A comprehensive guide to the origin/roots of HipHop's elements (all verified facts w/ OG interviews)

[K.O.N.Y]

None of the people ive encountered on the ground level could articulate the kool herc origin story properly

nikkas is out here saying that herc was doing this all by himself. The Jamaica theory literally depends on that narrative lol

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Question 2) At the party in 1973, was Herc playing the break parts of songs; looping with 2 turntables & 2 copies of the same song along with rapping on the mic?

Lets see what the early participants have to say


pioneering Bboy, Trxie's



thoughts on Herc looping breaks/playing segments

NORIN RAD: "When did you start breaking and who inspired you to start breaking?"

TRIXIE: "I'm gonna say it like this....Did nobody inspire me to start breaking 'cause I already knew how to dance. I started breakdancing in 1971, then 72,73...yeah, and I stopped dancing in 1974/75. When we did go to Herc's parties that's when I took it to another level. All my friends could tell you I already knew how to dance so it wasn't like I didn't know how to dance. Nobody did..I put it to you like this. My Mother was a dancer so I gotta say my mother kind of inspired me to dance."

NORIN RAD: "Is it true that breaking at that time was done mainly on top?"

TRIXIE:"Yeah,you would get into the move of it, you know?! Then once you see an opening then you come down to the ground and do your rolls, your spins, all of that....but you see there is a timing for that. A lot of people the way they are breaking right now all they do is the floormoves, they are not actually dancing. No! We didn't do it like that.You danced first then you break ..."Oh Boy, you now break Boy!" Then you come back up and you dance again.It was a dance. That's what it was. It was dance breaking."

Norin Rad:"And back then B-Boys used to dance to the whole song, right? Not just the break part?"

TRIXIE: "Yeah, yeah, yeah!!! From beginning to end! Whoever gets tired or whatever (against you)...you're the winner. Back in my time I could dance a whole album. A whole album by myself!"

Castles In The Sky: INTERVIEW WITH THE ORIGINAL B-BOY TRIXIE


.
.
Niqqa Twins



their thoughts

SIR NORIN RAD:"So in your era it was important to match the music with your moves?"

KEITH:"Absolutely!!! Absolutely!!!! That's what we would do when we were at home practicing. We knew that what we was going to do had to be a part of the music. Just like somebody doing a Broadway show. They know every move they gonna make of every sound that comes off the instruments. They know what they gonna be doing at that point. We practiced! That's what we did! We practiced! We knew that for every B-Boy record there was a break part that came because they didn't play just the break, they would play the whole record. If you play James Brown's "Give It Up Or Turn It Aloose" you had to wait for the "Clap your hands, stomp your feet.....Clyde!"- part. That's when the break came in. Herc wasn't mixing up those parts back and forth like that at that time (at his early parties). He would put one record on and then it would play all the way through. It was the same with "It's Just Begun", you know what I'm saying? After that saxophone part that's when the break came in and that's when you did whatever you had for that particular section. It was also the same with "Get Into Something" which was a very beautiful song to dance off of because it was so uptempo and then it had that break which was in the middle part of that song! Same thing with Baby Huey's "Listen To Me"...you know, you would be dancing that whole song and then that break part would come very late in that song. You had to have a lot of stuff going on to get to that break part and then when that break came in that's when you really had to go in....do some of your fiercest moves at that point. It was a lot different than it is today...the B-Boy thing, you know what I'm saying?"

Castles In The Sky

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Ced Gee (west bronx) of ultramagnetic, witnessed early herc jams says it's a misconception that Herc was rocking with 2 turntables and looping in the early days. He makes it very clear that Herc was just playing the whole song on 1 turntable.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Roosevelt Dmite Simmons (of the Furious 5) who grew up with LuvBug Starski and Keith Cowboy, came up on the West Side of BX and knows all them early cats

w/ Cowboy

w/ Baam

w/ Herc

w/ DJ Hollywood


...his thoughts on what was being done at early Herc parties

Q- Is there any truth to what Flash has said about Herc’s transitions being off, and having the dance floor in disarray?


A- Disarray? Nah I didn’t see that. He wasn’t using a cue at first. I don’t think Herc even had two copies of records at that point. He played with reckless abandon. Just throwing records on. There was no cohesiveness yet to what he was doing. None of that mattered to us.

I tell you what. I bet his system wasn’t in disarray…. that Herculord sound system was deafening even then. And this was a small club he only bought maybe two massive speakers and some Peavey Columns all powered by this Macintosh Amp. But he brought all his shyt wit him when he played outside - speakers stacked. You could hear his system for five city blocks in either direction. Easily. There were no Emcees yet. Just Coke saying fly phrases, like “jammin wit the jamming, servin wit the servers” and Clark Kent periodically dissing any B Boy he felt like. It was all very Kool

DYNAMITE - A BRONX TALE

 

[K.O.N.Y]

Roosevelt Dmite Simmons (of the Furious 5) who grew up with LuvBug Starski and Keith Cowboy, came up on the West Side of BX and knows all them early cats

w/ Cowboy

w/ Baam

w/ Herc

w/ DJ Hollywood


...his thoughts on what was being done at early Herc parties







DYNAMITE - A BRONX TALE

Has coke ever addressed dj Hollywood or vice versa

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Has coke ever addressed dj Hollywood or vice versa

Not really, coke for the most part hardly ever mentions people from outside the herc circle. Herc is the one who often brings up Hollywood.

 

[K.O.N.Y]

Not really, coke for the most part hardly ever mentions people from outside the herc circle. Herc is the one who often brings up Hollywood.

U would think herc would stay far away from mentioning Hollywood

Dude basically pulls herc card

showing it actually was possible to be both a pioneering-dj and an emcee at the same time

 

[IllmaticDelta]

U would think herc would stay far away from mentioning Hollywood

Dude basically pulls herc card

showing it actually was possible to be both a pioneering-dj and an emcee at the same time

Flash basically admitted to this when he talked about Hollywood and Luvbug (learned from Hollywood)

On dmite's page

the actual Flash quote is from:

The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats
By Grandmaster Flash, David Ritz


The first dudes who were cutting/mixing breaks while rapping at the same time was

1. Hollywood

2. LuvBug Starski

Along with early DJ partner DJ Hollywood, Kevin "Lovebug Starski" Smith pioneered party-rocking and rapping, while simultaneously DJing, at such Bronx hot spots as Disco Fever, long before hip-hop would become a household word.

NPR Cookie Consent and Choices






3. Grandmaster Caz

 

[K.O.N.Y]

Flash basically admitted to this when he talked about Hollywood and Luvbug (learned from Hollywood)

On dmite's page

the actual Flash quote is from:

The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats
By Grandmaster Flash, David Ritz


The first dudes who were cutting/mixing breaks while rapping at the same time was

1. Hollywood

2. LuvBug Starski







NPR Cookie Consent and Choices






3. Grandmaster Caz

Ok so the question now is

who came first starski or Hollywood

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Ok so the question now is

who came first starski or Hollywood

Hollywood

 

[IllmaticDelta]

....I've established that Herc wasn't rocking 2 turntables or looping double copies of the same record at that party in 1973 or his early days in general via his early bboys like Trixie and the Niqqa Twins. Now, the question is what is the Merry-Go-Round, is the merry-go-round actually breakbeat-djing and when /where did Herc actually attempt looping with 2 copies of the same record?


Question # 1) What is/was The Merry-Go-Round?

Herc's, Merry-Go-Round technique is basically a crude or rudimentary way of mixing between/across records or breaks that Herc did because he lacked foundational Disco djing skills. Here is a description by Flash of what Herc was doing:

When did you know that this was your calling?

Flash: I attempted to be a break-dancer first. But I found myself drawn to watching Kool Herc. After the third time I saw him, I noticed this thing I later termed the “disarray unison factor.” He might play something that was downtempo and then right behind that would play something that was uptempo, and it wasn’t on time. In between record A and record B, you could see how off time it was in the way the audience would go into disarray. “Find the beat and then go back into unison” was basically my calling from God. I knew I had to fix that.

Grandmaster Flash: Rap Pioneer – Billboard


.
.
.
Grandmaster Caz on Herc : "Herc would play a record, and then when the break stopped. he would lift the needle up to where he thought the break started or mix in another record that was totally different. He didn't have those smooth mixing skills like the djs that came after him, had"

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Here is a clip where Herc actually shows what he was doing with the "Merry-Go-Round". Notice that it's sloppy and doesn't match because he's using 2 different records with different beats/tempos?

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Question # 2) is the merry-go-round actually breakbeat-djing?


Not really because you need 2 copies of the same record to get a LOOP of the same break. This is where the Disco djing influence comes in. Remember I told you disco djs were already looping breaks by having 2 copies of the same record?



Herc didn't know how to do this but Flash learned it and brought in via Pete DJ Jones

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Question # 3) when /where did Herc actually attempt looping with 2 copies of the same record?

This will definitely further show you just how much that 1973 origin story is a myth


Herc in the video above tried to say he played/came across the "Merry-Go-Round" or looping breaks (he said he played James brown "Give it Up Turn It Loose" and Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache" or "Bongo Rock" in 1973 but the people who were actually there say otherwise. Let's look deeper into this:

By 1974, Herc was playing outdoors in the summer – in Cedar Park, where the decks and sound systems drew power from streetlights. But he was also getting booked at Bronx clubs, and one night he decided to spin the percussion breakdown from two copies of the same record one after the other, effectively replaying the break and extending it. The record was either Bongo Rock or Apache, by the Incredible Bongo Band. "And when I extended the break, people were ecstatic, because that was the best part of the record to dance to, and they were trippin' off it," he said in 1997.

DJ Kool Herc DJs his first block party (his sister's birthday) at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York

.
.

Here's where that story falls apart


.
.
Clark Kent who didn't get with Herc until late 1974 as I pointed out before, recalls how and when he intoduced the concept of playing double copies to Herc as opposed to spinning two separate records that didn't match in tempos/musically via the "Merry-Go-Round"

Clark Kent: "anyone who was there knew herc only had one copy of apache and he used to mix it with scorpio...that was ok and it worked out for the 'Merry-Go-Round' but I thought it would be better if he had another copy of Apache. We were at the Hevalo (a club) and I gave Herc a/the second copy of Apache. Herc puts on Apache, everyone is anticipating him fading into Scorpio and then all of a sudden, everybody hears Apache come back again, and then everybody went nuts"









.
.

cont next post

 

[IllmaticDelta]

What Herc and the 1973 origin myth is trying to keep under wraps is that while Herc agrees he first started looping/double copies at the Hevelo as does Clark Kent, Herc didn't start djing there until 1975/1976!

Herc- This, this was the Hevalo. Now it’s a car park.

Q- What year did you start playing here?

Herc - The good old year here was ’75, ’76.

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/01/kool-herc-interview

.
.

.
.
.
.


In the book: The Record Players - The Story of Dance Music Told By History's Greatest DJ


Herc says he started playing breaks in 1974

.
.
.

.
.
.but if you listen to the original interview Herc clearly admits that he started looping (attempting) in 1975 or 1976 which lines up with the Clark Kent story about giving Herc a copy of Apache for his birthday at the Hevalo so he could have 2 copies

As it turns out, Broughton has also made audio from the interview available at the Rock's Backpages website. Here's how it plays out on that original recording, beginning at 50:20:BROUGHTON: So the break... When you started playing breaks, which year is this?

HERC: That's in '75, '76.

BROUGHTON: And it was in the Hevalo?

HERC: Yeah.

BROUGHTON: And did...

HERC: It was earlier than that too, 'cause I had funky music before I came up to the Hevalo. It was earlier than that. I played it, but I never - you know - really put a lot of emphasis into it.lxii

Perfect Sound Forever: Kool Herc's historic moment, detailed

the website is--->Articles, interviews and reviews from Frank Broughton: Rock's Backpages.