Legendary producer Keith Shocklee tells us about being part of hip-hop’s pre-history
“The Bronx did carry a certain vibe with [grafitti] because they had a lot of train yards. And between that and the b-boy culture of dancing, I give that to the Bronx. That, and the concept of stretching the best part of the song or the breakdown of the song goes to Kool Herc. To me, Flash and Bambataa and them perfected it because they was the godfathers of it.”
“And the term MC comes from Master of Ceremony. You watch an award show back in the ’70s, you had the Master of Ceremonies. There’s certain things that people can lay claim to, but then there’s certain things that people can’t lay claim to, because I just think a certain aspect of hip-hop, when you’re going to say, “I was the first one” … From the DJs, they are the first ones. But as far as being an MC? That’s hard to say, man.
“People was calling themselves MCs, in the streets, at the parties, around ’76. Flash gave Cowboy credit for that. Yes, [he deserves credit] for putting it in the street term. DJ Hollywood was doing it at parties and even doing parties in the Apollo. Before that there was Love Bug Starsky and Eddie Cheever. Those cats was actually doing MCing before they started to become rappers. Because you didn’t want a rapper, you wanted an MC to motivate the crowd.
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