Chapter 9

The Birth

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I was only a little boy that summer when Rapper’s Delight was popular. The Sugar Hill Gang hit me more seriously than a sunstroke. Not only me, but also all the friends that I used to hang out with.

All summer we would gather around this weird guy named Allie and his “box”. It was a boom box, which was far too big. The machine played this first rap hit over and over. For us, the world was divided into what happened before and after the release of this hit. I do not want to be seen as a person who is without feeling and respect. However, it felt like somebody was restarting the world just like when our Lord was born. 

The birth of rap felt like the birth of something more than that. Something we felt was ours, part of our identity. It was publicly accepted. It was like before and after our birth.

The Sugar Hill Gang had focused what the cool boys in the street were doing when they gathered in the park on Sundays. They were toying with words, kind of playing with the sound of them. One wanting to be kind of better than the other.

We loved this Sunday park activity of ours. Now it was hot stuff taken straight off the street and played by DJs in clubs. What mattered to us was that it was played on people’s stereos. Most of all, Allie’s box boomed it out loud for us way down the street. We could hear it long before we could set eyes on it.

Allie was a dude with problems saying certain sounds. When he told us to check out his box, it sounded more like “boxkxkkss”. It sounded like music in our ears, because we were insiders and knew exactly what he meant.

All summer long he played that song, over and over, adding his personal sound to the lyrics. He had an uneven, thin moustache and long thin hair.  He was the priest giving a sermon for his disciples of rap. No one was more eager than I to pick up his lessons. Looking back I have Allie to thank for my lifetime of hip-hop.