1983 - A Year in Rap
Produced with some assistance from Mr Wiggles of the Rock Steady Crew’s ‘Hip Hop Timeline’, here is a round up of some of the significant hip hop related events of 1983:- Revered jazz musician Herbie Hancock (pictured above) drafts in the DJ skills of Grandmixer DST to perform scratches on his hit single ‘Rockit’ taken from the album ‘Future Shock’.
- DJ Afirka Islam, son of hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa starts his own hip hop radio show on New York’s WHBI. The same year Afrika Islam wins the New Music Seminar DJ battle in Los Angeles.
- Hip Hop documentary Style Wars is aired on PBS in the USA. The film featured appearances from genuine figures from graffiti underground of the day including Mare 149, Skeme and Seen.
- Hip Hop spreads its influence further on the international stage with the ‘Wild Style’ tour taking the Cold Crush Four and Rock Steady Crew to Japan.
- Rock Steady Crew appear in the hit movie Flash Dance.
- Rock Steady Crew also appear in the video for Malcolm Mclaren’s Buffalo Gals single taken from the 1983 album ‘Duck Rock’.
- B-Boy crews also appeared in music videos for artists outside the hip hop fraterntity. The New York City Breakers appeared in the video for Gladys Knight and the Pips’ ‘Save the Overtime for Me’
- New York punk band the Beastie Boys release the first of their records to experiment with new recording technology and the hip hop sound. The A-side ‘Cookie Puss’ placed scratching and recorded phone calls over drum machine programming.
- Rammelzee & K Rob release the leftfield classic ‘Beat Bop’ produced by renowned New York artist Jean Michel Basquiat.