While there’s no specific details on Herc’s illness, Premier claims that the hip hop veteran’s condition is deteriorating and that he has no medical insurance. “Kool Herc is very sick,” Premier revealed.
Herc, 55, is widely credited as being the Father of Hip-Hop and the creator of the breakbeat technique.
Herc originally hailed from Jamaica but, during the late sixties, reggae wasn’t popular with New Yorkers, so DJ Kool Herc spun rhythm and blues records to please his party crowd. During the breaks, Herc began to speak to his audience as he had learned to do in Jamaica. He called out, the audience responded, and then he pumped the volume back up on the record.
Herc’s DJ style caught on and his parties grew in popularity. He began to buy multiple copies of the same albums and used them to extend the breaks during which he chatted, as it is called in dancehall, with his audience for longer and longer periods. Sound familiar? That’s why he’s known for helping to “lay the foundation for a cultural revolution”; a revolution we know as rap.
He called his dancers “break-boys” and “break-girls”, or simply b-boys and b-girls. The obvious connection is to the breakbeat, but Herc has noted that “breaking” was also street slang of the time meaning “getting excited”, “acting energetically” or “causing a disturbance”. Herc’s terms “b-boy”, “b-girl” and “breaking” became part of the language of hip hop culture even before that culture itself had a name.
In his introduction to Jeff Chang’s book ‘Can’t Stop Won’t Stop’, Herc wrote: “To me hip-hop says, ‘Come as you are’. We are a family. It ain’t about security. It ain’t about bling-bling. It ain‘t about how much your gun can shoot. It ain’t about $200 sneakers. It is not about me being better than you or you being better than me. It’s about you and me, connecting as one.”
Donations for Kool Herc can be sent to Kool Herc Production, PO Box 20472, Huntington Station, NY 11746.
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