DJ Kool Herc

Clive Campbell (born April 16, 1955), better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican American DJ who is credited for the creation of hip hop music in the Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s. Although hip hop historian Jeff Chang notes DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Bambaataa as the “Holy Trinity of Hip Hop”, and many African American artists before and of that time influenced the creation of Hip Hop music within their culture,DJ Kool Herc is popularly referred to as the “Founder of Hip-Hop" and "Father of Hip-Hop". Campbell began playing hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown. Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the "break"—and switch from one break to another. Using the same two-turntable set-up of disco DJs, he used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using funky drum solos, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhythmically spoken accompaniment now known as rapping. He called the dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply b-boys and b-girls, terms that continue to be used fifty years later in the sport of breaking. Campbell's DJ style was quickly taken up by figures such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. Unlike them, he never made the move into commercially recorded hip hop in its earliest years. DJ Kool Herc is known for telling his story of how Hip Hop was always performed underground, or without the eyes and ears of media attention, in the 1970-1972 until it broke ground in 1973, likening it to a volcano under the sea until it erupts for everyone to see. He told a version of this story to the Schomberg Center in a one on one interview and before other audiences as well. As a fifteen year old teenager, this underground hip hop art form at the time influenced him greatly. On May 3, 2023, Campbell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Influence Award category.