Clive Campbell (born April 16, 1955), AKA Kool Herc, DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Herc, is a Jamaican-born DJ who is credited as originating hip hop music, in the Bronx, New York City. His playing of hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown was an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco in the 1970s. In response to the reactions of his dancers, Campbell in 1972 began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the break—and switch from one break to another to yet another.

Using the two turntable set-up of the disco DJs, Campbell's style led to the use of two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using hard funk, rock, and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers would lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment we now know as rapping. He dubbed his dancers break-boys and break-girls, or simply b-boys and b-girls. Campbell's DJ style was quickly taken up by figures such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. Unlike them, he never made the move into commercially recorded hip hop in its earliest years.

Biography

While growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, Campbell saw and heard the sound systems of neighborhood parties called dancehalls, and the accompanying speech of their DJs, known as toasting.[1] He moved to the Bronx, New York at the age of 13. The creation of the Cross Bronx Expressway by Robert Moses (completed 1963, with further construction continuing through to 1972) had uprooted thousands in the Bronx, displaced communities, and led to "white flight" due to lowered property values in its wake.[2] Parts of the Bronx that Campbell's family moved into were in the process of becoming in effect run by various street gangs. Campbell attended the Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, where his height, frame, and demeanor on the basketball court prompted the other kids to dub him Hercules. He began running with a graffiti crew called the Ex-Vandals, taking the name Kool Herc.[3] Herc recalls persuading his father to buy him a copy of "Sex Machine" by James Brown (King, 1970), a record that not a lot of people had, and one which they would come to him to hear.[4] He and his sister, Cindy, began hosting back-to-school parties in the recreation room of their building, 1520 Sedgwick Ave.[5] Herc's first soundsystem consisted of two turntables and a guitar amp, on which he would play records like James Brown's "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose", The Jimmy Castor Bunch's "It's Just Begun" and Booker T & the MG's's "Melting Pot".[3] With Bronx clubs afflicted with the menacing presence of street gangs, uptown DJs catering for an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from kids in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.[3][6][7]



It was at these neighborhood parties that DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc would get two copies of the same record and focus on a small part of each record, called the break. Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated and prolonged it. As one record reached the end of the break, he would cue the other record back to the beginning of the break, thereby extending a relatively small part of a record into a long "five-minute loop of fury".[8] This innovation had its roots in what he called "The Merry-Go-Round"—a switching from break to break done at the height of the party. Herc told the New York Times he first introduced the Merry-Go-Round into his sets in 1972.[9] The earliest known Merry-Go-Round involved playing the break from James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit A Loose" (with its refrain, "Now clap your hands! Stomp your feet!"), then switching to the break from "Bongo Rock" by The Incredible Bongo Band, and from "Bongo Rock"'s break into that of "The Mexican" by the English rock band Babe Ruth.[10] Kool Herc also contributed to developing the rhyming style of hip hop by punctuating the music with slang phrases from the DJ's microphone: "Rock on, my mellow!" "B-boys, b-girls, are you ready?" "This is the joint!" "To the beat, y'all!" "You don't stop!"[11][12]



The b-boys and b-girls were the dancers to Herc's breakbeats, who were said by him to be "breaking". The obvious connection is to the breakbeat, but Herc has said that "breaking" was also street slang of the time for "getting excited", "acting energetically".[13] Herc's terms b-boy, b-girl and breaking became part of the lexicon of hip hop culture even before that culture itself had a name. Early Kool Herc b-boy and later DJ innovator Grandmixer D.ST describes the early evolution thus: " ... [E]verybody would form a circle and the B-boys would go into the center. At first the dance was simple: touch your toes, hop, kick out your leg. Then some guy went down, spun around on all fours. Everybody said wow and went home to try to come up with something better."[11] This was the form the media would in the early eighties dub "breakdance"; the same form the dance critic of the New York Times would in 1991 declare "an art as demanding and inventive as mainstream dance forms like ballet and jazz."[14]

With the mystique of his graffiti name, his physical stature, and the reputation of his small parties, Herc had become somewhat of a folk hero in the Bronx. Herc branched out from the recreation room of his building in Sedgwick Avenue to the nearby Twilight Zone club,[5] the Havelo club, the Executive Playhouse club, the PAL on 183rd Street,[3] and high schools such as Dodge High School and Taft High School.[15] Rapping duties were delegated to Coke La Rock, and Herc's posse, known as The Herculords, was further augmented by Clark Kent and dancers The ? Twins.[3] Herc also took his soundsystem—now upgraded to one of legendary volume[16]—to the streets and parks of the Bronx. Nelson George recalls a schoolyard party: "The sun hadn't gone down yet, and kids were just hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Van pulls up, a bunch of guys come out with a table, crates of records. They unscrew the base of the light pole, take their equipment, attach it to that, get the electricity – Boom! We got a concert right here in the schoolyard and it's this guy Kool Herc. And he's just standing with the turntable, and the guys were studying his hands. There are people dancing, but there's as many people standing, just watching what he's doing. That was my first introduction to in-the-street, hip hop DJing."[17]

A young Grandmaster Flash, to whom Kool Herc was, in his words, "a hero", began DJing in Herc's style in 1975. By 1976, with his MCs The Furious Five, Flash could play to a packed Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, and was already associated with a famous break known as "The Bells", a cut up of the intro to smooth jazz artist Bob James's 1975 cover of Paul Simon's "Take Me to the Mardi Gras".Nervous venue owners, however, would soon send hip hop back to the clubs, community centers and high school gymnasiums of the Bronx.[18] Afrika Bambaataa first heard Kool Herc in 1973. Bambaataa, at that time a general in the notorious Black Spades gang of the Bronx, obtained his own soundsystem in 1975 and began to DJ in Herc's style, converting his followers to the non-violent Zulu Nation in the process. Kool Herc began using The Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache" as a break in 1975. It became a firm b-boy favorite—"the Bronx national anthem"[11]—and is still in use in hip hop today. Steven Hager wrote of this period.

For over five years the Bronx had lived in constant terror of street gangs. Suddenly, in 1975, they disappeared almost as quickly as they had arrived. This happened because something better came along to replace the gangs. That something was eventually called hip-hop.[11]

It is unclear why Kool Herc did not follow so many of the figures he inspired into commercially recorded hip hop, following Sylvia Robinson's assembling of the Sugarhill Gang and their release of "Rapper's Delight" in 1979. For one thing, early record labels were uncertain of how to integrate the DJ into a recording set-up, preferring to use a live band to back their rappers. Additionally, Grandmaster Flash suggests that Herc may not have kept pace with developments in techniques of cueing (lining up a record to play at a certain place on it).[19] There were also developments in cutting (switching from one record to another) and scratching (moving the record by hand to and fro under the stylus for percussive effect) in the late seventies. Herc himself puts it down to two events: an incident at the Executive Playhouse where he was stabbed while attempting to intercede in a fight, which took him out of action, and which he suggests would make people wary of attending events hosted by him subsequent to it, and the burning down of one of the venues at which he used to DJ. In 1980, Herc had stopped DJing, and was working in a record shop in South Bronx.[11]




Kool Herc appeared in Hollywood's take on hip hop, Beat Street (Orion, 1984), as himself. In 1994 he appeared on Terminator X & the Godfathers of Threatt's album, Super Bad.[3] In 2005, he wrote the foreword to Jeff Chang's book on hip hop, Can't Stop, Won't Stop.

OldSchoolHipHop.Com - Kool Herc Biography

**************************

Grandmaster Flash and the furious five

Joseph "Biggie Grand" Saddler (born January 1, 1958 in Bridgetown, Barbados), better known as Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop musician and DJ; one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming the first hip hop/rap artists to be honored.

Saddler's family immigrated to the United States, and he grew up in the Bronx. He currently lives in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx. He became involved in the earliest New York DJ scene, attending parties set up by early luminaries. Learning from Pete Jones and Kool Herc, he used duplicate copies of a single record and two turntables (for cutting) but added a dexterous manual edit with a mixer to promote the break (the ordinary playing of the record would be interrupted to overlay the break, the break could be repeated by using the mixer to switch channels while the second record was spun back). He also invented the technique initially called cutting,[citation needed] which was developed by Grand Wizard Theodore into scratching (AMG).

Grandmaster Flash's parents played an important role in his interest in music. His parents came from Barbados and his father was a big fan of Caribbean and black American records. As a child, Flash was fascinated by his father's record collection, "My father was a very heavy record collector. He still thinks that he has the stronger collection. I used to open his closets and just watch all the records he had. I used to get into trouble for touching his records, but I'd go right back and bother them."[2] Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal's book That's the Joint describes how Flash's entry into "cutting" came from this fascination with his father's record collection as well as his mother's desire for him to educate himself in electronics.

Flash played illegal parties and also worked with rappers such as Kurtis Blow and Lovebug Starski. He formed his own group in the late 1970s, after promptings from Ray Chandler[citation needed]. The initial members were Cowboy (Keith Wiggins), Melle Mel (Melvin Glover) and Kid(d) Creole (Nathaniel Glover) making Grandmaster Flash & the 3 MCs (with Melle Mel being the first rapper ever to call himself an "MC"). Two other rappers briefly joined, but they were replaced more permanently by Rahiem (Guy Todd Williams, previously in the Funky Four) and Scorpio (Eddie Morris, also used the name Mr. Ness) to create Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Soon gaining recognition for their skillful raps, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five pioneered MCing, freestyle battles, and invented some of the staple phrases in MCing. The group performed at Disco Fever in the Bronx beginning in 1978.

Cowboy created the term "Hip Hop" while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers.

Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five were signed to Bobby Robinson's Enjoy Records and in 1979 released the classic "Superrappin'". They later signed to Sugar Hill Records and released numerous singles, gaining a gold disc for "Freedom," and also toured. The classic "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel," released in 1981 was the best display of Flash's skills (combining elements of Blondie's "Rapture," Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache," Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and Chic's "Good Times." It also marked the first time that record scratching had been actually recorded on a record. The group's most significant hit was "The Message" (1982), which was produced by in-house Sugar Hill producer Clifton "Jiggs" Chase and featured session musician Duke Bootee. Other than Melle Mel, no members of the group actually appear on the record. Rahiem lip-synced Duke Bootee's vocal in the music video. "The Message" went platinum in less than a month. In 1982, Flash appeared in the movie "Wild Style" and sued Sugar Hill over the non-payment of royalties. The group split between Flash and Mel before disintegrating entirely. Flash, Kid Creole and Rahiem signed to Elektra Records and continued on as simply "Grandmaster Flash" while Mel and the others continued on as "Grandmaster Melle Mel & the Furious Five."[citation needed] In 1984, Mel released a 12" single, "White Lines (Don't Do It)" which went on to become one of his signature songs. Although frequently credited on the records, Flash doesn't actually appear on "The Message", "White Lines (Don't Do It)", or many of the other Furious Five songs (if you don't hear scratching on a track, then Flash isn't on it).[citation needed] Mel notably appeared on Chaka Khan's "I Feel for You" becoming the first rapper ever to win a Grammy award for "Record of the Year". He also appeared in the film "Beat Street" performing "Beat Street Breakdown" in the grand finale. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five reformed in 1987 for a charity concert, and in 1988 to release an album that did poorly. Melle Mel closed out the decade by winning two more Grammy awards for his work with Quincy Jones. There was another reunion, of a kind, in 1994, although Cowboy died in 1989.

Grandmaster Flash has a clothing line, "G.Phyre", and has signed a deal with Doubleday who will publish his memoirs. He hosts a show on Sirius Satellite Radio & he was recently presented with the BET "I Am Hip Hop" Icon award.

Melle Mel (now known as Mele Mel) has a clothing line with Sedgwick & Cedar. He released the children's book/CD/DVD "Portal In The Park" in November 2006 and he released his first ever solo album "Muscles" on January 30, 2007. The first single and music video is "M3 (The New Message)", released on the 25th anniversary of "The Message".

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were the first hip-hop/rap group ever inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on March 12, 2007 by Jay-Z.

Afrika Bambaataa April 19, , is a DJ and community leader from the South Bronx, who was instrumental in the early development of Hip Hop throughout the 1970s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three main originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and "Godfather" and The Amen Ra of Universal Hip Hop Culture as well as The Father of The Electro Funk Sound. Through his co-opting of the street gang the Black Spades into the music and culture-oriented Universal Zulu Nation, he is responsible for spreading rap and hip-hop culture throughout the world. Like many of the early pioneers in Hip-Hop, he is of Carribean descent. On September 27, 2007, he was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Bambaataa was a founding member of the Bronx River Projects-area street gang, The Savage Seven. Due to the explosive growth of the gang, it later became known as the Black Spades, and he rose to the position of Division Leader. After a life-changing visit to Africa, he changed his name to Afrika Bambaataa Aasim, adopting the name of the Zulu chief Bhambatha, who led an armed rebellion against unfair economic practices in early 20th century South Africa that can be seen as a precursor to the anti-Apartheid movement. Bambaataa was influenced by the courage and strategic brilliance of Shaka Zulu seen in the movie and TV series.


During 1982 Afrika Bambaataa and his followers group of dancers, artists and DJs went outside the United States on the first Hip-Hop tour. Bambataa saw that the Hip-Hop tours will be the key to help expand Hip-Hop and Universal Zulu Nation. In addition it will help promote the values of Hip-Hop that he believed are based on peace, unity, love, and having fun. His influence inspired many overseas artists like the French rapper MC. Solaar he was a popular DJ in South Bronx rap scene and became known not only as Afrika Bambaataa but also as the "Master of Records." He established two rap crews: the Jazzy 5 including MCs Ice, Mr. Freeze, Master D.E.E, and AJ Les, and the second Crew referred to as Soulsonic Force including Mr. Biggs, Pow Wow and Emcee G.L.O.B.E. In that same year Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force dropped the live band to go high-tech. He was provided an eerie keyboard hook by Kraftwerk who has been known for robotic trance music and popular among inner-city youth and also provided electronic "beat-box" by producer Arther Baker and synthesizer player John Robie. That, however, resulted in a pop hit "Planet Rock", which went to gold status and generated an entire school of "electro-boggie" rap and dance music. Bambaataa formed his own label to release the Time Zone Compilation. He created "turntablism" as its own subgenre and the ratification of "electronica" as an industry-certified trend in the late '90s. Bambaataa established a name to be recognized not only inside the hip-hop community but outside as well.

Moreover Bambaataa believed that the core values of Hip-Hop were: peace, unity, love and having fun. He was the "Godfather" of hip-hop as he is responsible for the Hip-Hop movement in Europe, Africa and Asia as well as the first one to name the culture Hip Hop. Bambaataa brought peace to the gangs as many artists and gang members say that "Hip-Hop saved a lot of lives". Bambaataa became famous in the industry due to his early use of drum machines and computer sounds. He was instrumental in changing the way R&B and other forms of black music were recorded.

Birth of the Zulu Nation

Bambaataa decided to use his leadership to turn those involved in the gang life into something more positive to the community. This began the development of which later became known as the , a group of socially & politically aware rappers, B-boys, graffiti artists and other people involved in Hip Hop culture. By 1977, inspired by DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Dee and after Disco King Mario loaned him his first equipment, Bambaataa began organizing block parties all around the South Bronx. He even faced his long time friend, Disco King Mario in a DJ battle. He then began performing at Stevenson High School and formed the Bronx River Organization, then later simply "The Organization". Bambaataa had deejayed with his own sound system at the Bronx River Community Center, with Mr. Biggs, Queen Kenya, and Cowboy, who accompanied him in performances in the community. Because of his prior status in the Black Spades, he already had an established Army party crowd drawn from former members of the gang. He became known as one of the best DJs in the Bronx.



About a year later he reformed the group, calling it the Zulu Nation (inspired by his wide studies on African history at the time). Five b-boys break dancers joined him, whom he called the ZULU Kings, and later formed the Zulu Queens, and the Shaka ZULU Kings and Queens. As he continued deejaying, more DJs, rappers, break dancers, graffiti writers, and artists followed him, and he took them under his wing and made them all members of his Zulu Nation. He was also the founder of the SoulSonic Force, which originally consisted of approximately twenty Zulu Nation members: Mr. Biggs, Queen Kenya, DJ Cowboy SoulSonic Force (#2), Pow Wow, G.L.0.B.E. (creator of the "MC popping" rap style), DJ Jazzy Jay, Cosmic Force, Queen Lisa Lee, Prince Ikey C, Ice Ice (#1), Chubby Chub; Jazzy Five-DJ Jazzy Jay, Mr. Freeze, Master D.E.E., Kool DJ Red Alert, Sundance, Ice Ice (#2), CharlieChew, Master Bee, Busy Bee Starski, Akbar (Lil Starski), and Raheim. The personnel for the Soul Sonic Force were groups within groups with whom he would perform and make records.

In 1980, his groups made their first recording with Paul Winley Records titled, "Death Mix". Winley also recorded Soul Sonic Force's landmark single, Zulu Nation Throwdown produced by Paul Winley. Disappointed with the results of the single, he left the company.

In 1982, Hip-Hop artist Fab 5 Freddy was putting together music packages in the largely white downtown Manhattan New Wave clubs, and invited Bam to perform at one of them, the Mudd Club. It was the first time Bam had performed before a predominantly white crowd, making it one of the first times that Hip-Hop had fused with white culture. Attendance for Bam's parties downtown became so large that he had to move to larger venues, first to the Ritz, with Malcolm McLaren's group Bow Wow Wow (and where the Rock Steady Crew b-boys became part of the Zulu Nation), then to the Peppermint Lounge, The Jefferson, Negril, Danceteria, and the Roxy. "Planet Rock", a popular single, came out that June under the name Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force. The song borrowed musical motifs from German electro-pop, funk, and rock. All the different elements and musical styles were blended together; and in doing so, they offered Hip-Hop as a new vision for global harmony. The song became an immediate hit and stormed the music charts worldwide.



The song melded the main melody from Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express with electronic beats based on their track "Numbers" as well as portions from records byBabe Ruth and Captain sky- thus creating a new style of music altogether, electro funk. It influenced many styles of electronic and dance music, e.g. freestyle music,house music and techno music.
Bambaataa organized the very first European hip-hop tour. Along with himself were rapper and graffiti artist Rammellzee, Zulu Nation DJ Grand Mixer DXT (formerly Grand Mixer D.St), B-boy and B-girl crews the Rock Steady Crew, and the Double Dutch Girls, as well as legendary graffiti artists Fab 5 Freddy, PHASE 2, Futura 2000, and Dondi.

Afrika Bambaataa's second release around 1983 was Looking for the Perfect Beat then later, Renegades of Funk," both with the same SoulSonic Force. He began working with producer Bill Laswell at Jean Karakos's Celluloid Records, where he developed and placed two groups on the label: "Time Zone" and "Shango". He recorded "Wildstyle" with Time Zone, and he recorded a collaboration with punk-rocker John Lydon and Time Zone in 1984, titled World Destruction. Shango's album Shango Funk Theology was also released by the label in 1984. That same year, Bam and other Hip-Hop celebrities appeared in the movie Beat Street. He also made a landmark recording with James Brown, titled Unity." It was billed in music industry circles as "the Godfather of Soul meets the Godfather of Hip Hop."

Around October 1985, Bambaataa and other music stars worked on the anti-apartheid album sun city with little steven van zandt, Run DMC, lou reed, and numerous others. During 1988, he recorded another landmark piece as "Afrika Bambaataa and Family" on capitol records, titled The Light, featuring Nona Hendryx, ub-40, boy george, bpotsy collins, and yellowman. Bam had recorded a few other works with Family three years earlier, one titled "Funk you" in 85, and the other titled Beware (The Funk Is Everywhere) in 1986.

In 1990, Bambaataa made Life magazine's "Most Important Americans of the 20th Century" issue. He was also involved in the anti-apartheid work "Hip Hop Artists Against Apartheid" for Warlock Records. He teamed with the Jungle brothers to record the album Return to Planet Rock (The Second Coming).



Greenstreet Records, John Baker, and Bambaataa organized a concert at Wembely in London in 1990 for the A.N.C. , in honor of Nelson mandela release from prison (not to be confused with the Nelson mandelaheld at the same venue two years earlier and organised by Jazzy Dammers. The concert brought together performances by British and American rappers, and also introduced both Nelson and Winnie and the A.N.C. to hip-hop audiences. In relation to the event, the recording Ndodemnyama (Free South Africa) helped raise approximately $30,000 for the A.N.C. Bam also helped to raise funds for the organization in Italy.

From the mid-1990s, Bam returned to his electro roots, collaborating with Westbam (who was named after him) which culminated in the 2004 album Dark Matter Moving at the Speed of Light which featured Gary Numan and many others. In 2000, Rage Against the Machine covered Afrika's song "Renegades of Funk" for their album Renegades. In that same year, Afrika Bambaataa collaborated with Leftfield on the song Afrika Shox, the first single from Leftfield Rhythm_and_Stealth. "Afrika Shox" is also popularly known from the soundtrack to Vanilla Sky. In 2006, he was featured on the British singer Jamelia album Walk With Me on a song called Do Me Right, and on Mekon's album Some Thing Came Up, on the track D-Funktional. Bambaataa has also performed the lyrics on the track "Is There Anybody Out There" by The Bassheads. As an actor, he has played a variety of both hilarious and serious voice over character roles in the international television series known around the world as kung faux from dubtitled Entertainment and tommy boy films.

On september, 2007, it was announced that Afrika Bambaataa was one of the nine nominees for the 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions.

Around the early 1990s, many violent films were produced that glorified California gang life, fueling hype about "Bloods" and "Crip". The Bloods and Crips, two major black street gangs that feud in West Coast ghettos, had now been adopted by New York and other East Coast youth who admired the image seen on screen. A rash of initiation assaults, raids, and gang violence ensued after being denounced in the early stages of hip hop. Suddenly a trend of Bloods and Crips association and attire was seen in rap music, and gangs began to target innocent people and fight with each other. Bambaataa, having seen it lead to increased negativity in the past, began holding peace conferences. He called on all gang leaders from the latin kings street gang, Crips, and Bloods and formed a peace treaty in the streets. Bambaataa is credited for preventing huge gang wars and an outbreak of crime while outsiders and politicians credited Guliani, the mayor at the time.