herself in the basement of 1520 sedgwick avenue. as kool herc was playing the music on his two-disc turntable, he began to slow the music down, slow the record. people stood up and took notice and then began asking him to do it again. he did it again. they asked him to do it again, and again. he did it again. he attracted more and more people to his performances and people began to imitate him. and that is the beginning of hip-hop music. it started in the bronx. anthony: moodies records. inside rummaging for records just like he used to do is the man, the legend, one of the very select few who started it all. who created the sound that hundreds of millions of people now claim as their own. google who created hip-hop? go ahead. you get dj kool herc. anthony: it s a national landmark now, isn t it?
door opens, and who walks in? dj kool herc. three men who created the musical style that s become the soundtrack to, well, the whole wide world. do they all nod at each other? lament how all of them got screwed over, cut out of the big money? or just laugh at the absurdity of it all? hip-hop it came from nowhere else. it could have come from nowhere else but the bronx. i took a walk through this beautiful world felt the cool rain on my shoulder found something good in this beautiful world i felt the rain getting colder sha, la, la, la, la, la, sha, la, la, la, la, la,
sedgwick? kool herc: no, it s not. we re working on it. anthony: working on it. kool herc: we re working on it. anthony: matter of time. kool herc: it s still the birthplace of hip-hop, undisputed, because i didn t start it with four guys in a club. i started it inside a residential building. at the time it wasn t really received in the building. we had a watchful eye over the recreation room, so she was watching for any disturbance. it never happened. and that s how it survived because good music sells itself. good drugs sells itself. anthony: yeah. kool herc: good anything sells itself. and this was something good. anthony: was there a moment when you realized, whoa, this is big. this is gonna be this is gonna spread. kool herc: i never anthony: way beyond my neighborhood. kool herc: i never i never look at it. i saw the spreading. but no, when i see barney rubble and fred flintstone dressed up like jam master jay, you know, the, the d, the dmc fella
so i want to talk today, really, i m going to tell you in a short period of time, everything i know about writing. today i m dropping by in my role as substitute teacher. i m from manhattan. and i don t know anything about the bronx, really. i m i m rid ridiculously, shamefully ignorant. do you think people know about the bronx? what it s like to grow up in the bronx? male student: everybody perceives the bronx as the emergence of hip-hop and all that, the culture. but, apart from that, the bronx is actually lively at all times. at night, at in the morning, you hear people screaming from outside your window. female student: i ve grown up with them since i was what, like second female student: like seven. female student: yeah. you know? and it just happened that way. so i feel like the sense of community is like the biggest thing. teacher: i ve been teaching here for eight years. and i think that what people forget is, a lot of times, we ve talked about this in class,
it was going. it s gonna take a big lift. so let s say i don t have money and all that now. i m rich in other ways. when time magazine said, what music would you credit to the united states? you got, you got louis armstrong for jazz, you got elvis presley for rock and roll, which, that could be between him and chuck berry, and you got kool herc for hip hop. anthony: feel good? kool herc: very good. lloyd: historically, from the last third of the 19th century into about 1920, the second language spoken in the bronx was german. from about 1930 to about 1960, the second language spoken in the bronx was yiddish. from about 1965 onward, the second language spoken in the bronx is spanish, and that s the way it is today. anthony: it s got a reputation as a tough place. crime, street gangs, a lot of which goes back to the way it was, and some of which, well, like i said, it s got a reputation as being tough.