Text by Patrick Knowles
Photography by Ruvan

Few artists have had a greater cultural impact and influence in contemporary music than the “Father of Hip Hop,” Kool Herc. The inspiration he found as a young man in the avenues between neighborhoods helped him to create the current soundtracks that resonate from any concrete city today. Born Clive Campbell in 1955, the young Kingstown kid left his home with his family and headed to the Bronx in the early ‘70s. While the sights and sounds of the street always had a way of speaking to him, it was here in the Bronx where Herc started to pursue massive sound systems and eventually moved from the dance floor to the decks. At the time, a DJ’s job was to put on an album, sit back and change it when they heard the scratchy click when the needle drifts to the center of the record. Not Herc. The way he saw it, no one needed to wait to get to the good beats. So, he found those breaks, killer hooks, and separated and repeated them all night long. While Kool Herc and the Herculoids, once his stage name, might have started off with reggae rhymes and shout-outs sung over this new style, soon he was cutting funk records that allowed the roots of hip hop to take hold. Like a modern-day John Henry, Herc was the first to lay down these tracks and this in turn, changed the direction and landscape of music throughout the world. SOMA caught up with Herc at his home in the Bronx, where he has lived for 35 years.

I wanted to take the readers back to growing up on the street in Kingston. How would you describe Kool Herc as a kid? I grew up in a community with a mother and father. I was a Jamaican kid getting into the culture and I knew where I came from. My mother was looking for a better life in the states and was studying nursing.

What kind of ideas did you have about the states before you got here? I thought I was on my way to the “good old Mr. Wilson” neighborhood like in Dennis the Menace. That was my whole picture of the United States. I mean we shot birds with slingshots down in Jamaica. All I remember of the local sound systems was this dance hall that was actually somebody’s yard with a big high fence around it. As a kid, I was curious to see what kind of party was going on.

Juan de Marcos González, the lead arranger from the Buena Vista Social Club, once told me that in order to sell music it’s important to have a myth, and a lot of myths surrounding music just weren’t true. I wondered if there was any myths about who you are and that faithful day when hip hop was born? Well, there was music here already, but I started something different within the music. I was just a young guy on the block who was ready to love my music. I knew that these big sound systems existed and I was driving towards that. I had an ear for music that the radio did not play. And out of that came a thing called hip hop. I did it my way and applied it to people the best I could by making my sound system better and playing for them, not me. I came from the dance floor and I applied that to the turntable. It was something different. And one day, I applied a little experiment I called the “Merry-Go-Round.”

That was getting to the best beats of the album and kinda looping them, right? Yeah, I went to the best part of the record without waiting to get to it. I used this one cut called Bongo Rock’s “Apache” to set it off. I played my music in formats, and played certain things at certain times.

So, would you say that the most important aspect of being a DJ is watching how the people move to the music? Yeah, that’s how they talk and that’s how I listen to what they are saying.

How would you describe getting behind the decks? I imagine that you have been doing it for so long that it is being inside a womb. That’s a good way of saying it. It’s just great to see how the people are responding to it – how people socialize and dance. It’s a party and my whole motto has been to make people feel as good as I feel.

With this street issue, we have been talking to people about how they interact with elements of street culture. I imagine that when you walk down the street, the simple day-to-day happenings are like music to you. What is the first thing that comes to mind when I ask, “What is important about street culture?” It’s the jungle. You need to know how to move around it, and it’s like how your parents might tell you what not to do or what to do. You move though life with people and the streets are the crossroads. I keep it moving and give respect to get respect.
You have been called the godfather of hip hop, and I couldn’t help but to wonder if that’s a label that rests easily on you. I don’t like that term. It’s secondary and a Mafioso term and I don’t accept that. I’m the father. I created this. There is no [Afrika] Bambaataa, no [Grandmaster] Flash…there’s me. They applied their thing to what I started.
Was there a moment where you said, “Hell, this is something I am going to dedicate my life to.” Well, it has been my life and will be my life. I don’t have a lot of the trappings, you know. I don’t wear my back on my wrist or around my neck. I have the title but not the wealth. I have the wealth with respect that others don’t have, but I don’t have the trappings that are supposed to go with it. Sometimes I wonder where the gratitude is because there are a lot of people living very comfortably off of this and they forgot where they came from. But I don’t stew in that. That does not keep me alive or moving.

Anyone who seriously follows music would only need to look in a history book to find you right at the beginning. How do you feel about maybe not getting mad respect for founding one of the most prominent and influential forms of music today? You know, you can’t wish how you could be for somebody else. I’m not red-eyed or green-eyed. A lot of these kids go by what they see on the TV and have no idea, you know.

So far, it’s been another incredible year for hip hop. Yeah, hip hop made it into Hollywood. We have an Oscar now. Don’t knock the rock. The rock is there and I hope people really take a good look at that. The business is locking and people should be giving more back to the community to keep it moving in a positive way and try to get everyone on that stage together.

There have been countless painters, poets and musicians who have only been appreciated after the fact. That being said, you seem as busy as ever with touring, recently being honored at the Smithsonian and standing center stage in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. Yeah, it was meant to be this way. For example, I might not have a billing on that poster, but I’m also not someone who’s looking for their identity.

I just remembered that one Erykah Badu video “Love Of My Life (An Ode To Hip Hop)” where she is walking though all these stages of hip hop and at the end, when all these big name cats are getting on that yellow school bus, you’re the one driving. You’re the one who is behind the wheel. Yeah, it was like, “Look what happened and look at what I was apart of.” Man, it made me remember that I started this when I was 14 or 15-years-old.

What’s the best piece of advice you might have to those starting off? What does The Father have to say? If you love it, you have to lay it down. Don’t give up and apply your craft to people. Keep listening to the people.

You know after talking about this I can’t help but to shake this image I have of you as a modern-day John Henry. (Laughs) I glad you said that, because I used to tease my family and say exactly that. The tacks might have been scattered here and there, and a lot of people need to kinda go back over the tracks, but I’m just doing my thing.