THE START OF HIP HOP JOURNALISM
The late Robert Ford Jr and myself pioneered coverage of this urban art form
In June 1978 I took the D train up to the Bronx with my mentor Robert ‘Rocky’ Ford. I was a college student interning at both the black weekly the Amsterdam News and Billboard, while Rocky was staff member in production at Billboard who also contributed articles. He’d gotten word from the owner of Downstairs records, a store located in the 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue subway station, that mobile jocks from uptown were buying cut outs (discounted) records in huge volumes. One of those DJs, a guy called Kool Herc, was doing a performance in the Taft High School yard. We went up to check it out. Whe played wasn’t the string and horn heavy disco filling New York night spots. He was spinning what he called “b-beats” or break beats from old, often obscure records.
I published an article in the Amsterdam News dated July 1, ‘DJ HERC AND HIS B BEATS’ and Rocky did an an article, ‘B-Beats Bombarding Bronx,’ in the July 1 issue of Billboard. Far as I know these are the first articles on what we now call hip-hop. In the May 5, 1979 issue Rocky did a follow up more focused on the rapping DJs, ‘Jive Talking N.Y. DJs Rapping Away at NY Discos.’ Rocky got so taken with the scene he recruited a Harlem rapper named Kurtis Blow to record a Christmas record, “Christmas Rappin’.” That record would be one of the many mentioned in the November ‘79 piece I co-wrote with disco editor Radcliffe Joe, a piece that came out in the wake of the Sugar Hill Gang’s release of “Rapper’s Delight” on Septmber 19, 1979. I was twenty years old when I published that piece in the Am News. I was just trying to get a by-line. I had no idea I was part of identifying one of the most important cultural movemenst of the last fifty years. Rocky died in May 2020, but was very proud of the role in played in hip hop as a journalist and record producer. I am eternally grateful to Rocky for letting me tag along and report with him forty-five years ago.