The Start Of A New Era

Clive Campbell also known as DJ Kool Herc is a Jamaican born American DJ who is said to be the originator of hip hop music in the early 1970s 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. 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 setup of disco DJs, Campbell used two copies of the same record to emphasize 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 rhymed spoken accompaniment now known as rapping. He called his dancers break-boys and break-girls, also known as Bboys and Bgirls. 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.