Although the creation of Hip Hop is often credited to that of DJ Kool Herc, the debate has long raged on regarding who, if anybody, can be certified as the true founder of the culture.
During a recently published interview with Chuck Creekmur of AllHipHop, Bronx and Rock Steady Crew b-boy Crazy Legs revealed his view that no one person can be credited for the creation of Hip Hop.
“For someone to say, ‘Yo Hip Hop was this back then and it was meant to be this,’ that’s impossible because there was no agenda back then,” Crazy Legs says. “It was like you write, you deejay, you rhyme, you emcee or you break. That’s how you were identified by the community — what was your element? Usually people did three elements. [Afrika Bambaataa] applied the Zulu Nation principles to Hip Hop and gave it a direction in 1982 because his whole thing was peace, unity, love and having fun. Then it became, ‘Okay what is Hip Hop meant to be from that point on?’
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“When you apply [DJ] Kool Herc and Bambaataa and The L Brothers and all that together and see what everyone was doing, I think it becomes a collective more than [just] one particular person but it’s just that Kool Herc does get praise from a lot of people,” Crazy Legs adds. “He plays a certain role and that role is very very important, I would never play his role down, but you have to look at everyone all around The Bronx and see what everyone was doing.”
Crazy Legs’ interview with AllHipHop can be viewed below:
