[techno beat]
[techno music]
[Shad] For a lifelong hip hop head,
meeting the pioneers who built hip hop's foundations
was an eye-opening experience.
Because I began to understand the incredible innovation
that fueled this music.
But hip hop today is a lot more than DJ's and MC's rocking parks in the Bronx.
It's a showbiz juggernaut
that dominates the Internet,
television and radio
and fills arenas around the world.
So clearly, creative innovation isn't the only thing that builds hip hop.
So what took it over the top?
How did hip hop go from the underground
to the mainstream?
["Hip-Hop" by the Dead Prez]
♪ Uh, uh, uh, 1, 2, 1, 2 ♪
♪ Uh, uh, 1, 2, 1, 2, uh, uh ♪
♪ One thing 'bout music When it hit, you feel no pain ♪
♪ White folks say it controls your brain ♪
♪ I know better than that, that's game ♪
♪ And we ready for that Two soldiers, head of the pack ♪
♪ Matter of fact, who got the gat? ♪
♪ And where my army at? Rather attack and not react ♪
♪ It's bigger than a hip-hop Hip-hop, hip-hop, hip ♪
♪ It's bigger than a hip-hop Hip-hop, hip-hop ♪
[sirens wailing]
[fast beat]
[Shad] New York City might have more rappers than streets today,
but in the late 1970s,
there was only one crew to look up to.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Flash and his MC's were the first crew to break out of uptown New York
and travel the globe.
Their success was something that all the young B-boys
in the Bronx and Harlem aspired to.
But getting on the mic was another story.
Creating a crew was expensive.
You needed mics, mixers,
turntables and speakers.
But hip hop was built on overcoming limitations.
Sometimes, it just needed a little nudge.
[intense pulsing instrumental]
[ominous music]
[reporter] The clock stopped exactly 24 hours ago,
along with just about everything else here in New York City.
The only lights were car lights.
Otherwise, the Big Apple was pitch black.
Thousands took to the streets to devastate and devour.
City officials summed it all up by calling it a night of terror.
Some shop owners attempted to guard their stores
with shotguns, homemade spears and baseball bats
in the South Bronx.
One Bronx police officer said the looters swept through here like locusts.
[Grandmaster Caz] It was crazy, everybody headed towards the electronic stores.
There's a place called the Sound Room
and they was pulling the gates down,
so I went over and I helped them pull the gate down.
Got it down and we broke the window
and we went inside.
And then, the cops came
and they had flashlights.
So, everybody's, "Shh, get down, get down, get down."
Everybody was down on the floor
until the flashlights disappeared.
And then we got up
and then we ran out.
And I had a Clubman Two mixer, all right,
and that's what I got away with.
[reporter] What did you get?
I got me a stereo, clothes, a bicycle, a bracelet.
We seeing everybody just break wild,
so we just went with that, there.
[reporter] Do you think if there's another blackout
the same thing will happen?
Yup.
[Kool Moe Dee] The hood mentality is the minute there's an opportunity
to capitalize on something,
we go in.
When the blackout happens,
if you're a DJ or you want to be one, you're absolutely stealing turntables.
And all of a sudden, this guy didn't have anything last week but he's in
the park this week, like where'd you get all of that?
Hey, nobody says anything.
But it is what it is.
[Disco Wiz] It was absolute Christmas.
I saw the craziest stuff that night, man.
Everybody I knew got gear.
[Grandmaster Caz] The bottom line is that there was a wealth
of equipment available to all the local DJ's.
[GrandMixer DXT] After that summer,
it was saturated with DJ's playing sound systems
and the groups
really started to form.
Everyone's an MC now.
♪ Brag about my crew ♪
♪ You know what we can do ♪
♪ Don't have an LP ♪
♪ But we're not blue ♪
♪ I'll rhyme to the tune to set the mood ♪
♪ And you hope that the ugly won't bother you... ♪
[Kool Moe Dee] At that time, it's pandemonium
'cause you had so many groups.
You had Funky Four,
uh, Busy Bee Starski.
You got DXT and those guys.
[Grand Wizzard Theodore] Spoony Gee, the Treacherous 3,
Fearless Four,
Masterdon and the Def Committee,
Crash Crew.
Yo, they had a lot of groups
coming out of Harlem and the Bronx, man.
You had to battle in order for people to know who you are.
Being competitive is what it's all about.
It makes you want to try to stay two or three steps ahead
of everybody else that's doing it.
Tell me about those battles and those shows at that time.
It was intense, man.
For, for a while, man, it was intense.
The group at the top,
Furious Five, no doubt.
But the Furious Five, they was on tour, they was out of the city,
so we were competing for that spot, you know,
that, that number one spot in New York.
The Fantastic
and the Cold Crush
were without a doubt the primary street rivals
in the Bronx right at that time.
♪ We're the Fantastic Five MC's ♪
♪ And we're pleasing all the ladies ♪
♪ And when we shock the party and do it right ♪
♪ They seem to all go crazy... ♪
[Grand Wizzard Theodore] We tried to be like the Jackson Five,
like dance steps,
harmonizing,
it got to the point where it started getting so popular with the ladies,
that we became the Fantastic Romantic Five.
♪ Ashes to ashes and dust to dust ♪
♪ We are the brothers known as the Cold Crush ♪
♪ Not one, not two, not three, but four ♪
♪ We keep your arms in the air Your feet on the floor ♪
♪ Guaranteed to give you what you paid your money for ♪
♪ But the Cold Crush Brothers got pride galore ♪
♪ If I dissed her voice all the ladies could tell... ♪
When we got together, we practiced for a year in my house
everyday before we even went out and did anything.
We blended together so well, so, like, when you say,
"I know somebody where I can finish his sentences,"
we could finish each other's sentences.
-♪ The heart, the breaker ♪ -♪ The heart, the breaker ♪
♪ On any stage I'm the number one breaker... ♪
[Grandmaster Caz] Us and the Fantastic's rivalry came to a culmination.
You had a battle at Harlem World.
Shit was epic.
[female MC] What's up, fly guy?
[male MC] Hello, fly girl.
♪ It's the disco sound ♪
♪ At Harlem World ♪
♪ The Cold Crush Four ♪
♪ With The Fantastic Five... ♪
[Grand Wizzard Theodore] Tensions were flaring up.
They took it, like, really, really, really, really serious.
And it was a thousand dollars that night, it was packed to capacity.
You had the Cold Crush Brothers' people there,
you had Fantastic Five people there.
[crowd roaring]
[male MC] Harlem World.
Settle down, settle down, settle down, settle down!
[Grand Wizzard Theodore] The owner said, "All right, fellas,
it's a thousand dollars, winner takes all.
But, if you guys want, I can give the winner
seven hundred
and give the losers three hundred.
What do you guys want to do?"
Everybody looked at each other.
Fuck it! Winner takes all!
[hip hop rapping]
[crowd cheers]
-[male MC] Say, "Fantastic." -[crowd] Fantastic!
-[male MC] Say, "Bombastic." -[crowd] Bombastic!
[Joe Conzo] We would, uh,
stack the room, so to speak.
We would bring Cold Crush fans from all over
and Grand Wizzard Theodore and the Fantastic Five
would stack the room with their people.
And the way these battles were won was by crowd participation.
You know, whoever could clap and yell the loudest.
[Grand Wizzard Theodore] So it was all up to us to go on stage, or the Cold Crush
to go on stage and
whoever had the better show that night.
We had routines, dance steps, man.
We were just untouchable, man.
-[Male MC] Say number one -[Crowd] Number one!
-[male MC] Say, "I feel." -[crowd] I feel!
-[male MC] Say, "Real good." -[crowd] Real good!
-We're the best at the bop. -[crowd] Best at the bop!
-[male MC] It's in the neighborhood. -[crowd] In the neighborhood!
[male MC] Somebody, and anybody, and everybody, scream...
[Kool Moe Dee] For Cold Crush and Fantastic
it's really about how creative are you,
what's your angle, 'cause you can't
predict what a person's going to do in a battle.
Doesn't matter how dope your rhyme was, if he's more effective with the crowd,
'cause it's a live, reciprocal kind of space.
♪ Well I'm the master robber with the bass in my voice ♪
♪ I talk to you, girl until your body get moist ♪
♪ It's just me on the mic I'm doing my job ♪
♪ You like pretty boys You know, I'm down with the mob... ♪
[Grandmaster Caz] It was about showmanship,
they was the pretty boys
so they had more going for them than just being talented.
You know, they looked good up there.
Of course, the girls are lovin' it.
So when you hear screams, you hear a lot of screams
and most of them is girls though.
When, when you hear screams for us...
[laughs] it's, it's the niggaz in there.
-[male MC] Is it them? -[crowd] No!
♪ Well who is it, is it, it Is it, is it? ♪
♪ Who is it, is it? It is us ♪
♪ You know it's us, the Cold Crush ♪
[cheers]
[male MC] Now are y'all ready?
Are you all ready to judge out there?
[crowd] Yeah!
Get ready to say, "Yeah!"
[crowd] Yeah!
[male MC] Now, if y'all think the Cold Crush Four won the battle,
-let me hear it. -[cheers]
[male MC] Now,
if y'all think the Fantastic Romantic Five won,
-let me hear you. -[loud cheers]
[male MC] Okay, I just want to make sure of one thing. Who get's this $1000?
[loud cheers]
[male MC] I want to hear it.
[loud cheers]
At the end of the night,
Fantastic Five, we got it, man.
We lost,
okay?
That night,
we lost.
From the day after,
we won.
Everything changed after that.
Because they won the battle that night,
but when people started listening to the tapes,
and was like, "Wait, hold up...
How they won?"
It was all that flash and all that, you know what I mean?
And all the girls in the front screaming and all that.
You know what I mean?
They did they thing,
but the tapes told the real story.
♪ The L, baby, baby ♪
♪ The one who rocks the world club, baby, baby ♪
♪ Well, it's '82 and everything is fine ♪
♪ But I still got a thought... ♪
[Shad] Grandmaster Caz and the Cold Crush Brothers
lost the epic battle against the Fantastic Five
on that legendary July night,
but that wasn't the end of the story.
Bootleg tapes of the battle spread the rhymes of the Cold Crush Brothers
across the five boroughs like wildfire.
[rap music]
[DMC] I was buying those tapes like drugs
every week in my high school, ninth grade, Terrence Washington
would come with a suitcase full of cassette tapes
and he would open it up.
And I got Cold Crush and the Funky 4 + 1,
Fantastic Five, Treacherous Three.
And then when I brought the infamous battle tape
of the Cold Crush versus the Fantastic Five,
hearing that was amazin'.
The Fantastic Five were known for being showmen,
dressed to a tee,
they all looked good,
the girls love 'em.
But Cold Crush came and put on a show,
but without all the glamour.
They put on a show with their attack.
♪ We battle Fantastic and here's a little gift ♪
♪ So before you go you all can know ♪
♪ Just who you're fucking with ♪
♪ It's Charlie Chase, Tony Tone and the Cold Crush ♪
I never heard this before.
♪ Motherfuckin' tough-ass four MC's ♪
And they dropped fuckin' um--
[scratching]
[hip hop rapping]
[DMC] When I heard that,
that was, "Whoa, these dudes is different."
They were like heavy metal hip hop.
♪ Hey, you better abide ♪
♪ While we rock your ass on the solo side... ♪
♪ Grandmaster Caz You are the dap ♪
♪ So get on the mic and show 'em you're the lord of rap ♪
♪ Well, I'm the Cap of the Four MC execs ♪
♪ And it don't come at all if it ain't correct ♪
[Kool Moe Dee] Clearly the most dominant
underground group of all time is Cold Crush.
And a lot of it has to do with Caz's writing those routines.
In his arsenal he has the braggadocious rhyme,
but he also has the street-flavored rhyme, where he's using slang
and things of the street that people can relate to.
He has the stories in the rhymes,
he had the jokes in the rhymes, so he had so much in his arsenal.
That kind of cleverness and that kind of wit. You don't want to battle
with that, because he can say something about you that have people looking at you
totally different from that point on.
His flow was tight, the rhymes he was saying, you know.
"Six one and a half, no good at math,
say rhymes to myself when I'm taking a bath."
And, you know, I was writing little stuff that I thought was slick,
and when I heard Caz, man,
I just ripped my first rhyme up like, "Yeah,
I need to rethink my life right now, man.
'Cause, yeah, this ain't it."
[Charlie Ahearn] Grandmaster Caz was the first real hip hop poet.
He showed me a stack of these school notebooks
and they were filled with the most beautiful penmanship
of page after page after page of his lyrics.
Which were written without cross outs.
Which indicates to me
that he made them up in his head
and then only wrote them down
after they were finished.
[Shad] Did you have influences as far as
putting rhymes together?
[Grandmaster Caz] As a kid
you listen to the music that you hear
and it was one radio station,
they played Barry Manilow and
Terry Jacks and Simon & Garfunkel
and the Beatles and, and Rolling Stones and all of that.
-What they used to call white boy music. -[Shad] Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I was deeper into it than I was, you know, so-called black music.
And it stuck with me.
Because of my appreciation for that music,
and I could see the greatness in the writing,
that helped me be lyrical.
I look back at those songs that I listened to growing up
and they gave me that inspiration to write that way.
When you hear Cold Crush go,
♪ We're here tonight to show you ♪
♪ A brand new song ♪
♪ We just put together we're the Cold Crush ♪
♪ And you can't bite this ♪
♪ You can't bite this ♪
That's, "I Write the Songs,"
by Barry Manilow.
Now when you hear that shit with, "Love Rap" playing underneath it,
you're like, "Yo, what is that?!
What is that?!"
That's the type of shit I write.
When I say the last word of my shit,
everybody, "Oh!"
♪ You don't have to bite ♪
♪ Not necessary ♪
♪ The Grandmaster Caz Got a rhyme library ♪
♪ Rhyme from now until the break of day ♪
♪ Don't have a big mouth Just a lot to say ♪
♪ So if you run out of rhymes Talk with me, me, me, GMC ♪
♪ I am the Captain of the Four and I'm down in here to tell you so ♪
♪ Styles, A.D., yo You're the number one breaker ♪
♪ Get on the mic and show 'em that you're the heart maker ♪
Cold Crush tapes became so popular
that they're rivaling whatever the hottest record is.
But Caz is doing things to the crowd
without a record.
It's still about performing live.
♪ You hear my, you hear my ♪
♪ You hear my voice on the set ♪
♪ And all that jack ♪
♪ Next step is the avid put on wax ♪
[Bill Adler] That whole old school era,
starting in '72 and '73, up until 1979
is something that we treasure.
But there's less documentation of it simply because
these musicians, these poets,
didn't make any records.
[Kevin Powell] When we talk about why people don't know some of the early
pioneers of hip hop,
part of it is no different than we look at early jazz.
A lot of the early jazz musicians at the turn of the last century
never got recorded.
Some of the early jazz pioneers
actually did not want to be recorded.
Some of the early hip hop folks didn't want to be recorded either.
They're like, "That's not what this is about."
It was strictly for parties.
[Grandmixer DXT] Anybody who's from the first generation of the hip hop circle,
the idea of making a record
was not a reality in anyone's mind until '79.
[Bill Adler] You can divide hip hop into a kind of B.C. and an A.D.
with the invention of hip hop on wax.
[lively guitar]
[Shad] Nearly a decade after its birth,
hip hop was still a live performance art in clubs and parties.
It had yet to be put onto vinyl.
But that was about to change.
And the idea to put hip hop on wax
would not come from within hip hop.
[drums and guitar music]
[Dan Charnas] Sylvia Robinson got her start in the music industry
as a teenage singer called Little Sylvia.
Her future husband, Joe Robinson, encouraged her
to form a group with her guitar teacher,
Mickey Baker.
They had a huge hit, "Love Is Strange".
[Nelson George] She has a real nice R & B pedigree.
In the '70s, she had a sexy record called, "Pillow Talk".
So she had a little vibe, she, she had success.
Joe was her business partner, he's a rough 'n' tumble guy from Jersey.
And they founded this label, "All Platinum Records"
out in New Jersey.
[Dan Charnas] But in the mid 1970s,
All Platinum starts getting into some financial trouble.
Sylvia begs God for a miracle that's gonna save her business
and save her family.
She goes to this birthday party for one of her nieces in Harlem.
She walks in the former Harlem World night club
and she sees her first rapping DJ,
Lovebug Starski.
[disco music]
[Dan Charnas] And she sees Starski on the mic
doing something like,
♪ Well, the hip, the hop The hippit, the hippit ♪
♪ The hip hip hop, you don't stop ♪
And she says, you know,
this is it, this is my miracle.
I'm gonna make a record out of this stuff.
You know, get me that guy, I want to make a record with him.
But Sylvia can't get this Harlem rapper
to come rap on her record,
so she just tells her son, Joey,
to find some folks, you know,
around the way in New Jersey.
[lively guitar strumming]
What's up, guys?
-Hey, man. -I'm Shad.
What's happening, baby?
-[Shad] Nice to meet you. -Wonder, Wonder Mike.
-[Master Gee] Have a seat, bro. -[Shad] Thank you very much.
I was discovered in front of this place in a, in a '98,
in an Oldsmobile '98 right outside.
[Shad] So who was in that car?
Joey Robinson Jr. and Sylvia Robinson.
Sylvia was looking for people to rap on a record.
Hank was the guy from the Bronx
that was a rapper, he could rap, that made pizzas here at Crispy Crust.
The Robinson's tell Hank, "Close the store up,
we wanna hear you rap."
Hank gets in this brand new '98
with flour, sauce,
sausage juice all over him.
[laughs]
And then he starts rapping, and then Guy jumps in.
Guy and Hank were going back and forth,
2:00 a.m. on a Friday night.
And she was like, oh, man, I don't know who to choose.
So I said, Miss Rob, I can rap.
And she was nice enough to hear me out.
She said, "Okay, let me hear what you got."
I said, "A hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie dippie..."
And she said, "You know what? I can't make a decision
between the three of you."
So she did like this,
"I'll join you all three together."
"Come in Monday, we'll cut a record."
♪ I said a hip hop The hippie, the hippie ♪
♪ To the hip, hip hop and you don't stop, the rocking ♪
♪ To the bang bang boogie Say, up jump the boogie ♪
♪ To the rhythm of the boogie... ♪
[Master Gee] When we came in the studio,
Mike, Hank and myself.
I really had no concept of what recording was like.
We put on headphones,
we decided who was gonna go first based on what was being said.
Mike said, you know, uh, you know,
"What you hear is not a test," so we thought that would be
a good way to start the song off.
♪ Now what you hear is not a test I'm rapping to the beat ♪
♪ And me, the groove and my friends are gonna try to move your feet ♪
[Master Gee] Mike started,
he passed it to Hank, Hank passed it to me,
I passed it back to Mike, Mike passed it to Hank.
♪ And next on the mic is my man Hank Come on, Hank, sing that song ♪
♪ Check it out I'm Imp the Dimp, the ladies' pimp ♪
♪ The women fight for my delight ♪
♪ But I'm the grandmaster with the three MC's ♪
♪ That shock the house with the young ladies ♪
♪ And when you come inside into the front ♪
♪ You do the freak, spank and do the bump... ♪
[Master Gee] So we just kept going. Nobody told us to stop.
They didn't say stop and we didn't think to stop.
We just kept passing it back and forth, as if we were doing a party.
♪ I said the M-A-S a T-E-R A G with a double E ♪
♪ I said I go by the unforgettable name of the man they call the Master Gee ♪
♪ Well, my name is known all over the world ♪
♪ By all the foxy ladies and the pretty girls ♪
♪ I'm goin' down in history as the baddest rapper... ♪
[Dan Charnas] "Rapper's Delight" hits the streets
and it's clear
that this was going to be monster.
♪ Then damn, they start doin' the freak, I said ♪
♪ Damn! Right outta your seat ♪
♪ Then you throw your hands high in the air... ♪
[Shad] What did you think the first time you heard
"Rapper's Delight"?
I loved it
and the volcano went boom!
We're here!
It exploded in '79.
[Kurtis Blow] The song was on every radio station,
every car,
every cab,
every boombox,
every radio out somebody's house
was playing that song 24 hours a day.
I lived in a five-story walk-up, they played it on every floor.
You know, three cars came by, they all had it on.
Switch radio stations, it's on all three stations.
♪ I said, a hip hop, the hippie The hippie ♪
♪ To the hip, hip hop... ♪
"I said a hip hop, the hippie"
you can go from beginning to end.
♪ The Master Gee and my mellow ♪
You know every word.
It's probably the only rap record in the history
that everybody knows every word.
You know, they were passing the mic like, you know, like a park jam
or, you know, a house party type of joint. Like, it was like some,
like, that real MC vibe, you know, and I'm, I'm just sitting there telling
my man, like, "No, no, no, no, no, this wasn't no tape.
Nobody playing no tape on the radio. I'm like, this is a song, man.
I'm telling you, there's a real song out, man."
Like, yeah, I was buggin'.
♪ See, I am Wonder Mike and I'd like to say hello ♪
[Wonder Mike] It took off like wildfire.
In August '79,
I worked at a candy factory.
And in September,
I'm opening up for Parliament Funkadelic.
People call up, "We would like you
to perform your song over here in, uh,
Brussels.
Over here in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Venezuela."
"We'll fly you in, we'll pay for your airfare, your hotels
and then we'll pay for you to do the show."
Really?
Wow.
[Master Gee] Hip hop exploded because of "Rapper's Delight."
It was the first worldwide, gigantic hit.
Ushered in a whole new genre of music.
♪ Ya rockin' to the beat without a care ♪
♪ With the sure shot MC's for the affair... ♪
Before us, there was nothing, man.
We're the first rap stars in the world, period.
We're the mold.
The whole image of being a rap star and fancy, being famous, on television,
we were the first ones to do all of that.
And what did other people think of that record?
Like, I don't mean the ordinary public.
But people that were down with hip hop--
No, the hip hop community was like, "What the, who the fuck is that?"
Like, "Who the fuck is they?"
Like, "What, what is this shit? It's like what are they doing to our art form?"
You know what I mean? It's like,
this is the first introduction that people get to, to, to what we do,
to what we've been doing for, like, seven years?
We hated it.
That was the worst piece of shit,
stupid-ass song that every-fucking-body liked,
and then people would come to us
and say, "You know, y'all need to make a record like that."
And we'd be like, "Well, how we gonna make a piece of shit like that?"
People thought they invented rapping.
You know what I mean? Like, wow, 'cause no one had heard this.
And people were really entranced by it. It was fun.
It was all the things that hip hop
always was.
But it just wasn't done by the people who created it.
♪ Do it, I'm gonna do it ♪
♪ I'm gonna do it, do it, do it ♪
[Russell Simmons] And they recorded the rhymes that were Cold Crush,
that were Hip Hollywood, that were
Starski, that were all of the rhymes that all these people had borrowed.
They took a lot of them and just made them into a record.
It's like, "Oh, shit, these niggas just stole our shit."
Hank was saying a rhyme that we was hearing at the parties already,
and he, he's saying somebody else's rhyme.
And for us, that's a catastrophic no-no.
There were people who would get beat up for saying somebody's rhyme.
And here's a record where this guy bites and actually records it.
Like, that was just the worst thing ever.
Hank robbed somebody,
Grandmaster Caz,
robbed him of the lyrics.
[Wonder Mike] Hank has a great voice,
phenomenal.
But, he really didn't have any rhymes.
And he heard Caz's rhymes and he was saying Caz's rhymes.
He asked Caz, he said, "Yo, these people want me to make a record.
Can you help me with some rhymes?"
Hank already knows my shit from being around me.
Let's say he woulda did what he was supposed to do,
and told Sylvia, "Listen, I don't rap, but my friend, Grandmaster Caz,
he's from the Bronx. You know what I mean? I could bring him out here or whatever."
He never said that. He just got in the car and was like,
"Yeah, I'm the C-A-S and the O-V-A." They was like, "Oh shit, that shit's fly.
All right, bet, you down."
♪ Check it out I'm the C-A-S and the O-V-A ♪
♪ And the rest is F-L-Y ♪
[Grandmaster Caz] The ironic thing about it is, you know, the last rhyme,
you know, was like never let an MC steal your rhymes.
[laughs]
♪ Whatever you do in your lifetime You never let an MC steal your rhymes... ♪
[Dan Charnas] In its day, "Rapper's Delight"
was the biggest selling
twelve-inch single of all time.
Most of us are looking at it and I was, like a one-off.
I didn't see an industry being born. I thought it was like, "Oh, they're doing
what we're doing and they're doing
a Pollyanna version of it," is what I thought.
[Nelson George] The Sugar Hill Gang record was, it was a phenomenon.
I don't think there was a high school kid
in America who wasn't aware of that record.
It was a real game-changer.
And so people in the industry, the record industry, began going like,
"Wow, this rap thing is happening.
It's a novelty,
so we'll make a novelty record."
["Rappin' Rodney" by Rodney Dangerfield]
♪ I'll tell ya, I'm all right now but last week I was in rough shape ♪
♪ I don't get a break with nothin' ♪
♪ No respect ♪
♪ Friends don't call My phone don't ring ♪
♪ I don't get a break with anything ♪
♪ What's the matter, Rodney? ♪
♪ Oh, death, where is thy sting? ♪
♪ It's just rappin' Rodney ♪
♪ Ain't that your type... ♪
[Shad] "Rapper's Delight" made people think that anyone could rap.
And soon dreamers and schemers from around the world would try
to cash in on the new craze.
♪ Poor ole rappin' Rodney... ♪
[Charlie Ahearn] There was a kind of a over-saturation.
Hip hop was in McDonald's commercials,
you know, with graffiti-style letters and things.
It became played. It became something
that was considered a cliche'.
It looked like it was getting ready to just like be one of those fads.
Hip hop was just gonna,
came on the scene,
everybody loved it, and it was getting ready to die.
[Jazzy Jay] What saved the culture of hip hop in its purest form
was when Afrika Bambaataa had said,
"You know what? Let's take it from the Bronx down to Manhattan."
That kind of opened up a whole new world for hip hop.
♪ Universal people looking for the perfect beat ♪
♪ Mortal motivations looking for the perfect beat ♪
At this time, I'm involved in the downtown art scene
as a painter, um, myself,
but also turned a lot of people
in the downtown art scene
on to the whole visual art of hip hop culture.
There was an audience of people in that downtown world
that were definitely open to different ideas,
which was the cool thing about downtown New York culture at that time.
[techno beat]
[Fab 5 Freddy] I was very good friends with an artist by the name
of Keith Haring. So I'd be telling Keith, you know,
there's this one guy named, Afrika Bambaataa,
a former gang leader,
who's also known as the Master of Records.
And Keith, I remember, said, "Hey, man. Do you think he might want
to come down and spin at one of our parties?"
And I said, "Sure, I'll, I'll ask him."
[scratching]
[Afrika Bambaataa] Downtown didn't want to let us in the clubs.
It was the new wave punk rockers
who was the first to open up the doors for us to, to play in they type of clubs.
People like Fab 5 Freddy invited us up there
and a lot of the punk rockers started following me
wherever I was playing at.
And at first everybody thought there was going to be a riot,
but when the music came on, everybody was doing them dances.
And you'd see the punk rockers was starting to learn
a lot of the hip hop dances.
Uh, that's when everything was going through a big change.
[Grandmaster Caz] The punk rock scene was cool,
it was kind of wild. You know what I mean?
But, hey, hip hop was kind of wild.
So we identified with that movement because it was kind of like
the alternative to rock.
And hip hop was the alternative to disco.
So it was like, we both, you know, shared that same plight.
And so we started doing those clubs down there.
Roxy, Negrill,
Peppermint Lounge.
And it was like a perfect marriage.
[mixing & scratching]
[GrandMixer DXT] It wasn't the aristocrats.
It wasn't the Studio 54 crowd.
You know, we were at Negrill, you know, the Mudd Club,
that scene, you know, and so they were into it.
[techno music]
[Bill Adler] Club owners, people like Michael Holman
and an English promoter named Lady Blue, were booking them.
So you didn't have to go to the Bronx to hear rap music.
You could be a college kid at NYU
and walk three blocks away.
And there's Afrika Bambaataa, you know, on the turntables.
[hip hop dance music]
[Shad] I want to ask you about going downtown for the first time.
-Oh boy-- -[Shad] And connecting with that world
and what that was like.
Okay, I took it way downtown
to the clubs where it was primarily white people,
and they were saying, "Do what you normally do."
Really?
Do what you normally do? Okay, so here comes The Bells.
Here comes Apache,
here comes all the heat
in a room full of 95%
white people.
What are they going to do when they hear this?
That shit went off.
[techno dance music]
They was flocking to that.
They couldn't get enough of us. We were booked all the time down there.
All the time, all the time, and it opened up a whole new market
for me because now
I was able to play songs that I couldn't play in the hood.
I was able to play down there because they got it.
But I would play it in a special way. I'd play it in
my science way.
So I guess in my mind I was enhancing it,
you know, but it, it worked extremely well over there.
[Grandmaster Flash] Fab 5 Freddy,
he says, "Flash,
I'm gonna bring somebody up here, a good friend of mine, you know,
so she could see this."
Fred brings her up to the stage,
and he says, "Flash
meet Blondie."
[Intro to "Rapture" by Blondie]
I'm like,
"Oh, shit."
And she says,
"Honey, I was watching you for the last couple of minutes
and I'm gonna write a song about you."
♪ Fab Five Freddie told me everybody's fly ♪
♪ A DJ's spinnin' I said, "My, my" ♪
♪ Flash is fast, Flash is cool ♪
♪ Francois sais pas, Flash says no deux ♪
♪ And you don't stop, sure shot ♪
♪ Go out to the parking lot... ♪
[Grandmaster Flash] People wanted to know to know who is this Flash guy
that she's talking about.
The interviews was ridiculous.
How do you know her? Because she was a super star.
She opened up a huge door.
♪ Shoots you dead and then he eats your head ♪
♪ And then you're in The Man from Mars ♪
♪ You go out at night, eatin' cars ♪
♪ You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too ♪
♪ Mercury and Subaru... ♪
[Russell Simmons] There was always the cool alternative whites who bought
into the new black phenomenon, a new cultural phenomenon,
and then they would bring it to the mainstream.
Even if it wasn't there, they would recognize it, you know,
and that punk rocks and alternative people identified with
hip hop.
♪ Toe to toe ♪
♪ Don't move to slow, 'cause the man from Mars, he's through with cars... ♪
[Fab 5 Freddy] How many people heard rap
for the first time through that record, without understanding
it was the tip of an iceberg?
[GrandMixer DXT] It was kind of like the same way
we were when we saw Kool Herc the first time.
That's what happened to the downtown people.
They were like, "Wow, this is different.
We got these little ghetto
hood rats down here playing this good music."
-♪ Beat this! ♪ -[heavy drum beat]
Bam took that first step
and saying, this is what they're playing downtown.
Bus Boys,
The Sex Pistols.
You know, Bam would throw in Elvis Presley.
[techno drum music]
[GrandMixer DXT] Bam was the first DJ that said, "Okay, I'm gonna go really
deeply into this,"
and he started to amass this incredible collection of beats.
[Afrika Bambaataa] I was playing a lot of rock and new wave punk
um, to my audience.
And, you know, B52s,
Siouxsie & The Banshees, Adam Ant,
Talking Heads,
and Kraftwerk, a lot of those different groups I was playing.
And they said, "Oh wow, where did you get that from?
How did you get it?"
[Tom Silverman] I went to see about a DJ
and there was kids dancing around and he's playing short bits
and extending breaks and things.
He played "Big Beat" by Billy Squier,
and then he'd play a Sly Stone record and a James Brown record.
And then he'd play a Monkees record.
And all he just was listening to,
is it funky or is not funky? That was the only question he, he asked.
And that day, I said, "Do you want to make a record?"
He said, "Yes," and I said, "Okay, let's do it."
♪ Party people, party people ♪
♪ Can y'all get funky? ♪
♪ Soul Sonic Force, can y'all get funky? ♪
♪ The Zulu Nation, can y'all get funky? ♪
♪ Yeah, just hit me ♪
♪ Just taste the funk and hit me ♪
♪ Just get on down... ♪
I was heavy into the, the technopop sounds
of Yellow Magic Orchestra,
Kraftwerk,
and I said, you know, I wanted a sound with these electronic instruments too,
like they was doing.
And putting it to the funk of James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone
and Uncle George Parliament Funkadelic Clinton.
Thus became the birth of that electro-funk sound.
♪ The Soul Sonic Force ♪
♪ Mr. Biggs, Pow Wow and M.C. Globe ♪
♪ We emphasize the show, we got ego Make this your night, just slip it right ♪
[Jazzy Jay] The idea came from just a routine
that Soul Sonic Force used to do
and me playing songs,
uh, behind it.
There was two Kraftwerk records. It was Numbers
and Trans-Europe Express
and "Super Sporm,"
was by Captain Rock.
And those three songs were selected to be the bedding
of the song we call "Planet Rock."
It was so different than what everybody else was doing.
♪ The Soul Sonic Force ♪
["Planet Rock" by Soul Sonic Force]
[Tom Silverman] But the spirit in the studio was one of experimentation.
Let's try this, let's try this,
and we didn't really have an intention
for it to come out any particular way. We just wanted it to be a representation
of the way Bambaataa DJ's so that it would have
the sounds of a few different breaks.
And we wanted to use this new technology.
It was the first hit record to use a 808.
And after that there was probably a thousand records that imitated the beat
that we used on that record.
[techno funk hip hop]
[Afrika Bambaataa] We had the 808's, we had the Synclavier synthesizers,
and John Robie and his playing the synthesizer
as funky as Kraftwerk.
That way we had with the Emulator, they did the scratching sounds,
so we was getting heavy into all the new technology that was coming out.
[John Schloss] Planet Rock was huge
on a lot of levels.
In terms of its production style, it was very important.
But I think it was also important because of the hip hop philosophy behind it.
And specifically that Bambaataa was drawing on a group like Kraftwerk
indicated that there were no boundaries.
And the idea of there being no boundaries
was a fundamental part of hip hop.
It's like every hip hop song is supposed to sample
from somebody you wouldn't expect.
And that's the way it's been ever since.
[Nelson George] It's futuristic,
it's dance-able,
it's weird,
based on what everyone thought hip hop was supposed to be.
And I think that's why it was so impactful.
The sound of Planet Rock is like a spaceship landing in the ghetto.
[techno beat]
[Shad] Bambaataa's futuristic funk
transported the club to Planet Rock,
but the B-boys
still resided on planet Earth.
And back in the Bronx
things were getting worse.
[woman] What are you trying to do for us?
[Reagan] I'm trying to tell you!
[woman] What can you?
[Sal Abbatiello] All of a sudden, hip hop's blowing up downtown
but meanwhile in the South Bronx,
there was no jobs for anybody.
I mean, there must have been about 25 to 30 percent unemployment,
so this whole generation would struggle for many years in this economic downfall.
There were so many abandoned buildings for blocks and blocks.
I mean, when Reagan came to look at the Bronx,
he said it looked like an atomic bomb hit it.
[Kevin Powell] When you talk about the Bronx, New York,
what did the Reagan era mean to poor people?
You know, I mean, of all backgrounds.
You are getting your butt kicked.
And then a big fucking helicopter came out of somewhere
and dropped a whole fucking lot of crack
down on our city.
Coincidentally.
All right.
The shit was crazy.
You would have been taking drugs, too, you bullshittin'.
[Intro to "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash]
And we've got a story about some music that's being heard across the land.
This new, young black group.
[female newscaster] They are called, this group,
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Their sound and their fury prove that music could be used to get across
a serious message.
Not coincidentally, the name of their song is, "The Message",
a hard-edged anthem of the urban ghetto.
♪It's like a jungle sometimes♪
♪It makes me wonder how I keep from going under♪
♪ It's like a jungle sometimes ♪
♪ It makes me wonder how I keep from going under ♪
[Shad] You knew when you wrote "The Message",
it wasn't a party song.
-Right. -So what inspired you to write that?
The concept of that rhyme,
it came from uh, uh, uh,
Stevie Wonder, "Living For the City".
A boy is born in hard time, Mississippi,
but I said, "A child is born with no state of mind,"
and then I just went from there.
Nobody understood
the scope of what "The Message" could be.
Until then, every song that came out was a party song.
Initially, we didn't want to do the record because it was basically
something that we wasn't used to, it was a non-party record.
But we did it, you know,
because it was socially relevant.
It had something to say.
♪ Broken glass everywhere ♪
♪ People pissin' on the stairs You know they just don't care ♪
♪ I can't take the smell Can't take the noise ♪
♪ Got no money to move out I guess I got no choice... ♪
"Rats in the front room, roaches in the back,
junkie in the alley with the baseball bat.
Tried to get away but I couldn't get far,
'cause a man with the tow truck repossessed my car."
You know, them lines like that is
ferocious,
they, they cut deeper,
they, they poignant,
they need to be said.
"Don't push me
'cause I'm close to the edge."
♪ I'm tryin' not to lose my head huh, huh, huh ♪
♪ It's like a jungle sometimes ♪
♪ It makes me wonder how I keep from going under ♪
[Kool Moe Dee] I've heard of thousands and thousands and thousands of rhymes.
I still have not heard
a better rhyme,
from beginning to end, than, "A child is born with no state of mind."
♪ A child is born with no state of mind ♪
♪ Blind to the ways of mankind ♪
♪ God is smilin' on you... ♪
That's a story.
It's a message.
It's poignant.
It's hip hop.
It's, it's like everything that an MC
could aspire to be in one rhyme.
♪ You'll admire all the number-book takers ♪
♪ Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers ♪
[Grandmaster Flash] That song is like a window
into urban America
for people that have never seen urban America
or too afraid to go in.
That's what that song was.
It was more powerful than politics, more powerful than religion,
more powerful than um, the news media.
It's information, it's game, it's knowledge.
That was very attractive to me
because,
to me a lot of rap was silly.
I had never heard...
information.
I had heard,
"Let's party, let's party, let's party,"
but I had never heard a message.
[Kevin Powell] It was jarring.
It was shocking.
The song didn't offer any solutions.
It didn't necessarily even offer any hope.
It just was like,
"This is what we're living in."
It was reaching down
to kids like me and saying, "Hey, this is where you're gonna end up
if you don't have a plan."
[Kool Moe Dee] The concept was a great concept that shifted the paradigm
of what types of records would be made,
and what kinds of things could be talked about.
[Nelson George] This was a record that allows people to see the potential
of this as an art form.
It really shows that hip hop could be very explicitly about politics,
could be about pain, and about anger, and about all of these things that,
before that it really hadn't been that much about.
I remember Rolling Stone, which had really never
paid much attention to hip hop at that point,
gave that record, like, five stars or something.
So even people who were like, anyone who was a, a hater or disbeliever,
they all, their ears had to perk up
and go, "Wow, this is something different."
And when radio started playing it,
the song really took off
and it became the first critically-acclaimed hip hop song,
to whereas people that,
they didn't like hip hop, even to this day there will be people
that never really liked hip hop
but they like, "The Message."
It actually changed the landscape. That broadened the horizons
of what hip hop could be.
♪ It's like a jungle sometimes ♪
♪ It makes me wonder how I keep from going under, huh, huh, huh ♪
♪ It's like a jungle sometimes ♪
♪ It makes me wonder how I keep from going under, huh, huh, huh... ♪
[Shad] "The Message" proved that hip hop had the depth
to move beyond the party.
But it also represented something much bigger.
Ten years after first making noise,
hip hop had finally discovered the power of its voice,
and just in time.
Because the coming decade would bring Reaganomics,
crack,
AIDS,
the war on drugs,
and gang violence.
And urban America would never be the same.
The people needed a new voice,
and hip hop was ready.
So now let me tell you
about our golden age.
[techno hip hop beats]