|
?uestlove Wants to Raise 1 Million Dollars for Kool Herc
Friday, February 6, 2004
By: brooklyniteOne
?uestlove's Kool crusade Pop quiz time: Is Clive "Kool Herc" Campbell:
A) A boxer who became an actor in the '90s?
B) A painter who worked with Andy Warhol in the '80s?
C) A disc jockey who helped invent rap music in the '70s?
If you knew the answer was C, you're more informed than most rap fans - which doesn't sit well with Roots drummer Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson (above). "I'm on a one-man mission to start a foundation that will honor the forefathers of hip-hop, especially Kool Herc," Mr. Thompson says. "Nobody knows who he is. There's no reason why the man who invented hip-hop should be working for Fed-Ex right now." Kool Herc got rap rolling at block parties in the late '70s in the Bronx, where he'd set up his massive sound system, put on an old funk record and start "toasting" - as they called free-form rhyming back in Herc's native Jamaica. Most of today's rap acts credit Herc as being the father of hip-hop, but since he never had a hit, he never saw much money from his creation - a situation Mr. Thompson wants to correct. "I'd like to present Herc with a $ 1 million award, and I'm gonna spend the next year hitting up anyone in hip-hop who makes over $ 10 million net in a fiscal year, the Jay-Zs, the Eminems, the Russell Simmons," says Mr. Thompson. "I think they can afford to put up $ 100,000 each, and if we got five or 10 of them, we could have a sort of MacArthur Award for hip-hop. ... I know you can't compensate intellectual property, but it would be nice if Kool Herc could pay his electric bill."
 (3) Comments | Post a comment »
|
// LATEST NEWS
|
»