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Dec 14, 2020 · DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) hosts what is considered the first hip hop party on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. Graffiti tagging spreads throughout the boroughs of New York City. Taggers would write their name followed by their street number.
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DJ Kool Herc (born April 16, 1955, Kingston, Jamaica) Jamaican American disc jockey (deejay or DJ) who is credited as the founder of hip-hop, a musical and cultural movement that revolves around four elements: rapping, graffiti painting, B-boying, and deejaying. In 1973 Herc introduced a number of innovations at a party he deejayed and cohosted tha...
Clive Campbell is the eldest of six children born to Keith Campbell, who worked as an automobile mechanic, and Nettie Campbell, who was a nurse. His father was an avid record collector who exposed his children to many musical genres and styles, including jazz, funk, and gospel music. Growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, Campbell was also influenced by the neighbourhood parties at local dance halls and the innovative sound systems that deejays devised for the parties. In 1967 he immigrated to the Bronx in New York City, where his mother had moved to live and work. Eventually, the entire family joined them, and they moved into an apartment at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue.
Campbell attended the Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, where he earned the nickname Hercules for his muscular physique. He became involved with a crew of local graffiti artists, and he began using the tag name Clyde as Kool for his graffiti. Soon, he started going by Kool Herc. His mother took him to house parties in the neighbourhood, and eventually he began throwing block parties where he served as a deejay. Herc was known for his powerful sound system and impressive collection of funk and soul music records. He drew on his Jamaican background for his deejay style, incorporating a Jamaican musical tradition called “toasting,” in which the deejay spoke, or “rapped,” improvised rhymes over the music.
On August 11, 1973, Herc’s sister Cindy Campbell hosted a back-to-school party, for which she hired her brother to deejay. The party was held in the recreation room of their apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue. In a 1998 interview with writer Frank Broughton, Herc recalled the party as “Lovely. Charged 25 cents for girls, 50 cents for fellas, 50 cents for sodas…beer was a dollar.”
He introduced a new technique at the party that allowed him to keep playing the percussive instrumental breaks in songs for a longer, continuous dance flow. At previous events he noticed that the breaks brought out more people to dance. By setting up two turntables and a mixer and playing two copies of the same record, he was able to loop and extend the breaks so that guests could dance to them for longer periods of time. To build his grooves, he favoured breaks from heavy funk songs such as “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose” by James Brown, “Bongo Rock” by the Incredible Bongo Band, “Get into Something” by the Isley Brothers, and “Listen to Me” by Baby Huey and the Babysitters. Herc also began naming, or “calling out,” individual dancers at the party to encourage them to show off their moves. He called his two-turntable technique “merry-go-round” and the dancers who performed during the breaks “break-boys and break-girls,” or “B-boys and B-girls.”
Music historians credit Herc’s innovations and experimentation at this event with providing the foundation for hip-hop, and August 11, 1973, is now considered the birth date of hip-hop. His techniques and style influenced the earliest rappers and hip-hop artists, including deejays Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash.
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After the back-to-school party, Herc continued to deejay at local events and clubs, such as the Twilight Zone in the Bronx. The events were promoted by word of mouth and handmade flyers distributed around the neighbourhood. He performed with a group of dancers, deejays, and MCs known as The Herculords, who rapped over his beats. He was known for his impressive sound system and stereo speakers, which were dubbed “The Herculoids.” However, Herc stopped performing after being stabbed while trying to break up a fight at a club gig in 1977. He told Spin magazine in a 2023 interview, “It drew me into a shell. The mystique wasn’t there no more.”
- DJ Kool Herc. Getty Images for Tribeca Film Fe. On Aug. 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc and his younger sister hosted a Back to School Jam in the recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Ave., which many consider the birthplace of hip-hop.
- DJ Premier. Neilson Barnard, Getty Images. An architect of the sample-based sound that dominated East Coast hip-hop during the 1990s, DJ Premier's bread and butter came via his production work for The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and his own group, Gang Starr.
- Lil Jon. Getty Images for Pepsi. As Atlanta became a breeding ground for talent during the 1990s, Lil Jon was at the forefront of the scene as a DJ, rapper and producer.
- Grandmaster Flash. Paul Zimmerman, Getty Images. Grandmaster Flash, the first DJ to become a bona fide superstar, is responsible for some of the most enduring innovations in turntablism to date.
Aug 8, 2023 · Most notably there was DJ Kool Herc, whose 1973 party was seen as the official birth of hip-hop; DJ Hollywood, credited as the first DJ to speak in rhyme in the traditional rap cadence; and Grand Wizzard Theodore, the inventor of the record scratch.
- Femi Lewis
- DJ Kool Herc. DJ Kool Herc, also known as Kool Herc, is credited for throwing the first hip hop party in 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. Playing funk records by artists such as James Brown, DJ Kool Herc revolutionized the way records were played when he began isolating the instrumental portion of a song and then switching to the break in another song.
- Afrika Bambaataa. When Afrika Bambaataa decided to become a contributor to hip hop culture, he drew from two inspiration sources: the Black liberation movement and the sounds of DJ Kool Herc.
- Grandmaster Flash. Grandmaster Flash was born Joseph Saddler on January 1, 1958, in Barbados. He moved to New York City as a child and he became interested in music after leafing through his father’s extensive record collection.
Mar 30, 2005 · DJ Kool Herc is the father of the breakbeat, the deejay practice of isolating and repeating "breaks," the most danceable portions of songs; breakbeats make up the foundation of modern hip-hop.
I thought about being remembered as a pioneer of hip-hop — an OG breakdancer — a DJ when I was just seven years old — and an incredible educator. But what stuck with me was being known as a man of God.
