Hip-hop's Jamaican roots

Clive Campbell was born in Kingston in 1955 and grew up around Jamaican sound-system dances before his family emigrated to the Bronx in 1967. As DJ Kool Herc, he carried that sound-system logic into a rec-room party on 11 August 1973, now widely marked as hip-hop's founding moment.

Dwight Arrington Myers was born in Mandeville, Jamaica, in 1967 and moved to Mount Vernon, New York, as a child. As Heavy D, he founded Heavy D & the Boyz, the first act signed to Andre Harrell's Uptown Records, and worked with Jamaican deejays including Super Cat in the early-1990s hip-hop/dancehall exchange.

Trevor George Smith Jr. was born in Brooklyn in 1972 to two Jamaican parents. Recording as Busta Rhymes — a name Chuck D of Public Enemy gave him — he built a career, a dreadlocked image and a rapid-fire delivery that leaned openly on that heritage, down to the Jamaican Patois woven through his lyrics.

Edward Archer was born in Brooklyn in 1972 to an Afro-Jamaican father and an Indo-Jamaican mother. Recording as Special Ed, he has said his Jamaican heritage runs through his work, and in the mid-1990s recorded "Just a Killa" with the dancehall deejay Bounty Killer.

Christopher Wallace's mother, Voletta, emigrated to New York from Trelawny Parish and took him back to Jamaica to see family. As the Notorious B.I.G., his first record appearance was a guest verse on a 1993 remix of Super Cat's "Dolly My Baby," reaching toward Brooklyn before the American majors came looking.

Born Lawrence Parker, KRS-One has named a Jamaican father in some interviews, a Barbadian or Trinidadian one in others — this record does not choose between his accounts. Documented, though: Boogie Down Productions, which he led from the mid-1980s, built its sound on an acknowledged debt to Jamaican toasting.

Edmund Carl Aiken was born in Jamaica and raised in the Bronx. Recording as Shinehead, he pioneered a direct fusion of dancehall toasting and hip-hop delivery in 1980s New York; his 1992 single "Jamaican in New York" became a defining statement of the city's Caribbean immigrant experience.

DJ Kool Herc's younger sister, born in Kingston and raised alongside him in the Bronx. She organised and financed the 11 August 1973 back-to-school party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue where Herc debuted his breakbeat technique: historians credit her as hip-hop's "first lady."

Sandra Denton, born in Kingston and raised from childhood in Queens, records as Pepa, one half of Salt-N-Pepa: the pioneering female rap duo whose late-1980s and 1990s run made them one of the best-selling groups in hip-hop history.

Richard Shaw, born in Kingston, recorded as Bushwick Bill, a member of Houston's Geto Boys. His uncompromising lyrics and, after losing an eye in 1991, his instantly recognisable image made him one of the most singular figures in Southern hip-hop.