- published: 11 Jul 2010
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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.
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.
Joseph Saddler (born January 1, 1958 in Bridgetown, Barbados), better known as King Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop musician and DJ—one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing.
He has been credited with the invention of the first crossfade by sourcing parts from a junkyard in the Bronx. It was initially an On/Off toggle switch from an old microphone that he transformed into a left/right switch which allowed him to switch from one turntable to another; switch from record one to record two.
Before this time DJs, like the first of them all, DJ Kool Herc, and then Afrika Bambaataa, would have to break up the party to pick up the needle and re-drop it on the record, or a new record; until Flash invented a new way to link one record to the other with the cross-fader. After this invention he went from being called Flash to Grandmaster Flash, having made a huge impact on the culture, he was repaid with this honorific name.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming the first hip hop/rap artists to be so honored.