Hip Hop Appreciation Week Pt 1

Mixtape 1 of 5 : Beginnings

May 15th - 22nd is Hip Hop Appreciation Week. To show my support, I have compiled a list of 50 songs that chart my personal history of Hip Hop. I have decided to make these into five mixtapes of 10 songs each. The first is Beginnings and I hope it captures how I learned about rap and Hip Hop culture, as well as what I know now after 27 odd years as a 'follower' and an obsessive reader of history.

This is by no means a proper chronological history, but I have tried to represent the years as I lived them. For that reason, there is minimal representation post Golden Age, with my attention taken away by Grunge while the West Coast sound matured and Pac and BIG duked it out.

• The Sugar Hill Gang - Rapper's Delight : Technically, this isn't really where it all started, as there's even arguments that rap was around in the form of the talking blues. But none-the-less, Rapper's Delight was the first commercial success and it helped cement the term Hip Hop as a name for the culture from a term that was often used on the mic in the clubs and the parks.

• Afrika Bambaataa - Planet Rock: Leader of the Zulu Nation, one time Black Spades member, Bronx messiah and Godfather of Hip Hop; Bam took rap from the Burroughs and gave it a planet.

• Kurtis Blow - The Breaks : Rap's first artist to sign to a major label also gave Hip Hop it's first gold record. Even more impressive is the fact Kurtis Blow was the first rapper to use the drum machine, sample and sample loop - rap's signature 'instruments'.

• Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message : Hip Hop folklore tells us Flash was the kid who decided the record sounded really good when you 'scratched' it back and forth. For me this track will always be important because I heard it long before I got 'into' rap with Run DMC and it was the first track ever, of any genre, that I realised had an important something to say.

• Arthur Baker - Breaker's Revenge : By the time I heard this song for the first time on Beat Street, I was a fully fledged B-Boy who was popping and locking with the best of them... at Orelia Primary School. Breaker's Revenge was part of the soundtrack to Hip Hop's debutant ball.

• Herbie Hancock - Rock It : While It's Just Begun and Apache were probably the B-Boy anthems for the kids from the Bronx who started it all, this was ours. The film clip was from another world, even given that videos hadn't quite found their way yet. Even now I can't hear this song without an overwhelming urge to do the robot.
  

• The Rock Steady Crew - (Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew : The other bona fide B-Boy anthem for Kwinana B-Boys back in the day. It is with great joy that I hear my three year old sing this song with enthusiasm. She has even invented a few new steps and a couple of freezes. A terrible song, really, but an exceptional dance crew with an inspirational icon as leader - respect to Crazy Legs, the man.

• Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - Beat Street Breakdown : Beat Street may have made a mess of the true culture and its elements, but to kids a million miles from the Bronx, it was all we had. To us, every element was represented. It was a whole new world to kids like me at the time and we wanted in. Knowing what I do now, they had the great Dondi White hanging around set, so why was the graffiti so lame?! Melle Mel does the Rap element proud in this track though and the New York City Breakers threw down but good.

• MC Shan & Marley Marl - The Bridge : It hadn't even been 10 years since Rapper's Delight when rappers started telling the culture's history. The Bridge tells the tale of MC battles in the park where MC Shan & Marley Marl's Juice Crew threw down in Queensbridge. This track also began one of the earliest Hip Hop beefs on wax when Boogie Down Productions responded in disbelief at the inference Hip Hop had begun in Queens.

• Boogie Down Productions - South Bronx : Responding to The Bridge, KRS One, D-Nice and Scott La Rock released South Bronx to stake the boogie down's (a local term for the burrough of the Bronx) claim as the originators of Hip Hop. This beef continued into Shan's Kill That Noise and BDP's subsequent The Bridge Is Over. Others weighed into the argument along the way including the Juice Crew's Roxanne Shante with Have a Nice Day and the pro-BDP MC Mitchski with Brooklyn Blew Up the Bridge.

I wanted to post the mixtapes, but blogger just sits there 'processing' video; even overnight. I have no idea why it won't work as it's a valid format and under maximum size. Could be Amnet's fault. I'll try again in another post.

And now, a Hip Hop prayer : In the name of Herc, Bam and Flash; yes ya'll.