DJ Kool Herc
Encyclopedia
Clive Campbell also known as Kool Herc, DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Herc, is a Jamaican-born DJ who is credited with originating hip hop music
, in The Bronx
, New York City
. His playing of hard funk
records of the sort typified by James Brown
was an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco
in the 1970s. In response to the reactions of his dancers, Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the "break
"—and switch from one break to another to yet another.
Using the same two turntable set-up of disco
DJs, Campbell's style led to the use of two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat
DJing, using hard funk, rock, and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment now known as rapping
. He called his dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply b-boys and b-girls. Campbell's DJ style was quickly taken up by figures such as Afrika Bambaataa
and Grandmaster Flash
. Unlike them, he never made the move into commercially recorded hip hop in its earliest years.
Clive Campbell was the first of six children born to Keith and Nettie Campbell in Kingston, Jamaica
. While growing up, he saw and heard the sound systems of neighborhood parties called dancehalls, and the accompanying speech of their DJs, known as toasting. He moved to the Bronx, New York in November 1967. The creation of the Cross Bronx Expressway by Robert Moses
(completed 1963, with further construction continuing through to 1972) had uprooted thousands in the Bronx, displaced communities, and led to "white flight" due to lowered property values in its wake. Many landlords resorted to arson in order to recoup money through insurance policies. A violent new street gang youth culture emerged there around 1968, and had spread with increasing lawlessness across large parts of the Bronx by 1973.
Campbell attended the Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, where his height, frame, and demeanor on the basketball court prompted the other kids to nickname him "Hercules
". He began running with a graffiti crew called the Ex-Vandals, taking the name Kool Herc. Herc recalls persuading his father to buy him a copy of "Sex Machine" by James Brown, a record that not a lot of people had, and one which they would come to him to hear. He and his sister, Cindy, began hosting back-to-school parties in the recreation room of their building, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. Herc's first soundsystem consisted of two turntables and a guitar amplifier
, on which he played records like James Brown
's "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose
", The Jimmy Castor Bunch's "It's Just Begun" and Booker T & the MG's' "Melting Pot". With Bronx clubs afflicted with the menacing presence of street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from kids in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
he first introduced the Merry-Go-Round into his sets in 1972. The earliest known Merry-Go-Round involved playing James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit A Loose" (with its refrain
, "Now clap your hands! Stomp your feet!"), then switching from its break into the break from "Bongo Rock" by The Incredible Bongo Band, and from "Bongo Rock"'s break into that of "The Mexican
" by the English rock band Babe Ruth
. Kool Herc also contributed to developing the rhyming style of hip hop by punctua with slang phrases from the DJ's microphone
: "Rock on, my mellow!" "B-boys, b-girls, are you ready?" "This is the joint!" "To the beat, y'all!" "You don't stop!" For his contributions Herc is called a "founding father of hip hop," a "nascent cultural hero," and an integral part of the beginnings of hip hop by Time
.
On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was a Disc Jockey
and Emcee at a party in the recreation room at Sedgwick Avenue. Specifically, DJ Kool Herc:
on 183rd Street, and high schools such as Dodge High School and Taft High School
. Rapping duties were delegated to Coke La Rock
. Herc's collective, known as The Herculoids, was further augmented by Clark Kent and dancers The Nigga Twins. Herc also took his soundsystem (the herculords) —now upgraded to one of legendary volume—to the streets and parks of the Bronx. Nelson George
recalls a schoolyard party:
, to whom Kool Herc was, in his words, "a hero", began DJing in Herc's style in 1975. By 1976, it was possible for Flash, and his MCs The Furious Five, to play to a packed Audubon Ballroom
in Manhattan
. Venue owners were often nervous of unruly young crowds, however, and soon sent hip hop back to the clubs, community centers and high school gymnasiums of the Bronx. Afrika Bambaataa
first heard Kool Herc in 1973. Bambaataa, at that time a general in the notorious Black Spades gang of the Bronx, obtained his own soundsystem in 1975 and began to DJ in Herc's style, converting his followers to the non-violent Zulu Nation
in the process. Kool Herc began using The Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache" as a break in 1975. It became a firm b-boy favorite—"the Bronx national anthem"—and is still in use in hip hop today. Steven Hager
wrote of this period:
In 1979, record company executive Sylvia Robinson
assembled a group she called The Sugarhill Gang
and recorded "Rapper's Delight
". The hit song ushered in the era of commercially released hip hop. By that year's end, Grandmaster Flash was recording for Enjoy Records
. In 1980, Afrika Bambaataa began recording for Winley
. By this time, DJ Kool Herc's star had faded. Grandmaster Flash suggests that Herc may not have kept pace with developments in techniques of cueing (lining up a record to play at a certain place on it). There were also developments in cutting (switching from one record to another) and scratching (moving the record by hand to and fro under the stylus for percussive effect) in the late seventies. Herc himself explains his retreat from the scene by referencing two events: an incident at the Executive Playhouse where he was stabbed while attempting to intercede in a fight, which took him out of action, and which he suggests made people wary of attending events hosted by him subsequent to it; and the burning down of one of the venues at which he used to DJ. In 1980, Herc had stopped DJing and was working in a record shop in South Bronx.
Kool Herc appeared in Hollywood's motion picture take on hip hop, Beat Street
(Orion
, 1984), as himself. Some time in the mid-1980s, his father died, and he became addicted to crack cocaine
. "I couldn’t cope, so I started medicating", he says of this period. In 1994 he appeared on Terminator X & the Godfathers of Threatt's album, Super Bad. In 2005, he wrote the foreword to Jeff Chang
's book on hip hop, Can't Stop Won't Stop
. In 2006, he became involved in getting Hip Hop commemorated at Smithsonian Institution
museums.
Since 2007 he has become involved in a campaign to prevent 1520 Sedgwick Avenue being sold to developers and moved out of its Mitchell-Lama affordable housing scheme. In the Summer of 2007, New York state officials declared 1520 Sedgwick Avenue the "birthplace of hip-hop", and made it eligible for national and state registers. The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development ruled against the proposed sale in February 2008, on the grounds that "the proposed purchase price is inconsistent with the use of property as a Mitchell-Lama affordable housing development". It is the first time they have so ruled in such a case.
fan blog
, The Source
's website and other sites, DJ Kool Herc had fallen gravely ill in early 2011. "Friends of DJ Kool Herc say he ... lacks health insurance," per another report. He had surgery for kidney stones, with a stent placed to relieve the pressure. He needs followup surgery but St. Barnabas Hospital, the site that performed the previous surgery, has requested that he put down a deposit prior to the next surgery, because he has missed several followup visits. The hospital stated it would not turn away uninsured patients in the emergency room. Herc's sister Cindy Campbell says that they have requested disclosure of the total sum required but the hospital has not yet given it to them. DJ Kool Herc and his family have set up an official website on which he describes his medical issue and the larger goal of establishing the DJ Kool Herc Fund to pioneer long term health care solutions.
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
, in The Bronx
The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. His playing of hard funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
records of the sort typified by James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
was an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
in the 1970s. In response to the reactions of his dancers, Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the "break
Break (music)
In popular music, a break is an instrumental or percussion section or interlude during a song derived from or related to stop-time – being a "break" from the main parts of the song or piece....
"—and switch from one break to another to yet another.
Using the same two turntable set-up of disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
DJs, Campbell's style led to the use of two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat
Breakbeat
In 1992, a new style called "jungalistic hardcore" emerged, and for many ravers it was too funky to dance to. Josh Lawford of Ravescene prophesied that the breakbeat was "the death-knell of rave" because the ever changing drumbeat patterns of breakbeat music didn't allow for the same zoned out,...
DJing, using hard funk, rock, and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment now known as rapping
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
. He called his dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply b-boys and b-girls. Campbell's DJ style was quickly taken up by figures such as Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa is an American DJ from the South Bronx, New York who was instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and the Amen Ra of Universal...
and Grandmaster Flash
Grandmaster Flash
Joseph Saddler better known as King Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop musician and DJ; one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing....
. Unlike them, he never made the move into commercially recorded hip hop in its earliest years.
1520 Sedgwick Avenue
Kingston, Jamaica
Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects the town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport to the rest of the island...
. While growing up, he saw and heard the sound systems of neighborhood parties called dancehalls, and the accompanying speech of their DJs, known as toasting. He moved to the Bronx, New York in November 1967. The creation of the Cross Bronx Expressway by Robert Moses
Robert Moses
Robert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...
(completed 1963, with further construction continuing through to 1972) had uprooted thousands in the Bronx, displaced communities, and led to "white flight" due to lowered property values in its wake. Many landlords resorted to arson in order to recoup money through insurance policies. A violent new street gang youth culture emerged there around 1968, and had spread with increasing lawlessness across large parts of the Bronx by 1973.
Campbell attended the Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, where his height, frame, and demeanor on the basketball court prompted the other kids to nickname him "Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
". He began running with a graffiti crew called the Ex-Vandals, taking the name Kool Herc. Herc recalls persuading his father to buy him a copy of "Sex Machine" by James Brown, a record that not a lot of people had, and one which they would come to him to hear. He and his sister, Cindy, began hosting back-to-school parties in the recreation room of their building, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. Herc's first soundsystem consisted of two turntables and a guitar amplifier
Amplifier
Generally, an amplifier or simply amp, is a device for increasing the power of a signal.In popular use, the term usually describes an electronic amplifier, in which the input "signal" is usually a voltage or a current. In audio applications, amplifiers drive the loudspeakers used in PA systems to...
, on which he played records like James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
's "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose
Give It Up or Turnit a Loose
"Give It Up or Turnit a Loose" is a funk song recorded by James Brown. Released as a single in 1969, it was a #1 R&B hit and also made the top 20 pop singles chart...
", The Jimmy Castor Bunch's "It's Just Begun" and Booker T & the MG's' "Melting Pot". With Bronx clubs afflicted with the menacing presence of street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from kids in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
The break
At these parties in the recreation room at Sedgwick Avenue, DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used two copies of the same record to focus on a short, heavily percussive, part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated and prolonged it. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued the other record back to the beginning of the break, thereby extending a relatively small part of a record into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what he called "The Merry-Go-Round"—a switching from break to break done at the height of the party. Herc told The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
he first introduced the Merry-Go-Round into his sets in 1972. The earliest known Merry-Go-Round involved playing James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit A Loose" (with its refrain
Refrain
A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...
, "Now clap your hands! Stomp your feet!"), then switching from its break into the break from "Bongo Rock" by The Incredible Bongo Band, and from "Bongo Rock"'s break into that of "The Mexican
The Mexican (song)
"The Mexican" is a piece of music on the album First Base by the 1970s British band Babe Ruth.The song is based on the whistling from the music soundtrack by Ennio Morricone for the film For a Few Dollars More...
" by the English rock band Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth (band)
Babe Ruth are a rock music group, primarily active through the 1970s, from Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. Their characteristically 'heavy' sound is marked by powerful vocals from Janita Haan and full arrangements by Alan Shacklock...
. Kool Herc also contributed to developing the rhyming style of hip hop by punctua with slang phrases from the DJ's microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
: "Rock on, my mellow!" "B-boys, b-girls, are you ready?" "This is the joint!" "To the beat, y'all!" "You don't stop!" For his contributions Herc is called a "founding father of hip hop," a "nascent cultural hero," and an integral part of the beginnings of hip hop by Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
.
On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was a Disc Jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
and Emcee at a party in the recreation room at Sedgwick Avenue. Specifically, DJ Kool Herc:
B-boys and b-girls
The "b-boys" and "b-girls" were the dancers to Herc's breaks, who were described as "breaking". The obvious connection is to the breakbeat, but Herc has noted that "breaking" was also street slang of the time meaning "getting excited", "acting energetically" or "causing a disturbance". Herc's terms "b-boy", "b-girl" and "breaking" became part of the lexicon of hip hop culture even before that culture itself had a name. Early Kool Herc b-boy and later DJ innovator Grandmixer DXT describes the early evolution thus: " ... [E]verybody would form a circle and the B-boys would go into the center. At first the dance was simple: touch your toes, hop, kick out your leg. Then some guy went down, spun around on all fours. Everybody said wow and went home to try to come up with something better." This was the form the media in the early eighties called "breakdance"; the same form the dance critic of the New York Times in 1991 declared "an art as demanding and inventive as mainstream dance forms like ballet and jazz." Since the overall emerging culture was yet to be named, its followers were likely to identify as "b-boys" over and above the specific connection to dance, a usage that persisted in following years.Move to the streets
With the mystique of his graffiti name, his physical stature, and the reputation of his small parties, Herc had become somewhat of a folk hero in the Bronx. Herc began to play at the nearby Twilight Zone club, the Havelo club, the Executive Playhouse club, the PALPolice Athletic League
The Police Athletic League is an organization in many American police departments in which members of the police force coach young people, both boys and girls, in sports, and help with homework and other school-related activities. The purpose is to build character, help strengthen police-community...
on 183rd Street, and high schools such as Dodge High School and Taft High School
William Howard Taft High School (New York City)
William Howard Taft High School was a high school in Southwest section of the Bronx, New York City.The school was operated by the New York City Department of Education....
. Rapping duties were delegated to Coke La Rock
Coke La Rock
Coke La Rock is an old school New York City rapper who is often credited as being the first MC in the history of hip-hop.In November, 2010, Coke La Rock was inducted into the High Times Counterculture Hall of Fame at the annual ceremonies at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam...
. Herc's collective, known as The Herculoids, was further augmented by Clark Kent and dancers The Nigga Twins. Herc also took his soundsystem (the herculords) —now upgraded to one of legendary volume—to the streets and parks of the Bronx. Nelson George
Nelson George
Nelson George is an African American author, columnist, music and culture critic, journalist, and filmmaker. He has been nominated twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award....
recalls a schoolyard party:
The sun hadn't gone down yet, and kids were just hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Van pulls up, a bunch of guys come out with a table, crates of records. They unscrew the base of the light pole, take their equipment, attach it to that, get the electricity – Boom! We got a concert right here in the schoolyard and it's this guy Kool Herc. And he's just standing with the turntable, and the guys were studying his hands. There are people dancing, but there's as many people standing, just watching what he's doing. That was my first introduction to in-the-street, hip hop DJing.
Impact on artists
A young Grandmaster FlashGrandmaster Flash
Joseph Saddler better known as King Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop musician and DJ; one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing....
, to whom Kool Herc was, in his words, "a hero", began DJing in Herc's style in 1975. By 1976, it was possible for Flash, and his MCs The Furious Five, to play to a packed Audubon Ballroom
Audubon Ballroom
The Audubon Ballroom was a theatre and ballroom located on Broadway at 165th Street in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, north of Harlem in New York. It is best known as the site of Malcolm X's assassination on February 21, 1965....
in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. Venue owners were often nervous of unruly young crowds, however, and soon sent hip hop back to the clubs, community centers and high school gymnasiums of the Bronx. Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa is an American DJ from the South Bronx, New York who was instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and the Amen Ra of Universal...
first heard Kool Herc in 1973. Bambaataa, at that time a general in the notorious Black Spades gang of the Bronx, obtained his own soundsystem in 1975 and began to DJ in Herc's style, converting his followers to the non-violent Zulu Nation
Universal Zulu Nation
|rightThe Universal Zulu Nation is an international hip hop awareness group formed and headed by hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa. Originally known simply as the Organization, it arose in the 1970s as reformed New York City gang members began to organize cultural events for youths, combining local...
in the process. Kool Herc began using The Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache" as a break in 1975. It became a firm b-boy favorite—"the Bronx national anthem"—and is still in use in hip hop today. Steven Hager
Steven Hager
Steven Hager, a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and counterculture and cannabis activist, was born May 25, 1951, in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, the son of Lowell P. Hager and Francis Erea Hager.-Early life and career:...
wrote of this period:
For over five years the Bronx had lived in constant terror of street gangs. Suddenly, in 1975, they disappeared almost as quickly as they had arrived. This happened because something better came along to replace the gangs. That something was eventually called hip-hop.
In 1979, record company executive Sylvia Robinson
Sylvia Robinson
Sylvia Robinson was an American singer, musician, record producer, and record label executive, most notably known for her work as founder/CEO of the hip hop label Sugar Hill Records. She is credited as the driving force behind two landmark singles in the genre...
assembled a group she called The Sugarhill Gang
The Sugarhill Gang
The Sugarhill Gang is an American hip hop group, known mostly for their 1979 hit, "Rapper's Delight", the first hip hop single to become a Top 40 hit. The song uses the instrumental track from the classic hit "Good Times" by Chic as its foundation....
and recorded "Rapper's Delight
Rapper's Delight
"Rapper's Delight" is a 1979 single by American hip hop trio The Sugarhill Gang. While it was not the first single to feature rapping, it is generally considered to be the song that first popularized hip hop in the United States and around the world. The song's opening lyric "I said a hip hop, a...
". The hit song ushered in the era of commercially released hip hop. By that year's end, Grandmaster Flash was recording for Enjoy Records
Enjoy Records
Enjoy Records was a record label owned and operated by Bobby Robinson from 1962 through the mid-1980s, and was run out of his record shop at 125th Street and 8th Ave. in Harlem...
. In 1980, Afrika Bambaataa began recording for Winley
Winley Records
Paul Winley Records Inc. was a doo-wop record label founded in 1956 that in 1979 became one of the earliest hip hop labels. It was situated on 125th Street, Harlem, New York City. Winley released doo-wop by The Paragons and The Jesters, and hip hop records by Paul Winley's daughters, Tanya and...
. By this time, DJ Kool Herc's star had faded. Grandmaster Flash suggests that Herc may not have kept pace with developments in techniques of cueing (lining up a record to play at a certain place on it). There were also developments in cutting (switching from one record to another) and scratching (moving the record by hand to and fro under the stylus for percussive effect) in the late seventies. Herc himself explains his retreat from the scene by referencing two events: an incident at the Executive Playhouse where he was stabbed while attempting to intercede in a fight, which took him out of action, and which he suggests made people wary of attending events hosted by him subsequent to it; and the burning down of one of the venues at which he used to DJ. In 1980, Herc had stopped DJing and was working in a record shop in South Bronx.
Later years
Beat Street
Beat Street is a 1984 drama film, following Wild Style in featuring New York City hip hop culture of the early 1980s; breakdancing, DJing, and graffiti.-Plot:...
(Orion
Orion Pictures
Orion Pictures Corporation was an American independent production company that produced movies from 1978 until 1998. It was formed in 1978 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and three former top-level executives of United Artists. Although it was never a large motion picture producer, Orion...
, 1984), as himself. Some time in the mid-1980s, his father died, and he became addicted to crack cocaine
Crack cocaine
Crack cocaine is the freebase form of cocaine that can be smoked. It may also be termed rock, hard, iron, cavvy, base, or just crack; it is the most addictive form of cocaine. Crack rocks offer a short but intense high to smokers...
. "I couldn’t cope, so I started medicating", he says of this period. In 1994 he appeared on Terminator X & the Godfathers of Threatt's album, Super Bad. In 2005, he wrote the foreword to Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is a Taiwanese male singer, who performs sentimental Mandarin pop ballads.Chang was born in Yunlin, Taiwan. He started off his showbiz career by winning a singing competition while in college...
's book on hip hop, Can't Stop Won't Stop
Can't Stop Won't Stop
Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation is a book by Jeff Chang chronicling the early hip hop scene.The book features portraits of DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D, and Ice Cube, among others, and is based on numerous interviews with graffiti artists, gang members, DJs,...
. In 2006, he became involved in getting Hip Hop commemorated at Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
museums.
Since 2007 he has become involved in a campaign to prevent 1520 Sedgwick Avenue being sold to developers and moved out of its Mitchell-Lama affordable housing scheme. In the Summer of 2007, New York state officials declared 1520 Sedgwick Avenue the "birthplace of hip-hop", and made it eligible for national and state registers. The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development ruled against the proposed sale in February 2008, on the grounds that "the proposed purchase price is inconsistent with the use of property as a Mitchell-Lama affordable housing development". It is the first time they have so ruled in such a case.
Serious illness
According to a DJ PremierDJ Premier
Christopher Edward Martin , better known by his stage name DJ Premier , is an American record producer and DJ, and was the instrumental half of the hip hop duo Gang Starr, together with emcee Guru...
fan blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
, The Source
The Source (magazine)
The Source is a United States-based, monthly full-color magazine covering hip-hop music, politics, and culture, founded in 1988. It is the world's second longest running rap periodical, behind United Kingdom-based publication Hip Hop Connection. The Source was founded as a newsletter in 1988...
's website and other sites, DJ Kool Herc had fallen gravely ill in early 2011. "Friends of DJ Kool Herc say he ... lacks health insurance," per another report. He had surgery for kidney stones, with a stent placed to relieve the pressure. He needs followup surgery but St. Barnabas Hospital, the site that performed the previous surgery, has requested that he put down a deposit prior to the next surgery, because he has missed several followup visits. The hospital stated it would not turn away uninsured patients in the emergency room. Herc's sister Cindy Campbell says that they have requested disclosure of the total sum required but the hospital has not yet given it to them. DJ Kool Herc and his family have set up an official website on which he describes his medical issue and the larger goal of establishing the DJ Kool Herc Fund to pioneer long term health care solutions.