ENTITY · PERSON (ARTIST, SELECTOR, PRODUCER…)

DJ Kool Herc

Well supported

Clive Campbell, born in Kingston in 1955, who moved to the Bronx in 1967 and carried the sound-system idea with him. The party he deejayed at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in August 1973, extending records' breaks for the dancers, is the standard origin point for hip-hop — a Jamaican export that founded another culture.

DJ Kool Herc at Hot 97, 2006Richard Alexander Caraballo · CC BY 3.0 · Source ↗

At a glance

Type: Person (artist, selector, producer…) →
Era: Streaming and the living archive →
Confidence: Well supported
Sources: hip-hop histories; documented interviews.

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Connections

Media & sources

In stories

Story · ProbableFrom Kingston to the Bronx: DJ Kool Herc and the Sound-System Roots of Hip-Hop

How a Jamaican teenager carried the logic of the dancehall sound system into a South Bronx rec room and helped set hip-hop in motion.

Story · Well supportedFrom toasting to chatting: how the deejay took over

The Jamaican deejay grew from a hype-man behind the selector into the star of the record.

Debate & reception

What people argued about this record — two documented positions each time, kept apart from verified fact. Browse every argument in the archive →

Debate

Did Jamaican toasting father hip-hop?

One side

Toasting as a direct root of rap

The other

Hip-hop as a distinct African-American innovation

A long-running, documented debate stated neutrally: one view holds that Jamaican sound-system toasting, carried to the Bronx by Kingston-raised DJ Kool Herc, was a direct root of rap; another view stresses that hip-hop was a distinct African-American innovation with its own lineage in the block party, funk and the spoken-word tradition. Neutral framing; no verdict.

Read the argument →