Hi my name Gaby, and my first CD was Pretty Sexy Cool by TLC.

My name is Keenan Clay and my first LP was Igor by Tyler, the creator.

Hi, my name is Becca.

The first album I ever bought for mysel was Born to Die by Lana Del Rey.

My name is Claire.

My first CD was, Fuji La by the Fugees.

I got it at my sister's college graduation from the streets of New York City and now, 50 years onward, hip hop music eclipsed rock as the most influential force in world music.

Wait a minute.

How did it all happen?

What were the circumstances that saw the late 1970s phenomena become so universal, and what allowed its birth in the first place?

Well, the musical birth of rap and hip hop came from the manipulation of vinyl by neighborhood deejays that had never been heard before.

So let's look into the crucial relationship of this music to vinyl records.

And by the way, what is a crate digger?

So we got a hip hop brain trust going on right no in Saint Louis.

I'm here with my, old compadre, the man known as Charli Chan's soprano.

And when he was a young, young young man, he was the hottes turntable master in Saint Louis.

And it's good to see him today.

And then right here, Mr.

Darrell.

Hello.

Daniels, aka mr.

DMC.

And we're going to talk a little bit about the relationship of vinyl to the music we call hip hop.

Gentlemen, nothing is final unless it's on vinyl.

Even to this day.

Streaming sucks.

Digital download and so s it's convenient, but it sucks.

Nothing.

And I repeat, nothing is fina unless it's on vinyl.

When it comes to music.

I agree.

Okay, I cannot disagree with that statement.

And, before you were a mic emcee, you were a deejay, a DJ.

Yeah.

So when you became or shall we say, when you decided that you were going to b working in this medium, right.

Did it ever occur to you that it was just going to blow up?

Not at all.

It was just it was like I was in a comic books for for music.

So the same way you would put a blanket o and run to the house and Batman.

It was just me pretending to be a deejay like Grandmaster Flash.

It was all make believe, and it was the youth music of the moment in the five boroughs, right?

It was.

Cause you said this earlier.

It was disco in the streets for us.

Cause if you think about the 70s, everybody was going to New York to get in the studio 54 and all other discos, but studio 54 was the one that was always on TV.

So Hollywood was leaving L.A.

to come to New York to go to studio 54 because people thought it was heaven.

CEOs, athletes, actors, the who's who, the billionaires and the millionaires all flocking to New York City to go to studio 54.

So we as kids was like, yo, what's going on in there?

And we wasn't really paying attention to the Rolls-Royces and the Bentleys and the fur coats.

It was champagne and the diamonds.

Our thing was like, yo, they go in that place and play music all day and all your problems could leave.

We gon do that.

But we had a problem.

We had no resources and real estate.

We had no money.

We bought and getting in studio 54.

So we figured out a way to do the discos in the street in New York to the point where if you listen to all early hip hop, everybody was the disco king.

I'm the disco man on the way.

Was this the Fat Boys?

One of the most legendary groups in hip hop.

Was the disco three.

If you listen to a flash that the king of the quick miss, he's the disco was disco, disco, disco, disco.

But it was disco done in the streets of New York for free.

When you started deejaying, how old were you?

12.

12.

And you would already come up listening to early hip hop on the radio?

Yes.

By the time you were 16, to me, you were the equal to anybody I was hearing out of New York, as far as, you know, skills to scratch and mix.

That was the foundation.

Plus we just listen to the records and we studied the record or whatever we heard on record.

We tried to learn how to do created a lot, trying to learn like you do a one thing you might couldn't hit it, but you hit something else.

So it was like you couldn't lose.

Like, okay, I can't do with flashes, but we check this out, see what I mean?

What I was trying to do with jam matches.

Jay was the one.

I couldn't quite get it.

But look what I made in response to it.

So it was just like it was him.

Like you said, it was make believe, right?

It was make believe.

But make believe comes true.

Yeah.

Look at the world.

Make believe, make the world believe it's real.

In Saint Louis, there are a whole lot of club deejays.

Some of them work with, turntables.

Some of them work with, laptop computers.

Some of them do rap, hip hop.

Top 40 dance music, even reggae.

But you've worked every form, every aspect, every genre of music in Saint Louis as a DJ in this city.

What would you say the relationship between hip hop and vinyl is?

Well, it's, a vehicle for being able to take certain pieces of original composition, whether it's rock, soul, jazz, etc., and recreating a new structure of it.

Like a breakbeat and, you know, like Aerosmith, for instance.

Walk This Way.

That intro was a big intro that even got repressed on another piece of vinyl.

So the DJs could specifically loop that up and keep the MC goin for however long his verses are.

And in those days it went pretty long.

Of course, in Saint Louis blues, jazz, funk, soul we're always in the atmosphere, as it was in many, many cities back in the 70s and the 80s, but hip hop emerged and suddenly the entire game was changed.

What was your first time that you can recall thinking, boy, this is the new era.

One Nation, our group changed my life.

I can't tell you how great that record is.

And the BPM and jus the whole arrangement and just.

It's like an amalgamation of all the things you heard in the past and what was going to be happening into the future.

And when I first heard Rapper's Delight, I thought, wow, this is cool.

The live band is, copying chic, and they're doing a pretty good job at it, you know?

And they are those those are a couple of records that kind of like were, you know, life changing.

But the record that really got me into deejaying and scratching and I had that moment where I was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

Everybody has that moment would be Grandmaster Flash Has Wheels of Steel, which was issued on Sugar Hill, which was done in 22 takes live with three turntables and tape.

No multi tracking might be some at it, but if you listen to it, it's a masterpiece and it just makes you want to go.

How did they do that.

And the rest is history.

Oh I really like how the DJ duo, Jekyll and Hyde.

Oh, yeah.

Just took Genius of Love.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, clot and made a new record out of it.

And not to mention it became the music bed for a famous, routine on the radio here called Roll Call.

And, that's, doctor Jockenstein.

Rest in peace.

The Godfather, Larry Shephard, those are the catalysts for that roll call using that music bed.

And it's still iconic today.

And then all of a sudden, there was the emergence of what was going on in the dance halls of Kingston, Jamaica.

And you started hearing some of that coming into the music, even though hip hop had always had a Jamaican influence.

Oh, absolutely.

As a lot of the people that lived in New York were from Jamaican descent.

So they either brought records with them or they brought their influence and it mixed with the people that live there already.

And, you know, Bronx Borough, Brooklyn Borough, Queens.

And yeah, that, was all a big melting pot of what, what we heard and what we're hearing today.

My name is Rev Shine's, DJ producer from Portland, Oregon.

Currently, host on KMHD jazz radio and former employee of Jump Jump music.

Well, and I understand that you, have performed wit a, hip hop group that's toured.

That's right.

The world.

Yeah.

Which, is again, got their beginnings, a lot because of things that happened at jump jump music.

Chief Xcel from Blackalicious was passing through town one time and then happened to be selling the Lifesavas.

Cassette single and Chief Xcel wanting to hear stuff from local artist as Dan Dan gave him that tape.

He goes on to sign Lifesavas to a record deal.

And where we then kind of toured what started out touring with them and other quantum artists, but went on to, yeah kind of have our own little run.

For a few years there.

We toured pretty heavily from about 2001 to 2009 or so, I would say.

And then, yeah, I was able to kind of just get some recognition through Lifesavas and then turn that into a solo DJ career and just have been able to keep writing that wave ever since.

Fortunately enough and surviving, I can tell you, when I first became aware of hip hop, I was working in the music business in Manhattan.

I was catching the train and boom box culture was already big.

And standing there waiting for the train and all and, start listening to what this kid has on his boombox.

It didn't have any lyrics or all, but what what it was, was, he had, looped Bongo rock, okay.

And I found myself going, oh, that's cute.

Yeah, he took that and looped.

That's pretty nice.

And a year late or so, a year and a half later, if somebody said, what is this hip hop music kind of going, it's this kid's music.

It's not disco and it's got a Latin component.

It's got a funk component.

It's got a whole style of dance and street art and, basically this is the kid's alternative to disco.

It really?

Yeah.

At the time, it was a hip hop.

It's like The Blob, though.

It's like it keeps just like, oh, now we can use country music Now we can use psychedelic rock.

And it's just growing and growing.

And the avenues are so vast now that, like the hip ho of the popular hip hop up today, it sounds like nothing like the hip hop tha we're talking about right now.

And I don't necessarily relat to a lot of it, but it's okay, because the stuff that I was listening to when I was a kid wasn't relatable to people my age then.

And so to me, that actually tells me that the right thing is happening.

I also shouldn't want to listen to music made by 14 year old people.

Maybe occasionally it happens, but that's not it's not made for me.

I shouldn't or shouldn't make it.

Can't really.

Yeah.

I also think that there's somewhere in the book of revelations that says you were in the in days when country artists try to rap we've seen that.

So the relationship of vinyl and hip hop created for deejays in the 80s, sort of a ready made universe of musical bits and pieces waiting to be put into a different original context.

And, in other words, it was like vinyl records was the library of beats, melodic phrases, vocals, snatches, lyrics that could be juggled into a new form.

Who was the first DJ locally or on record that you heard that you want?

Yeah, that' that's it.

Right at the place, without a doubt.

Grandmaster flash on Adventures of the Wheels of Steel, and then the fact that the group always said is made when you do a little test.

And then I saw him in concert with three turntables, two mixers.

I was like, oh my God.

And like, I didn't understand what he was doing.

But I love it.

Run-D.M.C.

was known all over the worl by the time you encountered him, and after the death of Grandmaster J, you became the turntable operator for Run-DMC.

You've been all over the world, so I want to know, what was that first time outside of the United States when you were doing a show and you thought, damn, the world is really ready for what it is we're doing?

Okay.

I want to say to some of my maybe London.

Absolutely.

With that being, what do you see?

I can't remember what London, what Switzerland does.

It was 15 years ago, so I just it was everything.

I thought it was everything.

I had seen life on video TV because it was a festival.

I do remember that.

And you get after it.

It's like 300,000 peopl and you're like, what the hell?

And you come out.

I remember I went out, I always wore a hoodie and I go out and I take the hoodie off.

It's new.

And then they see the red, they'll se shirt, and I pull my phone out and I do a selfi with the crowd, and they scream.

And I was like, this is what I envision.

This is how I saw.

And then when they come out, because I'm still a fan, so I'm with them, but I'm still kind of separate in my mind because I'm still a fan.

Like I've never stoppe being a fan, like I'm with them, but I'm a fan, so we all stay sometime I forget I play any record now.

It didn't stay on point.

Did you come up when you were on stage in, in Europe?

Were they waving their hands in the air like they didn't care?

Like they didn't care where the move was on fire.

They need no water.

I don't.

You know, it was it was incredible.

I've been there first B, A B and D day and going to, Paris.

And so I got a little bit of what it would be like but we went with both of them.

Huge band like, I can't I can't even think of the words.

My vocabulary is not big enough to think of the words.

What a feeling that go in.

It's just like, damn, I remember being in the crowd like, yeah, it was when I didn't see a single.

So I'm on stage things up.

Ain't nothing but a party through the history of hip hop.

I mean, it was always about what you could call good time party music.

But, there was also here and there hip hop artists that were making, you know, pretty heavyweight political statements.

The fact that you took a DJ name as James Biko, the gentleman, who in, South Africa was basically murdered by the apartheid regime, said somethin about your own political views.

And yet these days I don't hear much, cool lyrical hip hop or rap.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's still being made, obviously.

It's it's just not as, it's just not as celebrated.

It's not as, you know, promoted, played on the radio.

Definitely not played on the radio much.

But, you know, again, once things become popular, it seems that the, the room for the art having, you know, different layers to it becomes smaller.

You know, they have t just focus on whatever they feel is the selling point of the product.

And right now it's it' it's kind of, you know, a very, narrow, narrow, avenue, that really isn't saying much.

You know, it it kind of disguises itself as culture, reflecting, you know, black culture, which it does to a certain extent, but it's very, very minimal.

It's very, you know it's not it's not all engulfing.

And so, you know, that's that's problematic, because it is it is very influential and it can be used as a, as a, very important tool to shape to shape culture and, change minds.

You know, clearly inform, inform.

Exactly.

And those voices are kind of being muted right now.

So at this time, who are some contemporary hip hop artists that you fee are really carrying the swing?

One of the few contemporary artist that actually, receive airplay, I would say is Kendrick Lamar.

He's, he's he's very well-rounded.

You know, he's not afraid to speak on social issues and, and, things of that nature.

J. Cole is another one who's at, you know, at that level, that kind of brings a, they're more thoughtful in their approach.

They don't necessarily rely on one side of the black experience to focus on.

They will go in that lane, which, again, I feel like it's important to, to spotlight, the lane that seems to be the most spot, you know, highlighted.

But it's also important to make sure the, the entirety of the culture feel seen and understood and, and spoken to, you know, I would I would say Joey Badass is, is another one, who, who doesn't shy away from from social issues.

They're mostly what people might call underground.

Other than, you know, the Kendricks and Coles.

But, yeah, you have Rapsody, you have?

Yeah.

It's it's hard to, like, really kind of like just run off.

But there are they're out there and they're making the music.

It's just it's a very, you know, the channels for it to be played is, is is minimal.

You're a foundation artist in the music.

You've been around the world.

You've had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in front of you on stages while you were performing.

So now I've got to ask the question, what was your first record that I brought myself?

The first record I brought myself was, Grand Central Station, Larry Graham, and it was two songs that I heard.

It was a song called I think the single was.

Now Do You Want to Dance?

No.

Do you?

That was on the radio.

But then, because of my brother was playing sort of a call from, I have a call from my older brothers for himself.

It was a record that he had called.

Happy to see you again.

And I'm happy to see you again.

Bom bom bom happy that you are my friend.

Bom bom bom.

Haven't seen you in a long, long time.

It's a little weak.

Happy that you.

So I save my allowance to.

But gram, since you station.

I think even the artwork was cartoon art.

That's why it appealed to me.

That was the first record I took my own money to buy.

I'll never forget that first record.

Mr.

Chan.

I don't remember the first record I bought.

Think hard.

I wasn't before you as a DJ.

Yeah, I was about seven years old.

It was a 45 from target.

That's all I can remember.

I don't remember from Target?

to, you know, I had a little about 99 cent, but I don't remember what it was.

I want to say it might have been a Stevie Wonder, but I'm not exactly sure.

But I have been buying music since I was like 6 or 7 years old, being a single parent household with my mother and she was always buy records.

So, you know, we had target like, hey, can I get a Rec?

Can I get one too?

And that started so I, I think it was Stevie Wonder.

I'm not sure what song, but that's the farthest I can go back.

Like thinking about it.

Now, if we go to sa like 12in or record like that, That might have been in Grandmaster Flash.

And you know what I tell people I don't want to hear about people appropriating music.

Music appropriates.

People say that again, music appropriates people because I wanted to be a rock star.

I wanted to be Freddie Mercury.

But I had a problem.

I couldn't sing, I had no band, had no instruments.

Oh, this thing called hi hop comes into my neighborhood.

So now I could take it like, when I was growing up, my mothe and father's music was Al Green, Aretha Franklin, and James Brown.

I'm a kid.

All I cared about was comic books, Godzilla movies.

The best Hollywood movies ever or the 1930s?

The 1930s, horror films.

Frankenstein.

What?

What?

Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and the Godzilla.

So I didn't have a music.

So I'm sitting there playing FM over if it was AM.

at first AM had the black stations FM had a lot of the white stations, then Am went FM.

But there was one station in New York, 77 WABC Dan Ingram, Harry Harrison.

This station play black and white music together.

It was phenomenal.

So I, I would hear Aretha Franklin and I heard Janis Joplin out here side of family Stone and I went hear Procol Harum.

And it was just being exposed to, you know, hearing them al Black were one of the records.

It changed my life.

All Black Water, keep on Roll in Mississippi, no More jacket.

And then they go into that thing they was rapping.

They go into that thing at the end and then it starts to build me a rap.

You know?

I was like, what is this?

So music allowed this little black kid who read comic books and went to Catholic school his whole life to have his rock and roll dreams come true.

So it's important.

I wasn't a black ki trying to be like Freddie Mac.

I wanted to be like Freddie Mercury, but I was just a black kid loving music and vice versa.

What I love about, the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, those two groups, is you could sit there and you're doing an intervie about the Stones or Aerosmith.

You got Keith Keith or Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, you got Joe, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.

Now you're doing an interview with about them.

They're going to sit down and talk about Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf.

The whole thing, just like, oh, you want to sit here, pop m and run and Jay and Muddy does?

No, I'm telling you, Jim Croce changed my life.

Harry Chapman, Jim Croce and Grandmaster Cass inspired me.

Sha Rock, Joan Jett and Janis Jopli got this little kid hip hop it.

I feel young, I'm like Neil Young.

I'm not a fake one.

I'm a real one.

So all of that is who I am, and all of that is who everybody else is, whether young or old, age has nothing to do with it.

Location.

On the face of the earth has nothing to do with it.

I heard Yellow Man.

I wanted to be fathead.

Yeah, go was mad at Fathead.

How the hell do you get there?

Like, it's just.

It's just a beauty.

And if it's not a man in a rubber suit, it's not Godzilla?

Yes.

Honey, please.

Yes.

No.

CGI its gotta be the man in a rubber suit.

My first album that I bought because I inherited a lot of records from my parents was the it takes a nation of millions of this Back.

Public enemy second album.

I was totally enamored with the album.

It meant so much, it meant so much that I took it home and set my strict Nigeria parents down and said, listen, this record right here is going to change our lives.