LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 44

If you're into hip hip, but only know hip hop from the last fifteen or twenty years, you really need to bone up. Just as rockers go backwards to early blues and r & b, discovering how rock 'n' roll came to be, you owe it to yourself to do a bit of research. That is, unless you're just a casual listener. Then you just stick to your Auto-Tune saturated Spotify playlist and learn nothing.

If you are interested in soaking up some early hip hop, a good place to start is Beat Street, a 1984 film that, I just learned, had Harry Belafonte as one of the producers. This is early stuff with names some of you may not recognize. It's got Kool Moe Dee, Doug E. Fresh, Afrika Bambaataa and Melle Mel, but the reason I'm tuning in is that it has DJ Kool Herc in it. Herc was the man. He moved to New York from Jamaica, bringing with him the toasting over records style of DJing popularized by Jamaican sound systems at yard dances. Toasting, or deejaying as it's known in Jamaica, originated around 1970 (U Roy was the first to claim it as his meal ticket). It was 1973 when Herc first started using two turntables to extend breaks (sections of drum beats) and yelp, shout and rap over the music. That was pretty much the birth of rap/hip hop. Having an opportunity to see him back in the day is something I never thought I'd see. Oh, and we can't forget about break dancing. The film also has the Rock Steady Crew and NYC Breakers.

I went looking for some music to go with this and ran into Hip-Hop Radio Archives. Ho-ly shit. A whole bunch of radio shows dating back to 1983. Soup to nuts DJ-wise, from Afrika Bambaataa to Dr. Dre. The radio shows are searchable by name or year. On the site they're streaming, but there's a not-so-intuitive link you can click on to go to Internet Archive and download them. (Instructions below, with the link.)

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Watch:
Beat Street at YouTube
Visit:
Hip-Hop Radio Archives

NOTE, here's how to download: When you get on a page with a show that has the streaming widget, just to the right of the elapsed time on the streaming bar is a tiny thumbnail of a building with four columns. Click on that and it will take you to the corresponding page at Internet Archive. Once there, In the right column, under "Download options" click on "VBR MP3 Files"