How I got into hip hop part 1

I wish i could return to the days of college. Nothing but 40's and Phillie titans stuffed full of choice weed, all day every day. Somehow I found time to study, eat at the dining center, and play a wicked game of Time Pilot 84 on occasion. I also managed to perfect my DJ skills on my bootleg pair of Lineartech 1700's (the fake Technic 1200's of the early 90's along with Gemini's direct drive turntables). I was fascinated with music since childhood; my father was a disco/funk/reggae DJ who threw parties in our basement every weekend for as long as I can remember. I used to watch him spin but was NEVER allowed to touch his record or the turntables. When he would take a piss break or slink off plastered to bed, I would sneak over and gaze at the covers like a meteorologist trying to study weather patterns. The images were burned into my mind.....James Brown momentarily caught exuding sweaty funk perfection on Soul Power. Issac Hayes coming alive as Black Moses with shades. The black rock stylings of the Isley Brothers (boas and leopard skin gear, what??) The Ohio Players albums with that golden brown woman covered in honey, sparking a sense of arousal in my young mind for the very first time. The Funkadelic albums with their Picasso meets graffiti covers. I used to to stare at them for hours on end and be transported to a world beyond my 3 bedroom row house in what was then "the ghetto". Those artists covers were so creative they made you want to buy the album to hear what was inside even if you never heard it before, that's powerful. And my father had speakers that seemed 8 feet tall to me as a kid but were really about 5 and a half feet. Huge bass woofers, crisp tweeters. The highs crackled and the bass could literally stop your heart for a second; the faint of heart would actually leave the basement when he cranked it up to about 8 on the 1 to 10 scale. So before I was even exposed to what the wider world had to offer musically, I was being treated to the sounds of Bobby Womack, The Stylistics, Blue Magic, MFSB, Marvin Gaye, and so on. He had thousands of LPs and 45's of all the soul funk and disco greats, way too many to list. The education I received in that basement would inspire my taste in music as I grew into adulthood. To this day I love my classics, what I like to call Block party music becuase in the Philly we would run from grill to grill sampling neighbors foods while a DJ played funk, disco, and early hip hop on a system whose sound carried for blocks. Then when I was old enough to listen to the radio independently, WDAS was my station. At that time the number one black station in Philadelphia, they provided a steady diet of R&B staples such as Rick James, Prince, Kashif, Luther, Teddy, and Al Green plus disco funk like Rock Skate Roll Bounce, Instant Funk's Got My Mind Made Up, Diana Ross' Upside Down etc. I loved all of it and I often remind my children (who grew up on only rap) that the reason hip hop producers of my generation sampled so much was because we were paying homage to the brilliant music we were raised on. In any case I wasn't a fan of early rap. I accompanied my dad to Gola Electronics in downtown Philly on a record run when I was six, I'll never forget it because I saw a 45 that said Rappers Delight and had him buy it for me even though I knew nothing about rap except Kurtis Blow. My dad played The Breaks and Christmas Rappin, and I remember the album cover with Kurtis rocking an actual gold chain, not a rope but the shit you see attached to old school lamps. The shit that was used to lock up bikes. I dug that but it was more like disco to my young I barely separated it from, say, Thelma Houston or Vaughn Mason. Anyway, I got home and played Rappers Delight on my little record player, I danced my little body around and enjoyed it. I also loved the Philly Anthem, the Micstro by RC La Rock, and The Double Dutch Bus was goofy enough to catch my attention (plus he talked about Philly shit like trans passes and used the z language that Snoop would later appropriate e.g. "It's O-Kiz-ay") But outside those joints it would be two years before I enjoyed another rap song. I missed the Love Rap, which i would enjoy when I got older. But all the other Sugarhill Records, T Ski Valley, Captain Rock, Superrhymes and that ilk i just didn't dig for some reason. It wasnt until the double punch of Planet Rock and The Message in 1982 that I became a hip hop fan. Then in 1983, everything really changed. RUN DMC'S Its Like That dropped. I went from being a hip hop fan to a hip hopper. I was 9 years old and I was suddenly DMC. My best friend was suddenly RUN. Kids and teens all over the city were catching the fever, RUN DMC brought the Bronx flavor down to a level everyone could identify with and it was contagious. They were like you coolest big brother or friend and you wanted a to be a part of that. From there, all the pieces suddenly fell into place. That year me and my buddies started breaking out the cardboard and risking life and limb back spinning, windmilling, freezing, and popping. The local elementary school summer 83-84 left the gym open so the neighborhood kids could spin and centipede on the smooth wood floor instead of on top of asphalt. I started tagging every wall, house, sign and bus surface I could find along with my friend CRAZE DOE. As RUN and them bled into Whodini and the Fat Boys, my friends and I went from observers to savvy aficionados in the space of a year or so. By the time Slick Rick, Just Ice and Schooly D arrived on the scene in 1985 (along with Marley Marl and Shan's The Bridge, the first sampled beat which my cousin in Bushwick BK played to death) we judged, reviewed, and argued songs like professional music critics in the making. I was listening and taping mix shows off the radio by this time, Power 99 came out in 84 and toppled WDAS' dominance by playing rap, the highlight of which was their mix show Lady B's Street Beat. WDAS responded with The Rap Digest mix show hosted by Mimi Brown. I used to tape them both with my mid sized gray boom box I got three 100 test scores to earn. My allowance of $10 a week began going toward trips to Sound Of Upper Darby, King James Records on 52nd and Girard, and Funk O Mart in Center City to buy records and tapes of my favorite rappers. I was becoming the DJ my dad was and didn't even have two turntables yet. But the best was yet to come. In 1986, another explosion took placed which made hip-hop even more appealing and increased its creative output to unforeseen levels.