History of Hip-Hop part one

Rap music first began in 1971, when legendary DJ Kool Herc created the turntable. Before that, turntables were called "record players". He came up with the notion of charging people to hear him play vinyl records in stifling recreation rooms, which is one of the foundations of hip-hop. The other foundations are correcting your grandmother when she calls black people "the coloreds" and the movie Flashdance. But certainly without Kool Herc, hip-hop--and therefore Benzino--could have never existed.
At the same time that Kool Herc was annoying audiophiles by putting his fingers directly onto the grooves of records, other interesting cultural things were happening in New York City. Gangs would have showdowns called "war dances" where two gangs would congregate and shoot each other. When gang membership and ammunition dwindled, they began to engage in a formalized style of dance called "break dancing". The object was to see who could break more of their own bones by falling on the ground. Simultaneously, New York began to be covered in graffiti, which is an Italian word meaning "illegible writing." Young kids would write their names and the streets on which they lived on subway train cars which would carry their identity throughout the city. However, when it was discovered that revealing your name and address as part of your illegal offense is a fucking stupid thing to do, these kids began using nicknames and nom de plumes.
At this time, New York was in one of its worst fiscal crises, which was created by a curse placed on the city after the Mets won the World Series in 1969. This caused many public services and their employees to be cut or to become very lazy. Landlords in the Bronx began setting fire to their apartment buildings in order to create a frightening backdrop for Ronald Reagan's New York presidental campaign stop. The time was truly ripe for this new hip-hop culture to step up and fill in the gaps left by crappy television and music.
The first quantum leap in hip-hop took place when Grandmaster Flash wore his first sporty five-panel cap. This is why he was also known as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. He had a protege whose name was Grandwizard Theodore who was remarkable in that he had a very stupid DJ name. One day Theodore accidentally scratched a record and realized that if he ruined records but told people it was on purpose, they would pay him and he could buy more records. He would set up his turntables and speakers in local parks and play to the bunnies and chipmunks that populated them. When his critter fanbase was large enough, he began tackling bigger venues and ultimately performed on an ambitious tour which took him through all the national parks.
Meanwhile, the worlds of graffiti and breakdancing were popular, though not as popular since they both involve you probably getting your pants dirty. Graffiti style began to expand and artists were not content with just getting their nicknames on subway cars, so they began writing long stories which no one could read. One of these stories was recently compiled and released under the title The Nanny Diaries. Breakdancing was going strong, but it suffered some setbacks when everyone in the breakdancing scene was in a body cast at the same time. They shared a room at the Lenox Hill hospital where they would try to outperform each other's moves using only their tongues. These were innocent times in hip-hop, but all that was about to change.
In 1979, a new label released a new record called "Turkish Delight" by an unknown group called The Sugar Hill Gang. Many people in the existing hip-hop community didn't like the Sugar Hill Gang because they were not from a place called Sugar Hill, as they claimed. Despite their detractors, the Sugar Hill Gang went on to sell millions of records, most of which were destroyed by Grandwizard Theodore. This proved to be a futile gesture, however, because the landscape of hip-hop changed and everyone in the scene tried to release a record. That's how we got many of our rap classics like "Honeymooners Rap" and "99 Luft Baloons". Since then, rap has become a multi-billion dollar industry and all of its originators are sitting pretty on a nice chunk of that cash. In fact, Big Bank Hank from the Sugar Hill Gang went on to become famous rapper Jay-Z.