[hip hop music]
♪
[Shad] This is Hip Hop today.
A global phenomenon that permeates just
about every facet of society.
From business and sports,
to pop culture and politics.
-I've got 99 problems and now Jay Z's one. -[audience laughter]
[Shad] At this point, Hip Hop doesn't just influence the mainstream.
It is the mainstream.
But despite its success,
the rich history of Hip Hop's origins
is often glossed over.
[hip hop rock music]
♪
[Shad] Why does all this matter to me?
Well, because Hip Hop is a big part of my life.
My name is Shadrach Kabango
and firstly, I'm an MC.
♪ Check it out, I'm just spitting that for the love of spitting rap ♪
♪ Hits like Nickelback singing with The Diplomats ♪
[Shad] I fell in love with Hip Hop back in the '90s,
and at that time, it was all about Biggie, Common and Eminem.
And since then, I've followed Hip Hop's growth and journey.
I even studied Hip Hop in university.
♪ Tell me who's the sickest Kid, I'm putting on a clinic, listen ♪
[Shad] But I know there's a whole history that came before Big and Em.
A history that's been forgotten.
♪ I'm ahead of my time, wait Now I'm ahead of the times ♪
♪ Sped up ahead of the beat ♪
[Shad] So, I'm going to the source, to meet with Hip Hop's stars,
its innovators,
its moguls
and its pioneers.
I'm going to unravel the true story of Hip Hop.
["Hip-Hop" by Dead Prez playing]
♪ 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 hip-hop Hip-hop, hip-hop, hip ♪
♪ It's bigger than hip-hop, hip-hop, hip-hop ♪
[sirens and street noise]
[Shad] There's only one place to start a story about Hip Hop,
and that's here.
New York City.
I'm an MC today, but of course, I was a fan first.
And for any Hip Hop head, a trip to New York
is full of reminders of Hip Hop's deep history.
Even decades after it's birth,
the echoes of Hip Hop's early days are everywhere.
But to really understand Hip Hop's story,
I got to take you a step back,
to the early 1970s, just before it all began,
when a different sound ruled New York.
[disco music]
♪
[Kurtis Blow] You have to understand, disco was hot.
Late '60s and the early '70s disco came and hit.
It was an explosion.
[disco music]
♪
[Kurtis Blow] Everyone had on suits
and silk dresses
and you dress your best to go to the club.
Everyone was disco crazy.
[disco music]
You had CEO's,
athletes, entertainers,
whoever was so-called celebrity.
So, everybody's perception in New York City
was like, "Yo,
look at the fur coats,
look at the Rolls Royce's,
look at the champagne,
look at the diamonds,
look at the sex.
Look at all the money and the famous people."
People in the world,
especially in America, thought New York City was heaven.
But back then the Bronx was burning.
[fire truck horn]
[reporter] The South Bronx believed, by the city,
to be the worst fire area in the country.
There were 12,300 fires here last year.
It is as if there is a war going on.
Many parts of the South Bronx look like a city under siege,
with entire blocks wiped out,
buildings decimated, debris everywhere.
[Grandmaster Caz] I grew up in the Bronx during the '60s.
It was like Beirut.
You know, in certain parts of the Bronx, man.
I mean, when they say the Bronx was burning,
the Bronx was burning.
♪ Cold, cold eyes, upon me they stare ♪
♪ People all around me and they're all in fear ♪
[Joe Conzo] You go up into the middle of the Bronx
and it's just these pockets of devastation.
You know, it was a massive urban decay.
♪ From my party house ♪
♪ I'm afraid to come outside ♪
♪ Although I'm filled with love ♪
♪ I'm afraid they'll hurt my pride ♪
[Grand Wizzard Theodore] South Bronx where we lived at
people were struggling, man.
You had single parents,
they were on welfare,
you know, people wasn't really working.
There wasn't really no jobs and stuff like that.
You couldn't go in certain areas, man.
You couldn't go in that area, you can't go in this area,
you couldn't go in that area.
You had killings, you had muggings,
you had people getting killed by the police,
people going to jail for the rest of their lives.
[Joe Conzo] It was that boiling point
to just give birth to something from nothing.
And out of all that turbulence and upheaval
was the birth of Hip Hop.
[Shad] While the grown-ups of New York City
lost themselves in the glitter of disco,
the kids in the Bronx searched for something different.
And they'd find it in the rec room parties of a local DJ,
Kool Herc.
The man who threw Hip Hop's first party.
♪
[Kool Herc] This is the birthplace.
The big bang.
1520, right here.
Where it all began.
[Shad] 1520 Sedgwick Ave?
Yes. The kitchen and the two windows
were the recreation room.
At the time, the gangs was, you know,
terrorizing the house parties and stuff.
So, we asked could we give a party, you know.
They liked what I was playing and...
the rest is history.
[Shad] Could you describe the atmosphere
at that party, August 11?
[Kool Herc] The place could only hold a good probably forty,
fifty people in there at the most.
I'd get some milk crates,
no chairs or nothing, just some crates.
You know, my friends, they're having a good time.
[funk music]
♪ Watch me now ♪
♪ Feel the groove ♪
♪ Into something ♪
♪ Going to make you move ♪
[DJ Red Alert] My first time going to a Kool Herc party
was up on the west side of the Bronx.
It looked liked it was kind of a rundown condemned building.
But females just hanging around in there. I'm like, "Oh, okay."
So, as we get closer and closer to start hearing some sounds
and that's when I got to realize that was Kool Herc.
♪
[Melle Mel] Herc's parties was, like, really surreal.
Their voices went through a echo chamber
and back then they're like, you know,
we were smoking some weed and some angel dust.
It's just loud, booming music.
It's kind of dark, smokey
and their voices coming in echo.
Ra-ra-ra-ra!
Tee-tee-tee-tee!
Ta-ta-ta-ta!
Pop-pop-pop!
And you're just coming through all that
and guys is looking, and people dancing.
And just a vibe that, you know, Herc had.
Like, it looked excitement and a little bit of danger.
♪
[Kurtis Blow] I remember just going to the bass speaker
and sticking my head in the bass speaker
and closing my eyes and the bass would
just rumble all through my body.
All the way down to my toes.
♪
[Shad] A lot of people claim to have been at that party
but how many people were really at that party.
-They wasn't there, they heard about it. -[both laughing]
Their big brother told them, their big sister told them.
They hear the-- the war stories and stuff. They wasn't there.
I asked them how old they was, once they tell me, he wasn't there.
That's it. How old you are? Yeah, right.
[Kurtis Blow] Herc, he was a revolutionary.
He revolted.
He did not want to play the disco music that we heard on the radio.
He wanted to give us the music that we grew up on, the soul music
and it was incredible
because in the world of disco,
here's this DJ coming out
playing this special kind of music.
And that was so important to the birth of Hip Hop
that we're gonna play funk music.
[funk music]
[GrandMixer DXT] You're listening to,
like, the greatest records you ever heard and never heard any of them before
and never heard them on the radio.
You don't hear them on the radio, you don't hear them anywhere.
These are part of the sacred crates of Hip Hop.
[Shad] And-- and the music selection,
I mean, we hear about Scorpio and The Mexican.
I mean, what else is kind of side by side with that?
[chuckling] That's one thing I don't do...
-give out names to records. -Oh, that's true actually.
What am I doing?
[Kool Herc] You gotta hear it.
Everybody can't have your records to hide it.
'Cause if everybody have my record, why come to my party?
[Dan Charnas] Herc throws what most people believe
is the first Hip Hop party.
Why is it the first Hip Hop party?
It's because of the records that Herc plays
but also because of the way he plays those records.
He plays just the breakdown sections of these records,
where all the instruments drop out
and it's just the drums or drums and bass.
[hip hop music]
♪
[Kurtis Blow] And that was so important to the birth of Hip Hop.
Music that has a special part in it, which is a break.
Every song he played
had a breakdown
where the drummer would do this thing.
[mimics drum beats]
[drum beats playing]
Herc came up with the idea of, like, "Let me extend this break beat,
so, I'm gonna go from this record on this turntable,
to this record on this turntable." And it extends.
And it'd create almost a new song.
[GrandMixer DXT] I've never seen anyone have two copies of a record
and keep going back to the part where we normally
would pick the needle up and put it back.
So, there's this silence for minute.
Now, that was continuous
and he called it the Merry-Go-Round.
[funk music]
♪
[Kevin Powell] And people don't realize it gave name to those kids who were dancing
because they became known as breakdancers
because they were dancing to those break beats.
♪
[Kurtis Blow] Guys in that circle, they were dancing against each other,
trying to be James Brown.
-Doing that fancy footwork. -Yeah, yeah.
Everybody wanted to be James Brown and dance.
That's how b-boying started.
♪
[GrandMixer DXT] And then there was this whole thing
depending on what neighbourhood you were from.
We had a terminology called A Number 1.
Which meant you was the best b-boy from your crew.
So, when you go to these parties you go,
"Yo A1, I'm A1 b-boy, so
if you can burn me, you can burn my whole crew.
'Cause I'm better than all of them." You know what I'm saying?
And so, by the way, I was the A1 b-boy from my neighbourhood.
♪
[Shad] Kool Herc inspired the Bronx's b-boys
with his Merry-Go-Round technique.
But if you look hard at the party flyers, he wasn't rocking the crowd on his own.
Herc had a partner with a mic in his hand.
Hip Hop's first party rocker,
Coke La Rock.
[echoing]
-[Shad] You good? -All good, fantastic.
[Shad] Why don't we start back with when you first hooked up with Herc.
You're in the rec room. It's just neighbourhood people.
-Just neighbourhood people. -Yeah.
Herc's in the room playing the music.
-Yeah. -And everybody's out there dancing.
But first time I got on the mic, I used to just holler out my friend's names,
like shout outs.
You had Easy Al, Skip from the joint, Paradise, Reggie Red.
See, I used to do like this, like, my man Reggie be out, I'd be like,
"Yo, Reggie, go-go-go move your car. You're double parked in ra-ra," you know.
And we, like, sixteen.
The girls be like, "Oh, he got a car."
So, when you come back in the girls are like,
"You ain't got no car," you know?
After that, it didn't stop. It got better every time.
We went from maybe fifty people, to a hundred,
a hundred to five hundred.
We had everybody in our party,
I mean, we had the killers, we had the robbers,
we had the dancers, we had the regular party people.
You weren't there to get on the mic at first,
you had another job at the party.
Yes. I used to sell cannabis, you know. Little nickel bags of cannabis, you know.
And I went from, like I said, nickel bag, half an ounce
quarter pound, pound.
I'd bag up a quarter pound, and sell 160 nickels in two hours,
while I'm playing the music and talking.
So.
[Shad] So, you're on the mic shouting out.
Yes, as long as the music's not stopping, the rocks are dropping,
the champagne is flowing, the freaks will be going.
Hotel, motel. You don't tell, we don't tell.
One time route nine.
You see what I'm saying? This was back then.
Nobody was talking on the mic, man.
There's not a man that can't be thrown,
a horse that can't be rode, a bull that can't be stopped,
and there's not a disco that Kool Herc and Coke La Rock can't rock.
How'd the crowds respond when you do La Rock?
Ah! Crazy!
I couldn't stop it, man!
[funk music]
[echoing] Not a disco that Kool Herc
and Coke La Rock can't rock.
[Melle Mel] A lot of people don't know what they did,
simply 'cause they weren't there to see them do it,
but that was the foundation of everything.
The b-boy and that whole sound system era
and all the foundation that became MC'ing.
Actually, they did everything.
They just did it so early in the game
you know, that people, you know,
they just didn't see it.
[GrandMixer DXT] And we all watched them
and wanted to be like them
and wanted to play those records like them.
The seed is planted.
♪
♪ No matter how hard you try ♪
♪ You can't stop us now ♪
[Shad] For the lucky few who witnessed it, seeing Herc spin breaks
tapped into something elemental
that changed them.
♪
[Shad] The kids at Herc's parties became more than b-boys.
They became Hip Hop's first converts.
And one of those early converts was a young DJ
from the east side of the Bronx,
Afrika Bambaataa.
It's been a long time since Bam first planted
Hip Hop's flag in the Bronx River houses.
But even today, he's a local hero.
-Long time no see. -Oh, how you doing?
How you feeling, boo? Alright, that be good.
Peace and honor brother. One love.
What's up? Yes sir, yes sir.
How you doing man?
-Good. -Everything good?
It's one of the originals, too, from the early days.
That's right. One of the originals.
-Yes, sir. -1595.
-That's right. -Bambaataa.
♪ Renegades of this atomic age ♪
♪ This atomic age for renegades ♪
[Shad] Could I ask you about the first time
that you heard Herc play?
[Afrika Bambaataa] I heard Herc on the west side of the Bronx,
um, playing that set, uh, in Cedar Park.
And, um, hearing Herc on that side
playing the beats and everything like that.
I said, "Well, I got a lot of those records and then some."
And I started spinning a lot of that with my groups on this side of town.
You know I'm gonna say something, I love him.
I'm old school, been here forever,
Zulu Nation. We here.
This is Bronx River. It started here.
This where it's at. You hear the records back in the days,
Bronx River rolling thick.
Bronx River, this is what did his thing here, man.
We're going to-- me and you gonna get it.
This is real, this is right?
This is one of my original family brothers right here.
One of the original family brothers there.
[Shad] A lot of accounts of that time, people said
that they were very scared of coming to this neighborhood.
[Afrika Bambaataa] There was many people who was scared
to come to this neighborhood because we was no joke.
But we had all the street gang, um, organizations
who would pack this place up.
Our whole kingdom, huh.
Black Spade areas,
Savage Spades.
Nobody come messing with the Spades areas.
Especially in the Bronx, never in the home of God.
I got into street gangs, the Black Spades,
a lot of other groups I was in before I became a Spade,
Power Bronx, Savage Nomads.
But Spades was one of the groups that I really loved a lot.
It was a lot of unity in the group.
[GrandMixer DXT] The Black Spades, the biggest gang in the Bronx
dominated the street culture there.
They were like the conquerors, you know.
They would go from
area to area conquering.
You either convert or you get wiped out.
[Disco Wiz] For me, being a Spanish cat trying to be a DJ, it was rough.
Blacks and Puerto Ricans were killing each other,
you know, because of the street gang culture.
[Shad] What was happening, in your understanding, as a Black Spade,
that made you want to bring more peace and unity?
[Afrika Bambaataa] A lot of us was killing each other for nothing
or fighting against each other for foolishness,
that we need to turn this around and get the community
to start organizing themselves.
But we also had many other consciousness,
um, organizations that was out here
all coming to wake up many of the communities.
Like the Nation of Islam, Black Panther Party,
The Young Lords Party.
We had to change the paradigm
and try to teach and wake up the communities
to be warriors for your community instead of being destructors.
[leader] Brother Benson here is our brother here, man.
He's like my brother, too! You can dig that, too!
[leader] I tell you right now. If any of my members came to your turf,
you try to match me, I guarantee they'd pay for it.
They came up there in trucks on our turf.
[leader] You want to know when we came to your turf, man?
When Black Benji died, man.
That's when we came to your turf for static, man.
[Afrika Bambaataa] Well, the process was definitely hard
to deal with a lot of street organizations,
to get involved with what we trying to do
but I had a strong reputation for organizing.
And had much respect
with many of the different leaders
that they had in the different street organizations.
-President Young Sinners. -Vice President of the Young Sinners.
-Vice President Young Saints. -President of the Young Cobras.
[Afrika Bambaataa] You had to work on the leaders that would lead the followers
to come aboard and be part of what we was doing now.
Organizing and letting them know, you know, this is where we going.
I developed a vision for The Universal Zulu Nation
in peace, unity, love and having fun.
[man] Yo, Bam, I love you!
One love to you too, Ackie!
-[man] All day! -Yes, sir.
Peace!
[Kurtis Blow] Bambaataa was instrumental
in stopping a whole lot of that gang violence
and he convinced the Black Spades
to start the Zulu Nation.
[hip hop music]
♪
[Grand Wizzard Theodore] When he formed The Zulu Nation,
it was a melting pot of different gang members
and people wanting to straighten their lives out
and the music was another way for them to get into that, so...
People were getting into MC'ing.
People were getting into DJ'ing. People were getting into graffiti.
It was a way for you to release whatever pressure you had.
[hip hop music]
♪
[Afrika Bambaataa] The Universal Zulu Nation
was about organizing the people.
Bringing the DJ's, the MC's, the aerosol writers,
the b-boys, the b-girls and that fifth element, knowledge.
'Cause we put it together as a culture movement,
you know, and that's when we put the label Hip Hop on it.
♪ Well if you're looking for the perfect beat, people ♪
♪ Well here's a perfect beat for ya ♪
♪ Soulsonic stay aim ♪
♪ With a chorus you can sing, round up ♪
[Grandmaster Caz] Bam started inviting people to Bronx River.
He like, "Yo, everybody, come to Bronx River.
It's gonna be one big great set. Everybody can get on."
He brought us all together, like, "Yo, come here."
Is the Bronx in the house?
Is everybody in the house?
-[cheering] -Hit it!
♪ Everybody just listen up ♪
♪ Everybody just ♪
♪ Just hold your hands in the air ♪
♪ And wave 'em like you just don't care ♪
♪ Say Z-U-L-U ♪
♪ That's the way you say it ♪
♪ ZULU ♪
♪ What's the name of this nation? ♪
[chanting] ZULU! ZULU!
[Grand Wizzard Theodore] Bam decided to make sure
that no matter what colour you are,
you know who your ancestors were
and basically brought knowledge to Hip Hop.
[GrandMixer DXT] Here comes this guy saying his name is Afrika Bambaataa
and for me I go to this party
and I'm hearing these beats and I'm seeing Zulu
and Afrika and it automatically made sense.
♪ Everybody say Zulu ♪
-♪ Everybody ♪ -♪ Zulu ♪
[GrandMixer DXT] I grew up where I was taught and conditioned
when I see Africa or hear African
or anything like that, I'm running.
I've been trained to disconnect from my heritage.
Bambaataa and The Zulu Nation, that whole ideal rescued
that consciousness for me.
♪
[Shad] Herc forged the foundations of Hip Hop
and Bam built a community around it.
But as an art form, Hip Hop was still very raw.
But there was someone working on changing that.
On the south side of the borough, there was a mad scientist tinkering away,
perfecting what Herc and Bam had started.
[record scratching]
♪ Good times ♪
♪ Good times, good times Good times, good times ♪
[record scratching]
[Grandmaster Flash] Coming up
I had this fascination with electrical items.
Anything that plugged into the wall
um, you know, the hair dryer, the washing machine,
curling iron, whatever. If it was unscrewable
and you was able to get the back off of it, I would take them apart.
And I also had a fascination with things that spun around,
like the dryer, spin stage,
uh, bicycle wheels and I would
spin the wheels and just watch the wheels go around.
And I remember my father,
he would come home from a hard day of work and go in his closet
and pull out these black discs that were inside this cardboard sleeve.
And he would bring these black discs over
to this wooden box that was in the living room,
and he would put this black disc inside of this machine
and sound would come out.
I found this to be very intriguing.
So, once I figured out how sound worked
I would go down to backyards looking for
amplifiers and looking for turntables.
Looking for receivers.
And taking resistors, capacitors, diodes,
transformers from one and kind of putting it into
another to try to build that.
And then my speakers, I found in the back of abandoned cars.
It didn't sound like much but we were pretty cool with it.
[chuckles]
[static buzzing]
♪ The Grand Master Flash ♪
[heavy beats and scratching]
[Fab 5 Freddy] Flash looked so great doing what he did back then,
very stylistic.
The way he moved, hit the, hit the switches, the buttons.
Watching him was just dazzling and mesmerizing
and so exciting.
It was so different, like, yo, like, from another planet.
And I was just bitten by the fever of it all.
You know, and Flash was very intelligent, almost scientific.
He had these ideas about a way that he could
mix these records seamlessly
and that would send him on like this
research and development process
that was key in him perfecting his technique.
♪
[Grandmaster Flash] Watching most DJ's I grew up hearing two things.
Back then there were people doing mixes on the air on radio,
and they would do disco mixes where they would mix in and out of a record
really slow, blends.
And then, Herc's style was the opposite,
I called it, uh, disarray in unison.
I like that, I like that.
[Grandmaster Flash] He would play a song and take a drum solo
and expound and extend it back.
But the chances of always getting the needle
in the right place was slim to none.
So, both styles were frustrating to me.
[Melle Mel] The other guys, you know, they just blend it out in between records
and it'd be this big, you know, fucking jumble, like...
[scatting]
And then you'd hear the other record.
They didn't even, it wasn't even clean like that.
You know, it was just crazy.
[Grandmaster Flash] Most DJ's, they concentrated their efforts on
the tone arm.
It would be totally sloppy off beat and I seen a lot of that.
I knew there has to be a better way
and after trying many different things
I placed my fingers on the vinyl.
I let it go.
Stopped it. Let it go.
Stop it.
I said to myself,
"I have absolute control of the record."
But the taboo thing was you're not supposed to touch the middle of the vinyl.
DJ's are gonna hate you.
People are gonna hate you. You're gonna ruin these records.
I decided that this was the only way to do this.
And then, what I did was so that I could find the break quicker,
I took a crayon
and I would make a circular mark
where the break lived.
[scratching]
[Grandmaster Flash] So, the circular mark is where the break lived.
And the other mark is the intro to the break.
[record scratching]
So, what I would do is count how many times
it passed-- it passed the tone arm.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
One.
Two. Three...
I figured out a way to do this with never
touching the tone arm.
♪ Good times, good times Good Times, good times ♪
Now we know where we are.
We're not guessing anymore.
Faze.
♪ Good-- Good-- Good-- Good times ♪
The idea that this technology is not simply
something to play the record.
That I can play the technology.
To me, it's in a tradition of-- of great black music.
You know, the saxophone's a classical instrument
that's not really essential to the classical cannon,
but it was taken by black musicians,
who make it into the central instrument of jazz.
The electric guitar. Wah!
You know Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry.
They made it into some new thing.
And I feel the same way about Grandmaster Flash
because the turntables were made into an instrument.
♪
[GrandMixer DXT] Flash is the one who said take a closer look
at your mixer and your turntables.
Take a closer look at that. You know what I'm saying?
He's the first one to cut the beats
where it's more like he's editing.
So, he connected technique and technology.
That's Grandmaster Flash.
[funk music]
[Jazzy Jay] He would spark a whole generation
of second string cats like myself,
Grand Wizzard Theodore, you know, GrandMixer DXT,
Charlie Chase, you know,
even down to the Jam Master J's,
the DJ Premiers, you know.
Flash was turntable god to us.
♪
Same basics.
[Grandmaster Flash] So, I'm quite proud
that my science has been tooken to so many levels
and I see so many DJ's do super incredible things.
You know, but the real fact of the matter is
when there's cutting, crabbing, flaring,
scratching, sucka zucka.
Give me no credit for none of those things.
But what I will say it'd be in totally impossible
to do any of those things
without what I invented.
[funky beats]
♪
[Shad] Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and Kool Herc
created Hip Hop's foundation
by spinning break beats for people to dance to.
Their work is so fundamental to creating Hip Hop,
that in Hip Hop circles they're known by a loftier name:
The Holy Trinity.
But when people think about Hip Hop, they don't picture DJ's.
They picture rappers.
So, how did rapping begin?
When did the beats meet the rhymes?
I've read you say that rap was always there.
What do you mean by that? "Rap was always there."
Well, rap was always there as, um...
You could go to the '30s and you had Cab Calloway,
um, doing the "Hi-De Hi-De, Ho"
and the call and response back with that.
♪ Hi-de hi-de hi-de, hi ♪
♪ Ho-de ho-de ho-de, ho ♪
[GrandMixer DXT] And then there's the gospel quartet guys.
♪ Oh, oh, Noah ♪
The gospel choir style is more like sing rhyming.
♪ Stop still and listen' to me ♪
♪ God walked down to the brandy sea ♪
♪ He declared the eve of decent for man ♪
♪ And then he decide to destroy the land ♪
♪ He spoke to Noah and Noah stopped ♪
♪ He said, "Noah, I want you to build me an ark" ♪
[Afrika Bambaataa] You could have the-- the poetry, um, rap of Gil Scott-Heron,
The Last Poets, The Watts Prophets, Sonia Sanchez, Wanda Robinson.
Uh, you could have the political rap of Malcolm X.
You talk about somebody's mama that was coming with Muhammad Ali.
This may shock and amaze ya, but I will destroy Joe Frazier.
Some people say you better watch Joe Frazier. He's awful strong.
I said tell him to try Ban roll on.
[Nelson George] I just think it's always been a, a black thing
to talk smooth, you know,
and-- and on a mic and be entertaining.
You talk about Barry White,
you talk about Issac Hayes.
I mean, there's a huge legacy of rhythmic talking
over beats that Hip Hop is an extension of.
And then also, there is a style of talking over a mic
that comes out of the radio DJ's of New York.
Gary Byrd,
Ken Spider Web,
Frankie Crocker,
these guys were super entertaining.
I mean, you can find Frankie Crocker tapes
where he's damn near rapping over beat.
[Frankie Crocker] Like I always say baby, bound to put more dips in your hips,
more cut in your strut,
and more glide in your stride.
You see, they call me wax paper 'cause I'll rap on anything.
Call me aluminum foil 'cause my rap is so strong.
And when it gets good to 'em they call me candy paper
'cause the rap is definitely sweet.
[Grandmaster Caz] Frank Crocker's the first black cat
on the radio that you heard like that.
And, you know, he'd say his little phrases,
Yes, indeed, baby doll.
You're now listening to the sounds of the Grandmaster Caz.
All inside your mind one time as we do it to you like this.
So, basically, that's where the street DJ's picked that up,
did the same thing and it evolved into what we do.
Frankie Crocker is not a founder of Hip Hop
because he hated rap but he hated it because
they kind of bit a lot of his shit.
[Shad] So then, who's the first person that you saw rap
in the style that we associate with hip hop today?
Controversial.
That's controversy right there.
There are a few, uh, answers to that question.
A few different opinions.
But I tell ya,
out of New York disco came this cat, DJ Hollywood.
Hollywood is the king of rap, the first king of rap,
definitely, the golden voice, you can't get around it.
He's the first guy I ever saw do rhythmic rap.
♪ Everybody, clap your hands ♪
♪ Now, I don't mean to brag or boast ♪
♪ I'm like the hot butter on your morning toast ♪
♪ I'm not a Duracell, I'm an alkaline ♪
♪ So, let's have a good time ♪
♪ That's right ya'll And you don't stop, keep on ♪
♪ Yes, it's Hollywood ♪
♪ I turned out because that is all I be about ♪
[Shad] I've heard from some early pioneers
that you're the first rhythmic rapper they ever saw.
So, who are your influences?
As a kid growing up, uh, the things that I encountered,
uh, being with older people.
I heard Frankie Crocker, and I heard The Last Poets,
and I heard Pigmeat Markham.
But I didn't know, at the time, that that's what I was doing.
Okay, tell me about Pigmeat Markham.
That's a name I've never heard.
[Pigmeat Markham] Hear ye, hear ye. This court is now in session.
His Honor, Judge Pigmeat Markham presiding.
[DJ Hollywood] Pigmeat Markham had a record called, "Here Comes The Judge".
♪ Hear ye, Hear ye The court is swinging ♪
♪ Just about ready to do that thing ♪
♪ I don't want no tears Don't want no lies ♪
♪ And above all I don't want no alibis ♪
♪ This judge is hip and that ain't all ♪
♪ He'll give you time if you're big or small ♪
♪ Fall in line, this court is deep ♪
♪ Peace, brother ♪
♪ Uh, oh! Here come the judge Here come the judge ♪
♪ Everybody knows that he is the judge ♪
♪
And the music would go...
[imitating music beat]
"Here Come the Judge" is one of the break beats we would rhyme over.
♪ Gather here, gather here The court of swing ♪
♪ You're just about ready to ♪
That's absolutely what we're doing in terms of Hip Hop.
♪ Hey, everybody, near and far ♪
♪ I'm going to Paris to stop this war ♪
♪ All those kids gotta listen to me ♪
♪ Because I am the judge And you can plainly see ♪
♪ I wanna big round table when I get there I won't sit down to one that's square ♪
♪ I wanna lay down the law to them that brought it ♪
♪ I'll bust some head because I am the judge ♪
[DJ Hollywood] Pigmeat Markham introduced me to the flow of it
and the humor.
[singsong] Throw your hands in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care.
If you got on clean underwear somebody say, "Oh yeah."
♪ Just throw your hands in the air ♪
♪ Wave 'em like you just don't care ♪
♪ And if you came out to work your body this morning ♪
♪ Somebody say, "Oh, yeah" ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
[DJ Hollywood] I was able to tell a joke,
I was able to sing to some records,
I was able to just rap on other records.
And my love for making people smile
by saying things that's-- what be going on?
Hey is, how many-- how many ladies in here are a brick house?
Yay!
Oh, that ain't no brick house. That's a project.
♪ You just wiggle your hips and you rub your knees ♪
♪ And you better do any way you please ♪
♪ Now, the best ways to get into the swing ♪
♪ Is to act like you're doing the shig-a-ling ♪
[Kurtis Blow] He was the master of the crowd response.
I mean, he had people eating out of his hand
because the crowd felt like they were a part of the show.
That's what he brought into the table
and he did it with rhythm.
♪ Well I'm bonafide and I'm qualified and I'm solidified ♪
♪ To do anything your heart can stand ♪
♪ So, it all depends on you ♪
♪ Now, I'm listed in the yellow pages all around the world ♪
♪ I got 21 years' experience ♪
♪ In loving sweet, young girls ♪
That was his rhyme.
That rhyme right there was his master rhyme
that everybody in New York knew that rhyme.
Every MC mimicked that rhyme in their repertoire.
[Russell Simmons] DJ Hollywood and Eddie Cheba
and I guess you could say Lovebug Starski
were the ones who were the, uh, more high-brow rappers.
But, you know, a lot of the rappers would say these high-brow rappers,
they really weren't from the hip hop-- Of course they were, they were rappers.
They were great.
There were a lot of rappers in the street and they were popular,
and they would draw a lot of people for a dollar.
But Hollywood would draw people for six dollars and fifty cents.
Hollywood was the one who got paid and he's the one who had a big car.
So, Hollywood was the star.
[Melle Mel] The whole thing boils down to this:
Hollywood was disco.
Hip hop was based on the break beat, that beat.
The difference between a Hip Hop party
and a disco party, was like, Hollywood and them
was rapping R&B and disco.
His shit was Love Is the Message. Our shit was Apache.
They didn't really rock that,
you know, we was rockin' that and break dancing.
You know, the b-boy shit.
In order to go to a Hollywood party, you had to have a suit and tie on.
If you don't got no suit and tie on, you're not getting inside.
And we were able to get inside there sometimes,
and then we started breaking and he would cut the music off and be like,
"Yo, we don't do that here. No, there's no breaking here. We can't do that here."
[Grandmaster Caz] "Take that Hip Hop shit out to the street.
Take that shit out to a Kool Herc party.
We grown and sexy up in here." And that was their attitude.
Not just Hollywood, but all of them club DJ's.
What can you say about the contention
that-- that comes from a lot of the Bronx pioneers that say--
that say that disco and Hollywood was a different thing?
Hip Hop lives because of this.
Because of the ability to communicate with the spoken word and rhythm.
The rapper
is the one that brought this thing over the top
and this is what Hollywood did.
I don't know people, you know, have given him the proper respect.
And was he not Hip Hop?
He's Hip Hop, too.
Don't take my word for it. Take the crowd's.
When you're talking about rap, Hollywood was the best.
He's the best pure rapper.
He was the one who opened the door.
He was the one. He's the reason they made a rap fucking record.
How 'bout that?
Hollywood's the reason that rap records had to get made.
♪ Sha na na ♪
♪
♪ Take the train, take the train ♪
♪ Take the train ♪
♪ Hoo ha, hoo ha ♪
[Shad] To some, Harlem's DJ Hollywood was hip hop's first rhythmic rapper.
But to others, as a disco DJ,
Hollywood isn't a part of Hip Hop at all.
And that's because the debate about Hollywood is really
an argument about what makes Hip Hop, Hip Hop.
And to the heads in the Bronx,
Hip Hop was all about the breaks.
So, I'm going back to the Bronx
to learn how Grandmaster Flash helped form Hip Hop's first super group.
♪ We're the Furious Five plus Grandmaster Flash ♪
♪ Giving you a blast to show the flash ♪
♪ So to prove to you all we're second to none ♪
♪ We're going to make 5 MC's sound like one ♪
♪ We gotta dip with the dive ♪
[Grandmaster Flash] I decided to debut at the park. I said to myself,
"I'm gonna play the most exciting pop part, back to back back to back to back."
One, two to the beats. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
It had everybody in a frenzy.
Instead of everybody into a frenzy,
they were pushing past the ropes trying to figure out
what it was that I was doing.
I didn't want fascination. I wanted them to be dancing.
I-- I cried for, I don't know-- for days,
because I'm like, "After all this time why won't this work?"
I decided I had to start talking, but I couldn't talk very well and play.
So, I would put the microphone on the other side of the table.
And anybody that can vocalize
could be on my team.
What happened with Flash
is he came into our neighbourhood,
it was like one of the jams that he used to do in the park.
You know, so he used to just have a mic
and people used to give shout outs
or tell somebody your mother's lookin' for 'em.
Or, you know, just something weird.
And, you know, Flash don't really got a real good speaking voice.
He's not real quick and witty.
He's had all the technical skills.
And the whole time, me and my brother, Kid Creole,
we used to practice it in the house.
You know, so we, you know, was pretty polished,
you know, even before we ever did anything.
And then he just laid the mic down, you know,
and I pick up the mic,
and I started, you know,
started saying my little rhymes or whatever.
And from-- from then on we was in.
♪
Hi, Mom.
♪
[Melle Mel] At first, it was Grandmaster Flash with the three MC's.
That was Cowboy and my brother Creole and me.
The fourth member was a good friend of ours.
And he was a b-boy, too, and that was the Scorpio.
And then we got the fifth member from another
group and that was Rahiem. So, that was the Furious Five.
♪ Introducing the crew ya got to see to believe ♪
♪ We're one, two, three, four, five MCs ♪
♪ I'm Melle Mel and I rock it so well ♪
♪ And I'm Mr. Ness because I rocks the best ♪
♪ I'm Rahiem in all the ladies' dreams ♪
♪ And I'm Cowboy to make ya jump for joy ♪
♪ I'm Creole, solid gold ♪
[Shad] What was the first time
you're presenting that kind of show
where the MC's are at the forefront?
Our party became different because Flash might spin
a little bit but then we would come on, and we would do a set.
It was more based on a show than just a guy that talked on the mic.
We elevated it.
It's show time now.
[announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,
it's now the time
for the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five MC's!
♪ We're coming, we're coming We're coming ♪
♪ We're here ♪
[Melle Mel] Our thing became more like a concert than a party.
We wanted to be elevated.
'Til then, MC'ing was basically behind ropes.
Nobody really cared if they was even seen or not.
But we wanted to be up here and look down,
and we wanted the crowd to be down there and looking up.
We gonna be heard and noticed.
That changed the dynamics of Hip Hop from being
a DJ-orientated culture to where the rap
is the dominant part of Hip Hop.
-♪ We're the kings of swing ♪ -♪ And we're chosen to rule ♪
♪ The deans of clean inside the cool school ♪
♪ We're the chiefs of relief contained by wild beasts ♪
♪ The finesse of the West The masterpiece of the East ♪
Their routines, where you're in and out with the five guys
and just the fun they were having on a song.
They were just so incredible
that I just separated them from anything else
going on in Hip Hop.
♪ When you come inside there in the place tonight ♪
♪ We're gonna make you feel fine and feel just right ♪
♪ Well, we're Grandmaster Flash and the Five MC's ♪
♪ And we're guaranteed to rock you to your knees ♪
♪ Huh huh ♪
So, at that point in time there
I knew that this thing was exploding.
Poof!
All of a sudden, you know, the itinerary gets bigger.
We're doing two shows, same day, different states.
So, we're on Lear jets.
From there... Germany, Paris.
We're co-headlining with people like the Jacksons
and Rick James.
So, Hip Hop was going someplace.
♪ Like dynamite before it blows ♪
♪ Who needs a band when the beat just goes boom ♪
♪ Just let us rock you ♪
[mellow acoustic guitar playing]
♪
[Shad] Sometimes in Hip Hop,
we like to say that this music and culture started from nothing.
But what I've actually discovered is that Hip Hop comes from everything.
Hip Hop is funk and rock and soul and jazz.
It's gospel and toasts and nursery rhymes.
It's even disco.
Hip Hop is also politics and technology
because these are the forces that pushed it to become a culture.
But, more importantly, it's all these things put together.
But as important as these pioneers are,
they're still only part of the full story.
In those early years,
Hip Hop was a largely underground culture
and a long way away from taking over America.
No one had even made a rap record yet.
So, it's pretty clear my journey has only just begun.
[break beats playing]