Hip-hop and you don’t stop.
As hip-hop turns 48 next month, the United States Senate has made history by passing a resolution on Thursday (July 29), recognizing August 11 as national Hip Hop Celebration Day in the U.S. Not only that, the Senate Resolution 331 also designates the month of August as “Hip Hop Recognition Month” and establishes November as “Hip Hop History Month.”
According to a tweet issued by the Senate Periodicals’ Twitter account on Thursday, the vote was passed with unanimous consent. It marks the first time hip-hop has been officially recognized by the Senate.
August 11, 1973 marks the month, day, and year that DJ Kool Herc (real name Clive Campbell) and his sister Cindy Campbell hosted a back-to-school party in the basement at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Morris Heights area in the Bronx, New York. It was this party that many historians believe help birth hip-hop music and culture.
Herc is also credited for inventing “the break,” in which he utilized two turntables to extend the song’s instrumental to give partygoers more time to dance. The Jamaican-American native’s innovation would allow other DJs to take the art of DJing to new creative heights. Fellow hip-hop pioneer DJ Grandmaster Flash would later introduce the technique of looping two records together and cutting and scratching to the DJ culture.
“[The power of the DJ] is to motivate the crowd, man. It’s to have the insight to motivate the crowd,” Herc told Red Bull Music Academy in 2018. “To have the crowd at your fingertips. To control the crowd. That’s the best fuckin’ power, man.”
Next month, New York City will hold a weeklong of outdoor events called “It’s Time for Hip Hop in NYC” in The Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens. According to nyc.gov, the free concerts will run between Aug. 14 to Aug. 22. Hundreds of rappers are slated to perform at various events, including KRS-One, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Big Daddy Kane, Mobb Deep, Papoose, Maino, Too $hort, EPMD, and more. For more information head over to homecoming2021.com.
