ROCKING
gang culture and the beginnings of hip-hop

The street gangs which rose up in New York in the late ’50s and ’60s seemed to explode in numbers around 1970, carving up areas in the Bronx and Brooklyn into warring territories. By the early ’70s, gang violence and drug dealing had become such a problem that new laws were passed making it easier to incarcerate drug- and gang-related offenders. Many people in the affected neighborhoods had tired of the drugs and violence by this time as well.

Hip-hop culture rose out of the gang-dominated street culture, and aspects of the gangs are still defining features of hip-hop—particularly territorialism and the tradition of battling. As hip-hop grew in the ’70s, prominent DJs claimed specific territories as their own, and "crews" that derived either directly or in spirit from street gangs guarded the DJs, their equipment, and their territories. These DJs would battle for supremacy and territory.

The art and the dance associated with hip-hop culture—graffiti and b-boying or breaking—also have their roots in gang culture. Gang members "tagged" their territories to identify them and tagged rival territories to provoke those rivals. These "tags" were taken up by "writers" who were not affiliated with specific gangs and developed into an art form that found its most spectacular expression in rolling murals on the city’s subway cars. At the same time, battle dances were refined as an alternative to violence, though they were sometimes only a prelude to it.

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THE FOREFATHERS
b-boy and dj culture in the bronx

The popular music world was changing fast in the early ’70s. Following a period when rock, rhythm and blues, soul, and funk coexisted on popular radio, radio stations were splitting into segregated formats. On the R&B side, groups like the O’Jays, the Spinners, and Harold Melvin and the Blues Notes were paving the way for the disco sound, and club jocks—disc jockeys who played regularly in clubs rather than on the radio, like Grandmaster Flowers in Brooklyn—were making waves and taking gigs away from live musicians. These things were leading inexorably to disco downtown. There were discothèques uptown in the Bronx, too, featuring DJs like Pete Jones and John Brown, but they played for the "mature audience." Young kids had fewer entertainment options. They gave house parties and sometimes rented community centers in the projects to throw larger parties where they charged admission to cover expenses and make a little extra money. The story of hip-hop begins here, with a young DJ of Jamaican descent trying his hand at throwing parties.

As Kool Herc, followed by Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, developed a new way of spinning records, there was one similarity between their parties and the parties downtown on the burgeoning disco scene: the action was on the floor, not the stage. The action in the Bronx was dominated by the b-boys, and the DJ’s job was to keep the party going and periodically create the musical space for the b-boys to take over and do their thing. The percussion breaks—where most of the band drops out, leaving the drummer and percussionists to carry the music—were the parts that the b-boys liked, and the hip-hop forefathers developed a way to extend those breaks, alternating between the same section of the song on two records on different turntables. As DJ Disco Wiz said: "The main hip-hop entrepreneur was Herc. Then Bam gave an African flavor to it, and once he did that it was off the hook. Flash cut it up, and that took it to a different level. Then Theodore scratched it. That started it—the evolution of hip-hop."

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FRESH, WILD, FLY, AND BOLD
the scene: 1980-1981

"Rapper's Delight" hit in October 1979. By November, Bobby Robinson, a music industry veteran who had been putting out doo-wop and R&B records since 1951, had released "Superrappin’," by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5, and "Rappin" and "Rockin' the House," by the Funky 4 + 1, followed by singles by Spoonie Gee and the Treacherous 3. Fans will tell you that these records were superior to the fare being released by Sugarhill at the time, but Sugarhill remained the more successful label, and over the next couple of years they lured Bobby's most successful acts to their stable with promises of fame and fortune. Sugarhill delivered on the fame part: Flash and the Furious had their first gold record on Sugarhill with "Freedom," and the Funky 4's "That's the Joint," also on Sugarhill, was their biggest hit. On the strength of this success, the Sugarhill acts hit the road in 1981, providing a heady experience for these kids from the Bronx, many of whom were not yet out of high school.

But the fortune never came about for most of these groups. Flash and the Furious 5 had a huge hit with "The Message"—a song that rivaled "Rapper's Delight" in impact—but as had happened with pioneering artists in other genres, the contracts they signed in their youthful exuberance didn't serve their interests. Seeing that their more successful peers weren't being treated fairly reinforced the skepticism of the groups who were watching and waiting rather than signing with a label. While the new recording stars were on the road and in the studio, the newly formed Fantastic 5 and Cold Crush Brothers took over performing on the Bronx scene. In Manhattan, the Treacherous 3 signed with Sugarhill along with the Crash Crew and other newcomers. A new label and a new group seemed to spring up every week.

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