At a block party, in a basement, at a funeral.
Twenty-five rappers on the moment their lives changed forever.
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All told, hip-hop 50 has been a welcome moment of retrospection.
B-Real of Cypress Hill recalls listening to Run-D.M.C.
Pain and euphoria are equal catalysts for creative brilliance.
Common: When I Heard Run-D.M.C.
I think I was 11.
I was in Cincinnati visiting my cousin.
They started playing Sucker M.C.s and Rock Box by Run-D.M.C.
I remember feeling a feeling I hadnt felt before.
I was already listening to The Message, Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel with the Furious Five.
Somebody had bought me that record.
But hearing Sucker M.C.s and Rock Box took me to a place where I was like, Ireallylove this.
had this thing about em that expressed Black pride.
It felt like they was superheroes, but relatable.
I literally had those Adidas sweatsuits that they wore onKrush Groove.
They were like a younger Muhammad Ali for me but in a musical way.
They represented a revolution in hip-hop, and in music, and in Black and brown America.
It was something that I needed, something that I desired.
They recognized it as being dope.
I loved that feeling, like I was having my own Muhammad Alitype moment.
But I also liked the way they felt joy and felt empowered by it.
I wasnt using the word empowered then, but thats what it was.
It kind of defined for me what I loved about being an MC.
Saba: When My Brother Burned Notorious Thugs
It feels like describing a scene from a movie.
I remember the moment hearing Notorious Thugs for the first time.
It was track 12 on this CD we took from our stepdad.
That song spoke to me in a way I wasnt even aware that music could talk.
Im sure I lost the game we were playing by a bunch of points.
I was much more concentrated on the fact that I had never heard music sound like this before.
Like they were singing, rapping, yelling, chanting.
It was the cadences that caught my attention at first.
They were rapping in patterns no one else could even attempt.
I was immediately drawn to it.
I put it on repeat for the rest of the night and probably the next few years.
I had already loved the idea of creating music.
Creating music felt like a cross of art and science classes, which were my two favorites growing up.
I decided right then and there that I would rap.
We got our hip-hop radio from New York.
But when you got those glimpses, it was super-compelling.
It felt like it was coming from another planet.
Being immersed in this new medium felt so otherworldly and drastically different from everything else that was taking place.
Hip-hop came to be during the disco and funk era the more adult-feeling mediums.
Weve evolved and weve aged gracefully together.
I fell in love with it because I knew it was the art for the unspoken.
I remember hearing The Message and how it painted a picture and rhythm.
I remember watchingBeat Streetand knowing that that was the life for me.
I just remember how the music made me feel.
Im from the south side of Yonkers, pretty close to the border of the Bronx.
It was reflecting what I was seeing.
I just knew that I wanted to spend my life being part of the culture.
It was rough times, but family times.
Hard times, but beautiful times.
Lauryn was a teacher, a stranger I had never met, yet she spoke so clearly to me.
I remember being young, feeling lost, being ostracized, and not knowing how I could express myself.
Hip-hop is a home, and it welcomes all walks of life.
I invited myself in when I was 12 and havent looked back since.
Hip-hop is the most popular culture in the world, and it continues to grow.
There are no ceilings when were talking hip-hop.
The only rule is to be yourself.
You cant beat that.
I fell in love with it before I even realized it.
My parents were young when they had me: My moms was 19, my pops was 20.
Then Im getting on the train and Im seeing the graffiti everywhere.
The first time I picked up a pen and a pad and put words together was …
I want to say 91 or 92.
I saw the video for Chi-Alis Age Aint nothing But A #.
I know that whole song by heart.
She said, Go do it.
And thats what I did.
I went to a block party on Staten Island.
It was the summer.
The DJ was spinning records: Apache, Dance to the Drummers Beat, Smokin Cheeba Cheeba.
And kids started freestyling.
I had just come back from spending three years in North Carolina with my uncle.
Its become one of the driving forces in my life.
Then by the age of 9, I wrote my own lyrics.
And I just kept writing lyrics every day.
It was Run-D.M.C., Fat Boys, and Whodini.
I wanna say Whodini were the headliners.
I remember seeing Run-D.M.C.
They had a real dope kind of chemistry a tag team, yin and yang thing working.
Run was the more animated one, and D.M.C.
was kind of the straight man, but he still looked like an imposing figure.
He had those big glasses on.
He just looked like somebody you didnt wanna fuck with.
I always really admired that.
And then Whodini, they came out, and Ecstasy, he had the Black Zorro hat on.
Like, it became a clear line of demarcation.
This is for your parents, butthisis foryou.
That was when I fell in love with the culture.
My uncle bought me a Fat Boys T-shirt that night.
I wore it to school and couldnt nobody tell me shit.
[Laughs]I was that nigga.
I had a Fat Boys shirt,goddamn.
9th Wonder: When Planet Rock Blew My Mind
Summer, 1982.
I was 7 years old.
My mom and dad played gospel music, but my dads youngest brother played Marvin Gaye.
This is Sexual Healing Marvin Gaye, so in the South thats considered secular music.
If I wanted to hear the real stuff, Id go stay with my aunt and uncle.
And thats stretching it.
But the one they played that blew my face off was Planet Rock.
I cant even explain how monumental and how game-changing that was for me.
It wasnt my parents gospel.
It wasnt my parents spirituals, as we called them.
It wasnt even my older brothers music.
My older brother was 12 years my senior.
Yo, it was nuts!
I said, What the hell is this?!
Now Im a Zulu King, which Ive never thought I would be later on in life.
But to hear the Zulu Nation, that was it.
It came with the dance.
Im looking at dudes pop-locking.
I dont want to see you trying to break your neck doing a windmill.
Lee, Kennys little brother, onBeat Street?
If you could pop lock like him, that was it, bro.
Thats where I first heard Outkast, and I was immediately in love with whatever they were doing.
Thats how I began my little foray of understanding that theres hip-hop around me.
The song was Roses.
I said, Whatever this is, I like it.
My parents are not from here, so thats where we got put on.
I would see Outkast videos or whatever, and I think thats what drew me in.
All that came later.
I was writing poetry, like,I want to get these feelings out.
So I just thought that I was getting good at poetry.
They were like, Youre good.
You should probably keep going.
I had not even thought to check the tracklist.
That was the first piece of music I ever bought, and it changed my life.
DJ Drama: When I Rocked My Adidas
I first fell in love with hip-hop when Run-D.M.C.
put out My Adidas.
I remember being a young kid at the time.
Larger than life, tougher than leather.
It was because of them I went to my parents and asked for some Adidas.
They didnt buy me the ones I wanted with the three stripes; they bought me the other ones.
But nonetheless, it was because of My Adidas that I knew that hip-hop was a love of mine.
Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, Rakim, EPMD, N.W.A., Too Short, Ice-T, Ice Cube.
Those were my golden years.
That was the era where I remember just turning onYo!
MTV Rapsor The Box and getting my daily dose of hip-hop.
Ive been in love ever since.
My early childhood was spent in South Jamaica, Queens.
My father would listen to radio DJs like Chuck Chillout and Red Alert.
Id watchVideo Music Boxafter school at my best friends house with his older sister.
I put silver foil on my teeth to mimic gold fronts I saw in peoples mouths.
at my uncles wedding, but theres photo evidence of my breakdancing at the reception.
I couldnt get away from this culture if I tried.
My relationship with it was born out of my newly discovered relationship with death.
I was just gaining consciousness.
I would put my ear against the speaker to feel his voice reverberate through my body.
I know now that this was a lesson in being still and listening.
During this time, I was introduced to the voice of Tupac Shakur.
My parents loved him.
He passed away 140 days before I was born.
His voice sounded like a drum to me.
Tupac and my brother Michael were saying so much in such a limited amount of time.
It was fascinating to me.
Their voices inspired me to write.
I wrote my first rhyme at age 7.
It was titled I See Angels.
As I grew older, I dove deeper into the art form.
My father, older sister, and older cousins were my encyclopedias.
When I discovered J Dilla, I struck gold.
It was a spiritual experience.
I knew then that I wanted to make beats and rhyme on my beats.
I wanted to create.
I wanted to be at the source of what I was feeling so immensely.
Hip-hop had the supernatural ability of making me feel something that I had never felt before.
I was left thinking,This is for me.It provided me access to another world within my own.
It provides me with access to my heart and my mind.
It is so beautifully Black and so incredibly sacred.
They were the first radio station in L.A., probably Southern California, that was playing hip-hop.
No FM stations were touching it yet.
is what caught my ear.
That sparked me into becoming a huge hip-hop fan.
pulled me all the way in.
After they dropped, I just started listening to everything hip-hop.
They didnt sound like the Sugarhill Gang or Kurtis Blow sounded.
Those other guys were using more disco and funk breaks, but Run-D.M.C.
joints had live drums and bass and guitars because of Rick Rubins influence.
It was just different.
And I was a rock and metal fan.
Run-D.M.C., when they hit the ground running, they looked like guys from the block.
They didnt look like these other cats.
The other guys were just trying to portray themselves as stars.
That was cool, but it was not relatable.
I said, Say it again!
DJ Hollywood was my first introduction to hip-hop, and DJ Hollywood is the first true MC.
He was, and still is, the master of ceremony.
He is also the guy that created the art of crowd participation, call and response.
I would have to acknowledge him as the blueprint to my beginning.
And then it evolved from there.
I heard Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
I heard Kurtis Blow.
Then King Tim III, which was before Sugarhill Gang.
Then Jocko, which was a guy out of Philly who was kind of like a jazz-style rapper.
A lot of people dont give him love, but he was serious.
They were like superheroes, man.
Or to hear Grandmaster Flash take a record and cut it back and forth.
And it sounds good to your ears; it dont sound like noise.
Its like when youre reading a comic book; nobody is doing what Batman is doing.
DJ Hollywood was different from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was different than the Cold Crush Brothers.
The Cold Crush was different than Fantastic.
None of them are alike.
The way I interpreted this is that you gotta have your own superpower.
I cant be Hollywood.
I cant be Busy Bee or Cold Crush.
I might admire what they do and learn from them, but I cant be them.
So I had to be myself.
DJ Paul: When I Heard MC Shy D
I was at my moms house.
I was about 11 years old, possibly 10.
I had an old yellow-and-black radio.
He had a song called Gotta Be Tough.
Im like,I didnt know kids could rap!
I didnt even know none of this was legal!
How does he go to the club and do shows?!
I wanted to do it just because I thought he could.
I was probably in, like, fifth grade or whatever.
By the time I was in ninth grade, I had an EP out, making money.
Im gonna bring it back out on vinyl actually.
My first press of my cassette tapes, I made $2,000.
That was a lot of money in ninth grade.
Thats a lot of money now!
[Laughs].We recorded the EP in a closet in a bedroom in my mothers house.
I remember the whole song.
I was 15 when I did it.
I then realized I had a voice.
I realized I had something to talk about.
I dealt with communication issues my whole life.
Thats what I fell in love with.
It felt like they just spoke from a sense of struggle.
They spoke from a sense of emotion.
And it was extremely relatable.
It reconciled with what I was feeling.
Its really that simple.
I didnt start rapping until I heard Rakim.
Thats when I was like, Oh, this is what Im going to do.
Im going to do this for real.
Im officially a part of it, all the way now.
Jeezy: When Tupac Changed My Life
I started out very young.
But it wasnt until Tupac when I realized,This is my life.
Hes talking to me.
Thats how I was when I heard Pac.
He was different from everybody else; he actually stood for something.
He had a moral compass and he had values.
I had never seen that before.
And the values werent just money-driven.
He didnt let people box him in.
He was in arts and ballet before we even knew his story.
And thats when I was really in.
Because I dont believe in anyone but him.
I cant feel anyone else like that.
Plus, I was trying to get out of my situation.
Music was my therapy.
It was my podcast, it was my YouTube, it was my mentor.
I was getting the information to survive from the music.
It also helped me understand that I wasnt the only one out there going through this.
When I heard their music, I could relate to what they were saying.
They were speaking of their own experiences.
When you grow up in the inner city and experience poverty, the fabric is pretty much the same.
You see the difficulties on a daily basis.
Watching what people go through.
And even though they were not from New Orleans, the struggle was and is the same.
I wanted to use the platform to share my experiences in New Orleans.
It has sustainability we are the top genre for promoting and marketing products and brands.
It came on the radio when I was 13 years old.
After that, I just bought whatever rap record I could.
It was the new, cool, young thing, and I just immediately gravitated towards it.
Not only did I enjoy it right away, but I actually started doing it right away.
I first heard rap music in 1979, I started rapping in 1980.
I didnt waste any time I knew I could do this, too.
Thats how I felt about it.
I immediately was like,This is what I want to do.
We were extremely popular in the streets of the Bay Area.
We made money, we DJd parties, we sold cassette tapes it was my hustle.
Rap music has been my job since I was 15 years old.
I may have been 9 or 10.
I grew up with mixtapes at bodegas.
You had to look and find the music.
It was the Limewire era.
I grew up in a musical household too.
My mother listened to every genre but I remember hearing a lot of DMX and Jay-Z growing up.
I started listening to music when G-Unit and Dipset were the biggest groups.
Then I went to college and was introduced to the MF DOOMs and Wu-Tang.
I fell in love with the art of putting words together and telling a story.
KRS had a lyric on there when he said, Im not saying Im No.
1 / Oh, Im sorry, I lied.
1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
That was the moment I fell in love with hip-hop for sure.
I think I was about 11 years old.
I didnt listen to much hip-hop before that.
I was more so into rock and Nirvana and Guns N Roses.
So everything started to make sense.
The aggression of hip-hop started to make sense.
Its the most verbose art form.
Its likepunchline,punchline.
And I had never heard that in music before.
But it was that braggadocio that brought me into it.
It was that line.
It was raw the highest level of MCing, the highest performance of DJing.
It just blew my mind.
The Cold Crushs confidence, their unified presentation, was untouchable.
And the whole time, they were just going in with the rhymes.
DJ Charlie Chase never missed the beat.
Sort of like what happened when you saw Run-D.M.C.
and Jam Master Jay.
We had nothing prerecorded.
It was all live.
Run was already a professional rapper at 15 years old.
So we dropped Its Like That and Sucker M.C.s and it was off to the races.
All because of the Cold Crush.
And nobody talks about that.
Theyre basing this whole celebration of the 50th year of hip-hop on these record-making motherfuckers like me!
And thats a totally wrong thing to do.
Dont put me in that fucking category.
[Laughs]Thats the essence of hip-hop.
When hip-hop started getting on record, things changed.
What they was doing in the streets needed to be accepted on radio and in the music business.
Additional reporting by Abe Beame
