(5 of 9)
The after-school party, held in a rec room of a Bronx high-rise, was a success: Clive and Cindy charged 25[cents] for girls and 50[cents] for boys, and it went till 4 a.m. Pretty soon Clive was getting requests to do more parties, and in 1973 he gave his first block party. He was Kool Herc now--that was the graffito tag he used to write on subway cars--and he got respect. At 18 he was the first break-beat deejay, reciting rhymes over the "break," or instrumental, part of the records he was spinning. He had two turntables going and two copies of each record, so he could play the break over and over, on one turntable and then the next. Americans didn't get reggae, he thought, so he tried to capture that feel with U.S. funk songs--James Brown and Mandrill. He had dancers who did their thing in the break--break dancers, or, as he called them, b-boys. As they danced, Herc rapped, "Rocking and jamming/ That's all we play/ When push comes to shove/ The Herculoids won't budge/ So rock on, my brother..."
Joseph Saddler loved music too. He thought Kool Herc was a god--but he thought he could do better. Saddler figured most songs had only about 10 seconds that were good, that really got the party going, so he wanted to stretch those 10 seconds out, create long nights of mixing and dancing. Holed up in his Bronx bedroom, he figured out a way to listen to one turntable on headphones while the other turntable was revving up the crowd. That way a deejay could keep two records spinning seamlessly, over and over again. Herc was doing it by feel. Saddler wanted the show to be perfect.
So he became Grandmaster Flash. He played his turntables as if he were Jimi Hendrix, cuing records with his elbow, his feet, behind his back. He invented "scratching"--spinning a record back and forth to create a scratchy sound. He tried rapping, but he couldn't do it, so he gathered a crew around him--the Furious Five, rap's first supergroup.
Things happened fast. This is the remix. There were start-up labels like Sugar Hill and Tommy Boy. Then in 1979 came Rapper's Delight--the first rap song most people remember. Grandmaster Flash warned, "Don't touch me 'cause I'm close to the edge." Then there was Run-D.M.C. rocking the house, and the Beastie Boys hollering, "You gotta fight for your right--to party!" and Public Enemy saying, "Don't believe the hype," and Hammer's harem-style balloon pants. Then gangsta rap: N.W.A. rapping "F____ tha police"; Snoop drawling "187 on an undercover cop"; and Tupac crying, "Even as a crack fiend, mama/ You always was a black queen, mama." Then Mary J. Blige singing hip-hop soul; Guru and Digable Planets mixing rap with bebop; the Fugees "Killing me softly with his song"; Puffy mourning Biggie on CD and MTV.
We in the '90s And finally it's looking good Hip-hop took it to billions I knew we would. --Nas, We Will Survive