co-host Juana Summers joins me now. So next week, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED is exploring five key moments that helped define hip hop starting with that party that many call the birth of hip-hop. It is impossible now to imagine the world today without this music and its culture.
Since then, hip-hop has evolved and it has exploded. And presiding over it all was deejay Kool Herc. Nearly 50 years ago, on August 11, 1973, some teenagers threw a back-to-school party in the rec room of their apartment building in the Bronx.
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