Spike Lee Co signs Fat Joe "Black People and Puerto Ricans created one of the great art forms ever! Together! In the bronx! Undisputed!"

[Greenhornet]

I agree with both, it depends how fickle you are trying to be

did african american's create hiphop and the 5 elements? yes
did they influence every single other culture to even give them a style to run with? yes

but I can see where Spanish people deserve some credit for being the first to cosign and be right there in a technical form
before hiphop was seem as shyt really, they were on board.... even stronger fact is, that if you type "Spanish and black were beefing and separate" that means the culture was still strong enough for them to copy and want to be around it anyway. That's its own credit to notice and jump in immediately when every other culture rejected hiphop for decades on a mainstream level.


but at the core it was african american, the rhythm the flavor the dancing etc you cant have the first light bulb and be like "I believed in and invented light in my home with Thomas Edison, I am part of that" only one person can invent something. They were just a big part in making it more commercial and universal and added flavor and new styles... they get mad credit for doing it immediately but its a nuanced argument, creation and expansion are two different things

 

[3rdWorld]

Black people never needed anyone's help to create music, its the opposite

The nerve of these beaners
All the Salsa, cha cha cha they claim as their identity all came from African slaves.

Spike has always been a contradiction

 

[Shadow King]

A 50 year old man would say his friend since age 5 is a Day One...

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Shan don't know what he's talking about at 5:00


Ricans picked up the "fly" style/bboy look from black youth later on in the 1970s. If it's a lie, they told it themselves in their earliest interviews of HipHop history. A crew of Puerto Ricans called "Rockwell Association" that later became bboys after see the Black Zulu Kings were interviewed in the 1980s and this is what they said about a variety of things (relationship between blacks and ricans, dressing style, music they listened to etc...):

Rockwell Association History

They were a Puerto Rican crew when communication between blacks
and Puerto Ricans was somewhat limited.

ROCKWELL ASSOCIATION HISTORY...
In 1976 Tito and Macho were members of the RCA Rockmasters, a
crew of Puerto Rican teenagers based near the Tremont section
of the Bronx around 180th street and Southern Boulevard. Like
many crews during the period, RCA started as a group of
fun-loving disco dancers. Unfortunately, as the group got
larger, they began acting more like a street gang. Tito and
macho were not comfortable being in a gang, so they convinced
several members to quit RCA and form their own crew. "One night
we all went to Belmont Park," said Tito. "We made a big pile
with our RCA sweatshirts and burned them. Then we started
thinking about a new name. I said, 'how about "Rockwell"?'
Everybody liked that, so we became the Rockwell Association".
The group included Willie, Carlos, Victor, Hector, Pops,
Rubberband, George, and Shorty. They were a Puerto Rican crew
when communication between blacks and Puerto Ricans was
somewhat limited. Both groups were into music and dance, both
threw block parties, but the similarities stopped there. Puerto
Ricans played disco music, while blacks played hard-core funk.
Puerto Ricans dressed in flower-print shirts and pointy-toe
shoes and danced the Hustle, while blacks wore bell-bottoms and
sneakers while breakdancing.





However, around 1977, a Puerto
Rican deejay named Charlie Chase helped bring about a merger of
the two styles.
"From 1974 to 1977 I was in a band at Alfred E. Smith High
School", said Charlie Chase. But then I got interested in
deejaying. There was a crew around my house called the Monterey
Crew. They were the first crew that I saw getting into the
b-boy style. They didn't do any fancy cutting with their music,
but they played 'Just Begun.' So, I started doing a little
degassing. My friends would say, 'Okay Charlie, here's your
turn to play your black music,' and I would get fifteen minutes
to do my thing. When I was on the set, everybody would dance
and my friends couldn't understand why."
Willie Will was 16 at the time and had just learned to break
dance. "Pops taught me," he said, referring to a friend a year
younger than himself. "He learned from the Zulus. They had one
dancer
named Chopper who was real good. Breaking was like a hobby.
We'd go into the hallway and practice until three or four in
the morning. Get drunk. Fight. There was nothing else to do. I
don't know where the spinning came from, but it was out in
1976. The Zulus had footwork, headspins, backspins. We used to
break on the concrete in Belmont Park. If you did a backspin,
you'd only spin around once or twice. Everybody was in crews
and the crews would break against each other. First the whole
crew would dance and then the best two from each crew would go
down".
After developing the dance for over five years, many blacks
grew tired of breaking and had stopped by 1978. Some got into
the Hustle or the Freak. Others did the Electric Boogie, a
robotic mimelike dance popular in California and down South.
However, the Puerto Ricans were just getting breaking and had
no intentions of giving it up. Saint Martin's, a Catholic
Church located on Crotona Avenue, began sponsoring breaking
battles in their gymnasium with the local priests acting as
judges. Well-known crews participating in the battles included
The Disco Kids (TDK), the Apache Crew, Star Child La Rock, and
TBB.

Rockwell Association History

They were a Puerto Rican crew when communication between blacks and Puerto Ricans was somewhat limited.

en.v1battle.ru

 

[IllmaticDelta]

.
.




^^the guy in the video was a part of Rockwell (he's also crazy legs' cousin)


.
.
Rubberband from Rockwell says black and ricans were having race wars at that time (prior to the late 1970s)




.
.
back to the style of dress: Rican youth picked up those styles from black youth

 

[spliz]

Shan don't know what he's talking about at 5:00


Ricans picked up the "fly" style/bboy look from black youth later on in the 1970s. If it's a lie, they told it themselves in their earliest interviews of HipHop history. A crew of Puerto Ricans called "Rockwell Association" that later became bboys after see the Black Zulu Kings were interviewed in the 1980s and this is what they said about a variety of things (relationship between blacks and ricans, dressing style, music they listened to etc...):

Rockwell Association History

They were a Puerto Rican crew when communication between blacks and Puerto Ricans was somewhat limited.

en.v1battle.ru

My boy always come thru with the facts. Lol. To Spike's credit tho. He lived thru it and his interactions may have been different in real time. Spike is damn near 70 years old.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

My boy always come thru with the facts. Lol. To Spike's credit tho. He lived thru it and his interactions may have been different in real time. Spike is damn near 70 years old.

Spike Lee is from Brooklyn though; the Bronx and Harlem are the true areas of Black and Puerto Rican interaction and long history. Here goes Bambatta speaking on Black/Rican interaction prior to the late 1970s in the Bronx



In 1970s Bronx



















.
.






Rican OGs (Harlemites from before the HipHop era) who have spoke on Black/Rican relations from back in the day