Hip-Hop History: How teenagers invented rap music

Hey, Joy. Savion! I'm so happy you're here! Savion in the house! Are you working on your DJ skills? How'd you know? Was it my sweet turntables? Or the fact I'm holding one headphone up to my ear. Or my brand new giant gold necklace that says DJ Dolo. Hmm. All of the above. Well, it's true. I already have a signature name, DJ Dolo.

DJ Dolo! But I still need a signature DJ style. That's why I'm trying out new techniques. What kind of techniques? Well, you know how you usually spin records on a turntable? You mean those flat black discs? Yeah, I've heard of those. Well, playing records is so predictable. Instead, I'm seeing what it sounds like when I play other flat round stuff. Frisbees, sun hats, baloney.

A dinner plate. A cheese pizza. Oh, maybe a sesame bagel. What about pizza bagels? Genius. Lucky for you, I always keep an emergency pizza bagel in my pocket. Let's see how it sounds. Whoa, I was not expecting that to work or for it to sound as good. That's the DJ Dolo technique. DJ Dolo! When I say pizza, you say bagel. Pizza. Bagel. Pizza. Bagel. You're listening to Forever Ago from APM Studios. I'm your host, Joy Dolo, and I'm here with Savion from Oakland, California. Hi, Joy.

Today we're talking about the history of rap music, one of the most popular kinds of music in the world. We were inspired by this question from Parker. Hi, my name is Parker, and I'm from Saverry, Ontario. My question is, where did rap music come from? Thanks for that great question, Parker. Savion, have you ever listened to rap music? I have listened to it. It's like one of my favorite kinds of music. Oh, really? Do you have a favorite artist? I like Lupe Fiasco and like Tupac.

Oh, wow, that's pretty cool. Do you have a favorite song? I like Kick Push by Lupe Fiasco. Okay, cool, cool. That's cool. I'm going to have to look that up because, okay, so here's my deal. Like I listen to a lot of different kinds of music. And so like I know like one artist in each genre. If that makes sense. So I know who Tupac is. I don't know who Lupe Fiasco is. Please don't judge me, Savion.

Do you listen to other types of music or other genres? I listen to, like, rock music. Oh, okay. What are some of your other favorite artists? The score, Imagine Dragons. Locklight District. Cool. Do you have a favorite song that you're listening to right now or just like in general? I like Army by Zadie E. Wolf. Would it be too much for me to ask you how it goes or like what are some of the lyrics? I think I remember some of it.

The Tom is now going kamikaze won't back down, yeah. Yeah, that rocks! Rock and roll! Savion, we gotta start a band, man. That'd be cool. Would you want to be in a band? Um... Actually, yeah, I think so. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. That is so cool. If you could make up your own genre of music, what would it sound like?

I think it'd be like kind of like rock and electronic mixed together. Like guitars and maybe like a synth of some kind. Yeah. Would it have like a specific name, like this genre of music? I don't know. Maybe like electro rock. Oh, yeah. I like that. Electro-rock. Electroc. Oh, yeah. I like combining it, you know? Yeah. That's pretty cool. I like that. Maybe I can be in your band. Electroc band. Anyway, back to rap music.

Rapping is when you rhyme words over a beat, keeping the rhythm of the music. There are so many types of music that influenced rap, from the blues to jazz and spoken word poetry. Before rap was its own kind of music, there were a lot of examples. It sounded like an early version of rapping, like this 1940s song from the Jubilaires.

Stop, steal, and listen to me. God walked down to the Brandeis Sea. He declared that he must have sent the man. And then he decided to destroy the land. He spoke to Noah, Noah stopped. He said, Noah, I want you to build me an ark. There's also this spoken word poem set to music from 1971. It was written by Gil Scott-Heron. Bye.

The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions. The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew. hog moss confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary. The revolution will not be televised.

It's hard to say when rapping was officially invented. Firsts in history can be hard to pinpoint, as we know in First Things First, especially when we're talking about music, language, and art. Sometimes pinpointing history is like trying to pin jelly to the wall. Precisely. And even though it's tough to know exactly when rap first started, there's still so much history to explore.

Today, we're going to look at two standout moments in rap music history. First, how one back-to-school party brought beats and rhymes together, and later, how one song brought rap music to the world.

Our first story starts in August 1973. Story number one. Back in the 1970s, funk music was topping the charts, and bell-bottom bands were everywhere. The card game Uno had just been invented, and Disney World opened in Florida. And in New York City, many communities were struggling, especially in the Bronx.

The Bronx was one of the poorest parts of the city. Lots of families barely had enough money to buy food or pay rent. It was hard to find work, and schools were shutting down. For the kids living in the Bronx, there wasn't much to do. But young people were still getting creative and finding ways to have fun. Which brings us to Cindy Campbell.

In the summer of 1973, Cindy was 15 years old. She wanted new clothes for the upcoming school year, but she didn't have the cash to just go and buy a new wardrobe. So she decided to throw a party to raise money. Cindy got to work. She made flyers on index cards and left them all around the neighborhood. She reserved the community room in her family's apartment building, bought hot dogs and soda, and most importantly, she asked her older brother Clive to be in charge.

of music at the party. Clive was a DJ and his nickname was DJ Cool Herc. DJ Cool Herc was 18 years old at the time, and he loved to play music. Remember, this was back in the 70s, way before streaming music, CDs, even before cassette tapes. People used to play records. discs and they're about the same size as a pizza. They're usually black and have tiny circular lines on them called grooves. Yeah, they kind of look like tree rings.

To play music, you put the records on a machine called a turntable, which spins the record around and reads the music in the record's grooves, sending it to your speakers. DJ Kool Herc had a lot of records. He grew up in Jamaica and loved reggae music. But he also liked other kinds of music, like funk.

So Herc brought his records to the party, plus his speaker system and turntables to play them. And to top it off, Herc and Cindy hung a mirror disco ball from the ceiling to really set that party vibe. Remember, Cindy wanted to raise money to buy school clothes, so she charged up to 50 cents for anyone who came to the party. People started flooding into the party to see Herc DJ.

As the story goes, Herc noticed people really liked dancing during the breakdown of songs. The breakdown is a special word for when the song changes for a little bit, maybe 30 seconds or so. Breakdowns are little moments where the song takes a break from its usual pattern. Like if the song has a singer, maybe the singer stops singing and you just hear the instruments for a bit. Or maybe the rhythm of the song changes.

Usually these breakdowns are just instrumental. During one, you might only hear a few instruments, like just the drums and bass. Let's listen to a breakdown during the song Apache by The Incredible Bongo Band. Did you hear how the song switched up? It went from that guitar bit to just bongos and drums.

That bongo and drum solo is a breakdown. Have you ever heard that song before, Savion? Um, I don't think so. Yeah, that's an old one. But that's an example of a breakdown. It just makes you want to dance. Yeah, and that's exactly what DJ Cool Herc noticed, too. So to keep the party going, Herc invented a new technique on the turntables, inspired by song breakdowns like the one we just listened to. Herc set up two turntables.

He would play a drum breakdown on one turntable. And as soon as one breakdown finished, he would switch to the other turntable and play another breakdown. Perk bounced back and forth between records, creating an endless loop of breakdowns. He called this technique the merry-go-round. People at the party went wild for this. Some of them even started breakdancing.

Break dancing, also called breaking, is a type of dance that uses moves similar to the stuff you see in gymnastics and martial arts. There's quick steps, handstands, and even head spins. It was a new kind of dance back in the 1970s. Just like DJing was a new kind of music, people were finding so many new ways to make art.

But back to the party. DJ Cool Herc was playing loops of breakbeats, people were breakdancing, and to add to the fun, Herc took a microphone and started shouting out people. If he saw a friend in the crowd, he'd call out their name. DJ Cool Herc's friend, DJ Coco... LaRock also started doing shout outs and making up rhymes over Herc's looping breakdowns like rock and you don't stop. DJ Coke LaRock was rapping. The crowd went wild. The party was unforgettable.

And for many music historians, that legendary party on August 11th, 1973, marks the beginning of beats and rhyming coming together in a way no one had heard before. The birth of rap music as we know it. It was revolutionary. Teenagers were inventing a whole new kind of music without playing any kind of instruments. Instead, they were using music that already existed on records to create beats of their own. People were rhyming over these beats to create rap music.

or dancing to them to create breakdancing. They were inventing new art and celebrating, despite the difficult world around them. And it all started with teenagers like Cindy Campbell, DJ Kool Herc, and DJ Koklerock. But that was just one party. How did rap go from the Bronx to a worldwide obsession? Well, there's one song that put rap music on the map. But before we get into that, I think it's time for a...

D-d-d-d-breakdown! And by breakdown, I mean a little break. Because it's time for... First Things First! So this is the game where we take three things from history and try to put them in order of which came first, second, and most recent in time. And today's three things are three essentials to rap music.

turntables, those machines that play records, microphones, and drum machines, which are machines that you can use to make drum beats. So which of those three do you think came first, which came second, and which came most recently in history? I think... Microphones came first. Okay, and what about drum machines? Okay, so... I think it looks kind of high-tech, but not too high-tech, so I think that's second. Okay, so drum machine's second. And then turntables are last.

All right. So we have microphones and then drum machines and then turntables. Why do you think microphones is first? They seem like the least advanced. I mean, you still use them, but like... Well, I guess I'm kind of picturing the kind of microphones that you hold, not the ones that we're using right now.

That makes sense from a long time. And then turntables, I mean, we were just talking about them. So, I mean, they do seem like they could be like most recently invented. Those are solid guesses. We'll hear the answers at the end of the episode right after the credits. So stick around. We're working on an episode all about how whales communicate, and we want to know if you could communicate with any type of animal, which ones you want to talk with, and why. Savion, what do you think?

I think I'd want to talk with some kind of bird or something and then it could get me like dinner or something. A bird will get you dinner. I love that. Yeah. Like through a drive-thru? No, like swoop down, get a fish or something, and then I'll cook it. Okay, all right. Yeah, you can make me some fish too. Listeners, record yourself explaining what kind of...

animal you'd like to be able to communicate with and send it to us at foreverago.org slash contact. And while you're there, you can send us episode ideas, questions, and drawings like a picture of me DJing with pizza bagels. So keep listening. Brains on Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults. Since you're a fan of Forever Ago, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe. Come on, let's explore.

Forever ago, I'm their biggest fan. I also love Smash Boom Best, a fun debate podcast for kids and families. Listen. I will play you Smash Boom Best. You will love. To refresh your memory, the ugly duckling goes like this. A bunch of duck eggs hatch, and the cute little ducklings go quack, quack, quack. Mother duck is super happy with her eggs. When crack, the last one explodes, and out comes this... Listen to Smash Boom Best wherever you get your podcasts. Bye.

You're listening to Forever Ago. I'm Joy. And I'm Savion. And today we're talking about the history of rap. We just heard how a group of teenagers in the Bronx threw a raging party that marked the beginning of rap music. Cindy Campbell threw the party to raise money for new school clothes.

Cindy's brother, DJ Cool Herc, played loops of breakdowns, the instrumental breaks in songs to make the crowds go wild. And their friend Coke LaRock helped hype up the crowds by shouting out his friends and rhyming over Herc's beat. The party was so successful that Herc kept DJing more parties over the next few years.

A lot of times, the parties were outside, either in a park or even in the streets. Sometimes Herc would use street lamps to power his DJ sets, plugging his equipment into outlets at the lamp's base. People would get together, breakdance, and just have fun. Soon his music and merry-go-round technique of playing loops of breakdowns started spreading across the Bronx, then to other neighborhoods, then across New York City.

Yeah, this music was at parties or gatherings outside. Nobody was really recording it and nobody played it on the radio. But that was all about to change with one song and one visionary woman. Which brings us to... Story number two. Joy, I gotta say, your DJ skills are just getting better and better. Aw, thanks, Savion. I've been focusing on my hobbies and putting in the work. Practice makes perfect! For our next story, we're going to stay in the 1970s.

That's when a type of music called disco ruled the airwaves. Think spinning disco mirror balls, light up dance floors, and songs like Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees. People weren't listening to rap music on the radio, at least not yet. But that all changed because of Sylvia Robinson. Sylvia was a record producer in New Jersey. She started her own record company called Sugar Hill Records.

Unfortunately, back in 1979, Sylvia's record company was struggling. Think, Sylvia, think. What could save the company? Sylvia came up with the perfect solution when she went to her niece's birthday party. And she saw someone rapping. That's it! I'll make a record out of this!

So Sylvia got to work. With the help of her son, Sylvia found three rappers, Big Bank Hank, Master G, and Wonder Mike. She put them together into a musical group and called them the Sugar Hill Gang, named after her record company. had her new group sing over a popular funk track called Good Times by Chic.

The trio rapped over this track for a whopping 15 minutes straight, and they recorded it in just one take, meaning they didn't stop to re-record any of the parts. But they cut it down to about seven minutes for the radio, and they called it Rapper's Delight. Here's a clip of the song. Hey, Savion, what do you think of that song? I like it. Do you think you could do your own rhymes like that? No.

Yeah, me neither. Actually, maybe I could. Maybe I would. Or maybe I should. Pencils are made of wood. Oh gosh, I'm so bad. We'll keep it to the professionals. Rapper's Delight was a smash hit. You could tell because in lots of neighborhoods, it was everywhere. It seemed like every bus, train, car radio, and boombox was playing that song. It was the first rap song to break the Billboard's Top 40.

and went on to sell over 14 million copies. Now people could turn on the radio and hear rap music, which introduced the genre to so many more listeners. The song was so successful, Sylvia started signing more rap artists like the group Grandmaster Flash. and the Furious Five? You might have heard of their song, The Message.

So don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge I'm trying not to lose my head It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under Eventually, more and more record labels started signing more and more artists, and rap music exploded into the hugely popular genre it is today. Rapper's Delight brought rap music from parties and parks in New York to radio stations across the world.

That's right. And it all started with young people in the Bronx who were getting creative and finding ways to have fun, despite living through a really difficult time in the city. Those kids were truly innovative. Think about it. How cool is it that you can create rap music from other types of music? Right.

Just like how DJ Cool Hurt created a new sound just using the records he had around. And then you add even more layers when you start rapping. You know, it really reminds me of when you make a collage. I've heard of that. That's when you cut out different things from magazines or books or drawing and glue. it all together. That's right. And it's taking bits and pieces of something that already exists and putting it together to make something completely new. Rap music does the same thing.

And that's thanks to so many artists and visionaries over the decades. Yeah, people like Cindy Campbell, DJ Kool Herc, DJ Kochlerock, and music producer Sylvia Robinson. Plus inspiration from all different kinds of music and performance, like jazz, funk, and even spoken word poetry. If you really think about it, rap music is a mashup of so many amazing combinations. Just like a pizza bagel! We love ending with a metaphor. DJ Dolo! Drop that bagel beat.

This episode was written by Ruby Guthrie and produced by Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our editors are Sandin Totten and Shayla Farzan. Fact-checking by Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Engineering help from Brian Matheson and Alex Simpson with sound design by Rachel Breeze. Original theme music by Mark Sanchez. We had additional production help from the rest of the Brains on Universe team. Molly Bloom, Rosie DuPont, Anna Goldford.

And the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith. Special thanks to Heather Bowser and Adam DeWolf, Jurner, Kalief, Desmond, and Kamaria. And if you want access to ad-free episodes and special bonus content, subscribe to our Smarty Pass.

Okay, Savion, are you ready to hear the answers to first things first? Yep. All right. So just a reminder. First, you said microphones. Second, you said drum machine. And third, you said turntables, right? Mm-hmm. All right. Drum machine, drum roll, please. One day they're going to use my drum roll, but I don't think it will be anytime soon.

All right. Oh, man, this was a tough one. We got some things. We had the right intention. I'll tell you that right now. First up, we had turntables. That was actually the oldest one in history. Yeah. And that one is... from 1857. Whoa! The earliest turntable-like device was invented by a Frenchman named Edouard Leon Scott de Martineville.

It was called the phonautograph, and it was the first machine to record sound. The phonautograph would pick up sound vibrations, which moved a needle back and forth, tracing squiggling lines on the glass. Oh! Interesting. So that was first, that was 1857. And the next step, we had the microphone, and that was 1877. So lots of people were inventing microphone-like devices around the 1850s and 1860s, but German invent... Enter Emile Berliner.

is often credited for inventing the first modern microphone back in 1877. So Emile's microphone was used to make the sound in telephones louder and easier to hear. And without Emile's invention, the telephone probably wouldn't have become a household... object. Amil, thank you so much. Yes. Thank you. All right. And last but not least is the drum machine. And that was invented in 1930. Whoa! So the first drum machine was invented by Leon Theremin in 1930. He called it the Rhythmicon.

and it looked like a keyboard. You could play different rhythms with different pitches, but it was notoriously difficult to use. It would take 50 more years for the 808 drum machine to be invented, and that's one of the most influential instruments in rap music. Oh, and a side note, Leon Theremin also invented an instrument called the Theremin. It's an electric musical instrument that sounds kind of like an alien spaceship.

Have you ever played like a keyboard, Savion, like that can change different sounds and stuff? Yeah, at my old school we had a keyboard that we could play for breaks and stuff. Yeah. There used to be one that I played that you can change. It sounds like a voice saying a certain thing, like a la, la, la. And then when you do it all together, it sounds like people singing.

I always thought that was pretty cool. Were you surprised by any of these answers? Um, yeah. I thought the drum machines to be, like, in the first two. Yeah, yeah. You know, I thought of it more of, like, something that was invented recently. But, like, 1930 is still, like... A pretty long time ago. Mm-hmm. Join us next week for a new episode all about whales. Thanks for listening.