Coke La Rock | |
---|---|
Coke La Rock performing with DJ Kool Herc at a February 28, 2009 event in the Bronx. | |
Background information | |
Also known as | Coco La Rock, A-1 Coke, Nasty Coke |
Born | April 24, 1955 |
Genres | Hip hop |
Occupation(s) | Rapper |
Instrument(s) | Rapping, vocals |
Years active | 1973–present |
Labels | Sugar Hill |
Coke La Rock (aka Coco La Rock; born April 24, 1955) is an old-school rapper from New York City who is sometimes credited as being the first MC in the history of hip-hop. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
In November 2010, Coke La Rock was inducted into the High Times Counterculture Hall of Fame [6] at the annual ceremonies at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam.
La Rock was born in The Bronx, New York City on April 24, 1955, with family roots going back to North Carolina.
Coke La Rock was a friend and musical partner of DJ Kool Herc, who himself is generally considered to have laid down the foundation for hip-hop music starting in 1973. La Rock was an original member of Herc's MC crew, the Herculoids.
According to Herc, Coke La Rock's MC name had various iterations, beginning as "A-1 Coke," and then moving on to "Nasty Coke" before it was finalized as "Coke La Rock". [7] [8]
Coke La Rock joined Kool Herc for his first party, in 1973, to celebrate Herc's sister Cindy's birthday. It wasn't until about the fifth or sixth party that he took the name Coke La Rock. The name came to him in a dream. Before that time, he had no name and did his rapping out of sight from the audience, so no one knew who was doing the rapping.[ citation needed ]
His original raps were usually shout-outs to friends, but gradually the poetry emerged. [9] He originated such phrases as "You rock and you don't stop," and "Hotel, motel, you don't tell, we won't tell"[ citation needed ] (which was immortalized on the first Sugarhill Gang single "Rapper's Delight", although La Rock received no credit).
Coke La Rock's raps were always purely improvisational, unlike those of later 70s-era rap groups, —such as the Furious Five and Cold Crush Brothers, who wrote down and rehearsed their rhymes and created elaborate routines. According to La Rock, while rapping "at first I would just call out [my friends'] names. Then I pretended dudes had double-parked cars; that was to impress the girls. Truthfully, I wasn’t there to rap, I was just playing around." [10]
Nonetheless, La Rock's raps would, as with much else at Kool Herc's parties in the mid-1970s, serve as a basic model for other hip-hop artists that would come onto the Bronx music scene by the end of the decade. La Rock himself has argued, in a reference to two pioneering New York City narcotics dealers, that "me and Herc were to hip-hop what Nicky Barnes and Frank Lucas were to drugs." [10]
As other nascent hip-hop groups patterned themselves after Herc and La Rock and improved on their formula, the popularity of Herc and the Herculoids began to wane as early as 1977. [11]
After Kool Herc was stabbed at a party, La Rock went looking to kill the perpetrator, who was part of the Executive Playhouse crew. He found the man's friends in a Bronx pool hall, but they had already moved their friend down south to avoid a confrontation. After this incident, La Rock decided to step away from hip hop and let the younger generation move in.[ citation needed ] Since he'd had a long run lasting several years of being on top of the Bronx hip hop scene, La Rock didn't want to continue if murder was going to continue to be part of the game. Also his son, Dante La Rock, had just been born, and he needed to spend more time at home.
Gary Harris, an employee of the first hip-hop record label, Sugar Hill, noted that "people respected Herc and Coke, but by the early eighties those guys were like specters—they just weren’t visible on the scene anymore." [10] In contrast to other early Bronx hip-hop artists like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, Coke La Rock—like his partner Kool Herc—never achieved any recording success (indeed he did not record at all). However, late 2008 saw the release of what was deemed the first ever recording featuring La Rock, a song titled "Hello – Merry Christmas Baby!" which was released by Sedgwick & Cedar as part of a special holiday compilation to pay homage to the birthplace of hip-hop. [12]
La Rock's place in hip-hop history was arguably immortalized in the legendary 1986 Boogie Down Productions song "South Bronx" (the opening salvo of the so-called "Bridge Wars") wherein KRS-One raps this:
Now way back in the days when hip-hop began
With Coke La Rock, Kool Herc, and then Bam
Coke La Rock had no association with, nor relation to, KRS-One's DJ at the time, Scott La Rock. Nor did Coke La Rock and another influential old-school MC, T La Rock, know one another in the early days of hip-hop, and thus the name similarity is coincidental. [8]
In 2021, after years of being absent from the hip hop scene, Coke La Rock returned to the microphone with a verse on the DJ Kay Slay posse track "Rolling 110 Deep". [13]
L Brothers vs The Herculoids – Bronx River Centre (1978)
DJ Kool Herc and Whiz kid with the Herculoids: Live at T-Connection (1981)
Boogie Down Productions (BDP) was an American hip hop group originally composed of KRS-One, D-Nice, and DJ Scott La Rock. DJ Scott La Rock was murdered on August 27, 1987, five months after the release of BDP's debut album, Criminal Minded. The name of the group, Boogie Down, derives from a nickname for the South Bronx section of New York City. The group pioneered the fusion of dancehall reggae and hip hop music and their debut LP Criminal Minded contained frank descriptions of life in the South Bronx during the late 1980s, thus setting the stage for what would eventually become gangsta rap.
Rapping is an artistic form of vocal delivery and emotive expression that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and [commonly] street vernacular". It is usually performed over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The components of rap include "content", "flow", and "delivery". Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that it is usually performed off-time to musical accompaniment. It also differs from singing, which varies in pitch and does not always include words. Because they do not rely on pitch inflection, some rap artists may play with timbre or other vocal qualities. Rap is a primary ingredient of hip hop music, and so commonly associated with that genre that it is sometimes called "rap music".
The new school of hip hop was a movement in hip hop music, beginning in 1983–84 with the early records of Run–D.M.C., Whodini, and LL Cool J. Predominantly from Queens and Brooklyn, it was characterized by drum machine-led minimalism, often tinged with elements of rock; rapped taunts, boasts, and socio-political commentary; and aggressive, self-assertive delivery. In song and image, its artists projected a tough, cool, street b-boy attitude. These elements contrasted sharply with funk and disco, novelty hits, live bands, synthesizers, and party rhymes of artists prevalent in the early 1980s. Compared to their older hip hop counterparts, new school artists crafted more cohesive LPs and shorter songs more amenable to airplay. By 1986, their releases began to establish hip hop in the mainstream.
Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist. He was the bridge between the burgeoning uptown rap scene and the downtown No Wave art scene. He was immortalized in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.
Nathaniel Thomas Wilson, better known by his stage name Kool G Rap, is an American rapper. He began his career in the mid-1980s as one half of the group Kool G Rap & DJ Polo and as a member of the Juice Crew. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential and skilled MCs of all time, and a pioneer of mafioso rap/street/hardcore content and multisyllabic rhyming. On his album The Giancana Story, he stated that the "G" in his name stands for "Giancana", but on other occasions he has stated that it stands for "Genius".
Henry Lee Jackson, known by his stage name Big Bank Hank, was an American old school rapper and manager. Also known as Imp the Dimp, he was a member of the trio The Sugarhill Gang, the first hip hop act to have a hit, with the cross-over single "Rapper's Delight" in the pop charts in 1979. He contributed to many documentaries based on the rap music industry. Lyrics to his verse from "Rapper's Delight" were allegedly plagiarized from rhymes written by Grandmaster Caz.
The Bridge Wars was a hip hop music rivalry during the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s, that arose from a dispute over the true birthplace of hip hop music and retaliation over the rejecting of a record for airplay. The Bridge Wars originally involved the South Bronx's Boogie Down Productions, led by KRS-One, and Marley Marl's Juice Crew, hailing from Queensbridge. KRS-One and Marley Marl have since officially retired the feud, with the release of their collaborative 2007 album Hip-Hop Lives.
Hip hop or hip-hop is a culture and art movement that was created by African Americans pioneered from Black American street culture, also known as hip hop African American culture, that had been around for years prior to its more mainstream discovery while later reaching other groups such as Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans, starting in the Bronx, New York City. Hip Hop is one of cultural movements that has been shaped and dominated by African American males though female hip hop artists have contributed to the art form and culture as well. Hip hop culture is characterized by the key elements of rapping, DJing and turntablism, and breakdancing. Other elements include historical knowledge of the movement, graffiti, beatboxing, street entrepreneurship, hip hop language, and hip hop fashion.
The Juice Crew was an American hip hop collective made up largely of Queensbridge, New York–based artists in the mid-to-late 1980s. Founded by radio DJ Mr. Magic, and housed by Tyrone Williams' record label Cold Chillin' Records, the Juice Crew helped introduce New School artists MC Shan, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Roxanne Shante, Masta Ace, Tragedy, Craig G and Kool G Rap. The crew produced many answer records and engaged with numerous "beefs" – primarily with rival radio jock Kool DJ Red Alert and the South Bronx's Boogie Down Productions, as well as the "posse cut", "The Symphony".
Golden age hip hop is mainstream hip hop music created from the mid-1980s to the early-mid 1990s, particularly by artists and musicians originating from the New York metropolitan area. A precursor to the new school hip hop movement, it is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence on hip hop after the genre's emergence and establishment in the old-school era, and is associated with the development and eventual mainstream success of hip hop. There were various types of subject matter, while the music was experimental and the sampling from old records was eclectic.
Domingo Padilla, better known as Domingo, is an American hip hop producer from Brooklyn, New York of Latino descent. He has produced for some well-known hip hop artists such as Das EFX, Immortal Technique, and Rakim, among others. He is closely associated with Kool G Rap.
Luis Cedeño, more commonly known as DJ Disco Wiz is an American DJ.
Clive Campbell, better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican American DJ who is a pioneer of hip hop music in the Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s. Nicknamed the Father of Hip-Hop, Campbell began playing hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown.
Hip hop or hip-hop, also known as rap, and formerly known as disco rap, is a genre of popular music that originated in the early 1970s by African Americans in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. It existed for several years prior to mainstream discovery. Hip-hop music originated as an anti-drug and anti-violence genre consisting of stylized rhythmic music that often accompanies rapping, a rhythmic delivery of poetic speech. According to the professor Asante of African American studies at Temple University, "hip hop is something that blacks can unequivocally claim as their own". The music developed as part of the broader hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti art. While often used to refer solely to rapping and rap music, "hip hop" more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of the culture, including DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.
Lawrence "Kris" Parker, better known by his stage names KRS-One and Teacha, is an American rapper from the South Bronx. He rose to prominence as part of the hip hop group Boogie Down Productions, which he formed with DJ Scott La Rock in the mid-1980s. KRS-One is known for his songs "Sound of da Police", "Love's Gonna Get'cha ", and "My Philosophy". Boogie Down Productions received numerous awards and critical acclaim in their early years. Following the release of the group's debut album, Criminal Minded, fellow artist Scott La Rock was shot and killed, but KRS-One continued the group, effectively as a solo project. He began releasing records under his own name in 1993. He is politically active, having started the Stop the Violence Movement after La Rock's death. He is also a vegan activist, expressed in songs such as "Beef". He is widely considered an influence on many hip-hop artists.
1520 Sedgwick Avenue is a 102-unit apartment building in the Morris Heights neighborhood in the Bronx, New York City. Recognized as a long-time "haven for working class families," it has been historically accepted as the birthplace of hip hop.
Curtis Brown, better known by the stage name Grandmaster Caz or Casanova Fly, is an American rapper, songwriter, and DJ. He was a member of the hip hop group The Cold Crush Brothers from 1979 to the mid-1980s. He is best known as the (uncredited) main writer of Big Bank Hank's raps on the seminal 1979 hip hop single by The Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight".
Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation is a 2005 book by Jeff Chang chronicling the early hip hop scene.
Sharon Green, also known as MC Sha-Rock, is considered the "first female rapper" or emcee. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, she grew up in the South Bronx, New York City during the earliest years of hip hop culture and rap music. Within the hip-hop community she has been referred to as the "Mother of the Mic" signifying her role as a prominent female figure among the early rappers. As a member of the first hip-hop crew to appear on national television, known as the Funky 4 + 1, her style of delivering raps on early mixtapes influenced notable rappers like MC Lyte and DMC of Run-DMC. McDaniels cited Green as a significant influence on the style of rapping associated with the pioneering group.
Hip-Hop Evolution is a Canadian music documentary series that originally aired on HBO Canada in 2016. Hosted by Juno Award-winning artist Shad, the series profiles the history of hip-hop music through interviews with many of the genre's leading cultural figures. The series is produced by Darby Wheeler, Rodrigo Bascuñán, Russell Peters, Scot McFadyen, Sam Dunn and Nelson George. It won the 2016 Peabody Award, and the 2017 International Emmy Award for Best Arts Programming.