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ENTITY · PERSON (ARTIST, SELECTOR, PRODUCER…)

KRS-One (Lawrence "Kris" Parker)

Probable

KRS-One, born Lawrence Parker in the Bronx, has given differing accounts of his father's origin in different interviews — variously Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad — so the paternal claim is recorded here as unsettled rather than confirmed. What is well documented is that Boogie Down Productions, the group he led from the mid-1980s, built its sound and delivery on an openly acknowledged debt to Jamaican toasting and sound-system practice, the same inheritance DJ Kool Herc had carried from Kingston to the Bronx a decade earlier.

KRS-One performing, 2007Wade Grayson · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source ↗

At a glance

Confidence
Probable
Sources
EthniCelebs; "Hip Hop History — KRS-One," 1ncredible.

Coverage areas

Diaspora & global influence

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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.

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Compiled and researched by The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk. The sources that informed it are credited above.

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