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From the cover of The Third Unheard: The Original Cut Master Joey Dee
Photos: Third Unheard Photo Gallery
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Coming Summer 2005:
Old school hip hop is the stuff of legend. The New York City gangs. A truce or two. Rocking block parties in The Bronx. Two turntables and a shoddy mixer. Young, musical visionaries taking then-contemporary breaks and beats from any funky source material and flipping those precious seconds into something wholly new. Don’t forget the microphone. DJs rapping, rappers probably wishing they could DJ (how backwards that must sound to today’s rap-reared youth!). It wasn’t long until this revolution was committed to wax, and the Sugar Hill Gang’s debut single spurred on releases by countless others. The famous, the not-so-famous and the downright obscure all found ways to testify on twelve inches of vinyl. New York-based labels like Sugar Hill, Enjoy and Peter Brown’s multitude of imprints recorded a chorus of thousands of voices. Contributing to this legend are the snapshots of the fledgling stages of a burgeoning scene. Photographers like Jamel Shabazz captured the (re)rebirth of cool on the Big Apple’s streets. Pitchmen like Fab 5 Freddy exported the music and culture to foreign territories (as nearby as a SoHo art gallery). Historians and artists like Phase 2 committed to memory the oral tradition of the scene and designed flyers that, twenty-some years later, serve as colorful reminders of the landmark events where the music’s first heroes honed their craft. Documentarians like the aforementioned Freddy, Henry Chalfant, Tony Silver and Charlie Ahearn created films and books that perpetuated myths, lionized founding figures and influenced music fans the world over. |
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