Happy birthday to Kool Herc’s beat matching
It’s 44 years since Kool Herc publicly put two slices of the same cheese together at a Bronx shindig and made a thing that changed the face of music for ever: the ‘Merry-Go-Round’ looping break. In the relative safety of my white, middle class, middle-aged, edgeless life, Herc’s beat-matching still makes me feel as though I can hold onto a strand of street; it’s an ever thinning strand, but Jesus Christ, it makes me feel a million bucks. Boom.
N.B. There will always be a debate at what point hip hop was born; for what it’s worth ‘The Hustlers Convention’ is my starting point. Fucking amazing.