“Ooh-ooh-ooh Old School…” 40 years after DJ Kool Herc changed funk forever by using “two copies of the same song to elongate the break”, there he stands behind behind two turn tables and the microphone, celebrating the scratch that was heard around the world. It is Saturday afternoon and with pictures of James Brown and Jay Z framing him, Herc is calling out rappers on Forbes list of richest musicians who fail to give back to the place that formed. “Trayvon Martin’s death was a tragedy,” Herc explains, “but it wasn’t the only tragedy”.
I only caught half of the four hour performance (rushing off to conduct an interview) but what I saw I more than liked. With Roxanne Shante MC-ing, the now closer to 50 than 40 rapper who got her break when she replaced UTFO for a producer Marley Marl and DJ Magic Mark concert, she freestyled an answer song to “Roxanne Roxanne” over a Mark instrumental, called “Roxanne’s Revenge”. It sold 250,000 copies in New York alone and Roxanne never looked back till Saturday night, when with an orange Afro she brought it all back home playing “remember when…” , leading the Old School fans, aging B-Boys and B-Girls into a rousing version of “Moving On Up”!
And then… she introduced Marley Marl himself. You know Marl, right? “Every Saturday Rap Attack, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl…” Biggie rapped that on his epic “Juicy”. If you don’t know than here is some info off Wikipedia: ” Marl was the first to sample a breakbeat and reprogram it…” And there he is mixing up DJ Kool’ and Method Man, on his knees, Marl puts himself to turntable level and uses both hands to scratch in double time. It is remarkable and Marl doesn’t even crack a smile.
Earlier in the afternoon, Herc brought it back to the beginning DJing above a painting of James Brown, he advises those of us who don’t know what we now know again: it all began with Kool Herc as he took the rhythm breaks of Brown thumpers like taking the cream off the top of the milk. Still, Herc is a serious guy doing a man’s job behind his turntables, it takes Roxanne, B-Boy Trixie, Soul Sonic Force and others I didn’t see to match up with Herc, Marl, GrandWizzard Theodore and others I missed including the greatest rap poet of them all, Rakim and force of nature Big Daddy Kane, to insure what we had loved about the earliest days of Hip Hop we still love about the earliest days of hip hop.
“Hotel Motel, you don’t tell we won’t tell” Trixie raps at one point before giving way to Soul Sonic Forces return to the song with Africa Bambaata that broke big out of the Hip Hop cult into the pop world in 1982 leading directly to EDM “Planet Rock” -a sure shock indeed which hails down from 30 years ago. It is thrilling to see these crews, a little older sure, back on stage. Those who made it have word it well, and those who came before Biggies sea change in hip hop Ready To Die, are not gone. Later that night I would see legends of the earliest beginnings of rock and roll, James Burton who first performed on “Louisiana Hay Ride” in 1954, and here I am seeing an earlier birthing, one I actually lived through of what is no hip hop.
The change in hip, the move from a rhythm break to a melodic sample, was huge and is why hip hop sounds the way it does, but you can’t build a door without a house and this is the foundation of that. Plus, it is great music, the day meanders a little at the star, a little confused, a lot of people will be coming out, Roxanne did such a great job MC-ing that when it did, she just called out for “Pass The Dutchie” or the Jeffersons theme.
At the start of Hip Hop it was much like rock and roll: every louder than everything else as cheaply made as possible. Roxanne spoke of waiting for her friends to leave the Supermarket before she’d buy her Mom’s groceries with Food stamps. In 2013 21,000 children are homeless. In the US today, kids go to bed without enough to eat. It might not be the job of the State to help the lazy but children? A country that doesn’t feed its young is useless. It is over.
And just below the surface, just below Hercs anger, is this feeling of a race being discriminated against and responding, but not with the blues or even the rhythm, but with the arrogance of James Brown insisting to be met on its own grounds, in the crumbling edifice that was New York City in 1975 when Ford was telling us to go to hell.
Just seeing these guys again, just seeing how they’ve aged but still do it, can still bring the party, was a thrill. They don’t stop
Grade: A