The DJ and MC are certainly the dynamic duo of hip-hop music. One provides music, the other provides lyrics, and together they can rock a party and deliver a show that is the epitome of exhilaration.
On a surface level, the MC and DJ of hip-hop might look as if they need each other, both being very different in their conception. One holds a microphone and uses their vocals, while the other uses records, turntables, a mixer, and a host of other equipment.
However, no matter how different they may seem, oftentimes the MC and DJ are working towards essentially the same individual goal, using the means at their disposal to creatively communicate with the audience and express themselves, often in some way utilizing the art of sampling.
Scratching a record of my life
At its heart, I believe that hip-hop’s connection to DJing is essentially a quest for power, beginning originally with the power over sound that DJs demonstrate when you hear them over the radio.
To give one example, Douglas “Jocko” Henderson is one of the black “personality jocks” of the mid 20th century often pointed to as a major influence on hip-hop, who as the “personality jock” title suggests was known for his extremely charismatic on-air persona.
This persona included both Jocko’s famous rhyming ability as well as his entire sci-fi theme exemplified in his “Rocket Ship” show, both of which were inspired in the early ‘50s by the popular black disc jockey Maurice “Hot Rod” Hulbert of Jocko’s hometown of Baltimore, as explained by William Barlow in the “Spin Doctors of the Postwar Era” section of his extensive Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (1999).
While Jocko had stars like Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, and the Supremes appear at his R&B revues held at the Apollo Theater, which he began hosting in the mid- ‘50s, Barlow posits that Jocko himself was also a star of the stage for his audience.
The Apollo built an actual rocket ship prop that was rigged to descend onto the stage for Jocko to exit from and make his grand entrance, with the rocket being accompanied in its descent by smoke, lights, and a series of rocket ship noises.
Jocko himself also wore an actual space suit from the U.S. Air Force for these shows, which Barlow says he obtained through a publicity stunt orchestrated by the Pentagon’s space program.
Jocko’s “Rocket Ship” show and his use of an actual rocket and space suit at the Apollo are iconic and clearly very influential on Parliament Funkadelic and their concept of the Mothership, which like Jocko’s rocket would actually land on stage. George Clinton even references one of Jocko’s famous rhyming routines at the beginning of “Mr. Wiggles,” the album opener for Parliament’s Motor Booty Affair (1978).
However, beyond the larger-than-life space age image associated with Jocko Henderson, I believe at a more foundational level, a part of what made him and other black DJs so attractive to their audience and influential on hip-hop was the power they demonstrated over sound.
As a listener, hearing a disc jockey like Jocko Henderson on a station like WADO in New York City was not only entrancing because of his rhyming ability, but also because he had rhetorical powers that were enhanced based on his technology, or his “record machine” as he would call it.
Jocko could choose a record to play, speak over it, sing along to it, read messages from fans, and format his system of putting advertisements within his show.
From the audience’s perspective, Jocko as a communicator was not only a prominent speaker, but he could seemingly bend sound to his will through the radio. This gives him extraordinary abilities within the call and response dynamic of speaker and audience that is such a core component of African American rhetoric and language, or as The Perceptionists termed it for the title of their 2005 album, Black Dialogue.
There was an image of power that I believe became attached to the DJ through the radio, and hip-hop wanted to use that within their own manipulation of sound, both cutting into or sampling it, and talking over it.
To be clear, however, hip-hop is not the first instance of the power of the radio DJ persona being harnessed within how people made music.
Some of the earliest examples of what we understand as sampling within the context of hip-hop occurred during the same era in which Jocko Henderson rose to fame in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In particular, this era saw the appearance of "break-in" records, which were comedic novelty records created through cutting and splicing together magnetic tape to mix and repurpose audio from various songs.
Many of the pioneering "break-in" records were produced by the songwriting duo of Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman, dating back to their 1956 release on Luniverse Records, “The Flying Saucer.” The Buchanan & Goodman duo and their “Flying Saucer” release are given a very informative history in a post on Michael Jack Kirby’s Way Back Attack blog.
In short, the master reel that became “The Flying Saucer” was created through compiling tape splices of lyrics and music from various ‘50s rock and roll hits and fitting them within a comedic sci-fi drama Buchanan and Goodman crafted.
Bits of audio from songs by Little Richard, Fats Domino, and many more were repurposed to make it sound as though the artists were characters in the skit, while I believe Buchanan and Goodman themselves voiced the radio DJs, news reporters, scientists, and the alien.
“The Flying Saucer” was parodying the space age sci-fi of the era, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), directed by Robert Wise.
As Michael Jack Kirby references, the news report style of “The Flying Saucer” was also reminiscent of earlier radio shows, particularly The War of the Worlds episode of CBS’ Mercury Theatre on the Air from 1938, an episode that adapted the 1898 H. G. Wells novel and was both narrated and directed by Orson Welles, who was the leading creative voice behind the show.
To go full circle to hip-hop, “The Flying Saucer” was sampled in 1985 for Double Dee and Steinski’s “History of Hip-Hop Mix,” or “Lesson 3,” the third in a series of sample collages, titled “lessons,” that were released through Tommy Boy Records. This began in 1983 with “Lesson 1,” or “The Payoff Mix” of G.L.O.B.E. and Whiz Kid’s 1983 classic “Play That Beat Mr. D.J.,” which won a contest put on by Tommy Boy asking the participants to create a remix for the song.
Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds radio episode was also sampled for “Lesson 2” or the “James Brown Mix,” which sampled the voice of one of the announcers, possibly Dan Seymour.
The producer and YouTuber El Train explored the history of hip-hop mixes and sample collages in more detail in his video on Double Dee and Steinski, where he shows how they influenced the likes of artists like DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, formerly of Jurassic 5.
In short, my reason for currently referencing Buchanan & Goodman and “The Flying Saucer” is to show an instance in which the power of the radio DJ was transferred to record. Not only was the record done in the style of a radio broadcast, but it was created through mashing together audio from different records, which I believe was inspired in part by the power a radio DJ has in choosing what record gets played and how.
Hip-hop sampling utilizes this same logic, of being able to assert your own will over records and rearrange their sounds to fit your own purpose.
However, having control over disparate songs does not only have to be achieved through tampering directly with records. It can also be done through the use of a different piece of technology, namely your own voice.
To give another example preceding hip-hop, I point to the documentary Ella Fitzgerald: Just One Of Those Things (2019) directed by Leslie Woodhead, in which various figures talk about Fitzgerald’s famously improvised performance of “How High The Moon” at Deutschlandhalle in Berlin in 1960, where she was backed by The Paul Smith Quartet.
Directly following what became a grammy winning performance of “Mack The Knife” in which she forgot the lyrics and provided an improvised version complete with an impression of Louis Armstrong, Fitzgerald forgot the lyrics to “How High The Moon” and instead improvised a five-minute scat rendition.
Within this performance, Fitzgerald somehow quotes the music and/or lyrics from over 40 other songs, encompassing a range that included jazz standards, symphonies, nursery rhymes, show tunes, and both folk and novelty songs.
As explained by music critic Will Friedwald, amongst the songs Fitzgerald pulled from were “Love in Bloom,” “Deep Purple,” “The Peanut Vendor,” “I Cover the Waterfront,” Ornithology,” “Gotta Be This Or That,” “Hawaiian War Chant,” her classic “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” from her time with Chick Webb, and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” which she changes to “sweat gets in my eye,” as she was perspiring from giving such a grandiose performance.
While she is not a hip-hop artist, the way Ella Fitzgerald used her voice in 1960 to reference this multitude of songs is in my opinion not too dissimilar to the way a hip-hop DJ or producer might mix together various parts of different songs.
The sonic template Ella Fitzgerald creates with her voice is in my opinion not far from the collage Grandmaster Flash laid out in his groundbreaking “Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” in 1981.
Through the mastery of his craft as a DJ, Flash was able to cut together music from Spoonie Gee and The Sequence, Blondie, Chic, The Incredible Bongo Band, Queen, and The Furious Five, among others.
Flash famously used actor and radio announcer Jackson Beck’s introduction to the Official Adventures of Flash Gordon record from 1966, which he cut before Beck said “Gordon” to essentially make him say “The official adventures of Flash” as if it was his own personal intro, this also being the source for the song’s title I presume.
As a quick aside, around four years later this same sample of Jackson Beck’s voice was used in the beginning of Schoolly-D’s “P.S.K. - What Does It Mean?,” though this time it was cut even earlier, I believe by DJ Code Money, to only say “The official adventures of…,”.
So, my reason for comparing Ella Fitzgerald and Grandmaster Flash, and DJ Code Money for that matter, is to say that through different means, they all demonstrate their power over music. They each have a method at their disposal to pull from a host of songs and mix them how they wish.
In a way that I believe descends from Ella Fitzgerald's performance of "How High The Moon" in Berlin and the improvisational style of jazz more generally, various rappers also use their abilities as vocalists and lyricists to mix songs.
Grand Puba's "I Like It (I Wanna Be Where You Are)" from 1995 includes lyrics, both rapped and sung, which weave together references to a plethora of R&B songs from the likes of Michael Jackson, as clear from the title, along with others like "Tears" by The Force M.D.'s and "You Are Everything" by The Stylistics.
Mark Sparks produced "I Like It," which includes a direct sample of the chorus from the DeBarge song of the same name. While Mark Sparks directly took audio from DeBarge, in an alternate universe Grand Puba could have mimicked their song with his own voice, as he was known to often do.
So, if DJs and MCs are both using their own methods to take control of music and use it to their own liking, the next question would be to what end are they doing so?
The broadest answer would of course be they are trying to rock the crowd and get a positive reaction from the audience, though I believe a more personal answer can be revealed when examining how hip-hop artists attempt to connect with an audience.
To be straight forward, hip-hop is oftentimes very blatant in portraying itself as youth culture, or as something that is focused on kids, teens, and young adults. This can be traced all the way back to the earliest days of the art form I believe.
In the montage of graffiti tags shown around seven minutes into Wild Style (1982), directed by Charlie Ahearn, one can see various breathtaking pieces on train cars, in notebooks, or up on a wall.
However, through everything, one of the recurring elements in much of the artwork is the continued use of comic strip and cartoon characters. In the montage, you can see characters such as Dick Tracy, Popeye, Donald Duck, and Richie Rich. Above all else, there is the main character of Raymond, played by graffiti artist Lee Quiñones, whose tagging persona in the film is based on the pulp magazine, film, and television hero Zorro.
In 1978, Lee Quiñones famously painted a mural of Marvel Comics character Howard the Duck in the courtyard of Corlears Junior High School on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
In my opinion, the graffiti art in Wild Style was very clear in showing that it came from a youthful place and perspective, and hip-hop music's manipulation of sound was and largely still is no different.
In the “Herculords at the Hevalo" chapter of Steven Hager's Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music, and Graffiti (1984), Hager mentions a famous DJ battle between Afrika Bambaataa and Disco King Mario that took place around maybe 1977.
Eventually known as the "Master of Records" for his ability to use obscure or unexpected music, the young Bambaataa started his set with the theme song from The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), followed by the theme from The Munsters (1964-1966). These were both played over a drum break, and at least in the case of the Andy Griffith theme, had been recorded off of Bambaataa’s tv. After the theme songs he transitioned into James Brown’s “I Got The Feelin’.”
Within this same era, then Bronx-based engineer Kenny Wilson also utilized television in the composition of his mixtape, which became "Live" Convention '77-'79, the previously unreleased precursor to the "Live" Convention albums released in the early '80s through Johnny Soul's Disc-O-Wax label, which I mentioned briefly in a previous article about live performance in hip-hop.
Due to Johnny Soul's record store on 125th Street being robbed, and Kenny Wilson moving to Virginia, the master reels and artwork for "Live" Convention '77-'79, which was going to be released in two parts, were lost and couldn't be released on schedule in 1981. They were eventually rediscovered in 2004 and officially released in 2007.
As Kenny Wilson explains in an interview attached to the 2007 release,“Live” Convention ‘77-79’ began to be developed around 1978 based on his desire to edit together segments from different late '70s hip-hop tapes held within the extensive collection of his younger brother Reggie, who had collected and sold many, as was a common thing to do in that era.
Kenny was basically trying to make a greatest hits of the tapes of that era, one in which he would use his editing skills to not only put together audio from different tapes in Reggie's collection, but also improve their poor sound quality, as many of these tapes were dubs that had been copied over multiple times.
To solve this sound quality issue, Kenny recorded the breakbeats the MCs rapped over straight onto a reel-to-reel and then added the vocals from Reggie’s tapes. Besides this, he also also utilized transitions to sequence “Live” Convention. This involved both extending the breakbeats, but also adding in audio from other media to play over these extensions.
This included audio from Hustlers Convention (1973) by Jalal Mansur Nuriddin of The Last Poets, a highly influential album on hip-hop done in the style of the African American toasts often recited by pimps and hustlers. Besides this, there were also multiple samples from TV shows, such as The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-1978) and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972-1985), though the audio from Fat Albert was eventually taken out.
I mention these examples of putting sounds from television into music, or characters from comic books into graffiti, to show that referencing outside entertainment or children's media has been an element of hip-hop since it's earliest days, and is indicative of the fact that it is a culture based around young people communicating with one another.
Outside of records you might know from block parties or your parent's record collection, things that you see on television or in comic books are in my opinion bound to show up in your art if you are a child or young person, and therefore, are often what gets referenced by hip-hop artists, whether through their lyrics, their skills on the turntables, or by extension their production.
To give one of several examples, LL Cool J's "My Rhyme Ain't Done" from 1987 sees the rapper give a multitude of fantastical verses in which he travels through various different worlds and communities from within American history and pop culture, moving through each before exclaiming that his rhyme is not yet finished.
Among other things, this song sees LL recount his own version of historical events, such as rocking Ford's Theatre shortly before John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, getting absorbed into his tv and meeting The Honeymooners (1955-1956) , and waking up in the world of cartoons to hang out with characters like Spider-Man, Charlie Brown, and Snoopy to start a comic strip band.
Like Grand Puba on "I Like It (I Wanna Be Where You Are)," I believe this is an example of lyrical mixing, or of LL using his words to mix together various pieces of media, doing what a DJ can do with records on the turntables, or through a mixtape. Likely only being 18 at the time "My Rhyme Ain't Done" was recorded, it makes sense there would be a verse dedicated to cartoons.
To give some production based examples of this same phenomenon, both De La Soul and Compton’s Most Wanted reference Schoolhouse Rock! (1973-1985) in the opening tracks of their albums, specifically from the program's series of multiplication related songs entitled Multiplication Rock (1973).
“The Magic Number” from De La Soul’s debut 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), produced by Prince Paul along with the group members, directly samples and interpolates lyrics from “Three Is A Magic Number” by Bob Dorough. As a quick aside, they also use "Lesson 3" by Double Dee and Steinski among many other samples.
Compton’s Most Wanted use the beginning of “Figure Eight” by Blossom Dearie, in reference to MC Eiht, as the intro to their third album, Music To Driveby (1992). MC Eiht and DJ Slip are credited as the producers for this intro.
To be clear, the reason I titled this section of the article "Scratching a record of my life" was essentially to say that whether you are LL Cool J rapping about a world of cartoons, or Compton's Most Wanted directly taking music from Schoolhouse Rock!, all of these artists are trying to use their control of sound to communicate who they are and where they come from.
Hip-hop artists often utilize sounds from the world of entertainment as a source of communication because it was such a mainstay in their childhood and that of their audience, making it very accessible and fun to communicate through.
In hip-hop, you almost have to think of yourself as a living record, and figure out what sounds or images from your life need to be pulled out and expressed to others, and in what way.