Thomas "Herc" Hauk is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire played by actor Domenick Lombardozzi. The series introduces Herc as a detective in the Baltimore Police Department's Major Case Unit and the partner and loyal friend of Ellis Carver. Following promotion to sergeant, he is dismissed from the force after an incident involving the loss of a department surveillance camera. He subsequently works as a private investigator for attorney Maurice Levy.

Herc and Ellis Carver typically worked as a pair in Narcotics, and both are intimidated by Kima Greggs' ability and annoyed at her superior attitude towards them. All three join the Barksdale detail headed by their shift Lieutenant Cedric Daniels. Herc and Carver get into trouble early on in the investigation when, along with Detective Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski, they drunkenly charge into a Barksdale-controlled housing project and harass a group of youths. While there, Prez pistol whips one of the youths, blinding him in one eye and nearly inciting a riot. Herc is slightly injured during the incident when residents begin throwing bottles and firing at the officers, but returns early from his sick leave to take part in raids on Barksdale's operation.

Clive Campbell (born April 16, 1955), also known as Kool Herc, DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Herc, is a Jamaican-born DJ who is credited with originating hip hop music, in The Bronx, New York City. His playing of hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown was an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco in the 1970s. In response to the reactions of his dancers, Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the "break"—and switch from one break to another to yet another.

Using the same two turntable set-up of disco DJs, Campbell's style led to the use of two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using hard funk, rock, and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment now known as rapping. He called his dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply b-boys and b-girls. 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.

John W. Bowman, Jr., better known by his stage name DJ Kool is an American rapper who, in the late 1990s, produced several popular rap singles. Born in 1959 in Washington, D.C., his influence from his years of working the go-go and rap circuits became apparent in his music. During the early- to mid-1980s, Kool worked as a warm-up DJ for Rare Essence, until he was picked up by CLR Records.

In 1996, he recorded his most successful track, "Let Me Clear My Throat," which was released on American Recordings. The track peaked at #8 in the UK Singles Chart in March 1997. The song prominently featured a sample of "The 900 Number" by DJ Mark the 45 King, (that song featured a sample from Marva Whitney's "Unwind Yourself", repeated over a breakbeat for six minutes). The song also began by sampling "Hollywood Swinging" by Kool and the Gang. The song is a recognizable dance floor-filler, and the track remains popular to this day^[update]. DJ Kool was featured on Mýa's 2006 single "Ayo!" from her 2008 album Liberation. He was also featured on two tracks on Will Smith's 2005 album Lost and Found.

Gus Triandos (born July 30, 1930, in San Francisco, California) is a Greek-American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball mostly as a catcher but also played as a first baseman for the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles and the Detroit Tigers of the American League and the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros of the National League. He batted and threw right-handed.

Triandos was signed by the New York Yankees as an amateur free agent in 1948. He joined the Yankees' major league roster briefly in 1953, but was sent back to the minor leagues in 1954. Triandos was traded to the Baltimore Orioles in 1955 where he played mostly as a first baseman for his first two years with the team, before becoming the Orioles' regular catcher in 1957. As the Orioles' catcher, he used an outsized catcher's mitt designed by manager Paul Richards to handle the unpredictable knuckleball of Hoyt Wilhelm. Triandos was behind the plate when Wilhelm threw a no hitter against the New York Yankees on September 20, 1958, and also scored the only run of the game when he hit a home run in the eighth inning.