APPENDIX: THE TIMEPIECE HIP-HOP TIMELINE 1967 Clive Campbell aka DJ Kool Herc (hip-hop’s first DJ) immi- grates to the West Bronx in New York City from Jamaica. 1968 Rucker Park is a must stop for top college and pro- basketball stars eager to prove themselves. Julius Erving, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul Jabar establish the legacy maintained by the likes of Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Ron Artest, and Elton Brand. The Rucker Tournament, the Rucker Pro League, and the Entertainer’s Basketball Classic are legendary touchstones for hip-hop’s love affair with athletics. 1968–9 James Brown records and releases “Funky Drummer” (one of the most sampled drum tracks in hip-hop history) and “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud).” 1969 Greek-born Demetrius from 183 Street in the Bronx makes himself famous by “tagging” Taki 183 throughout the five boroughs of New York City. 1973 DJ Kool Herc DJs his first party. 1974 Afrika Bambaataa leaves the Black Spades (one of the largest and most violent gangs in New York) to form hip-hop’s first organization, the ZULU Nation. 1974 Busy Bee Starski, DJ Hollywood, and/or Afrika Bambaataa coin the term “hip-hop.” 1975 Grand Wizard Theodore discovers the scratch. 1976 The first pieces (i.e., graf-like murals) appear on New York City subway trains. 1977 Bronx B. Boys, Jimmy D., and Jojo establish the legendary Rock Steady Crew (joined by Crazy Legs and Lenny Len in 1979). 1979 Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” spends 12 weeks on the Billboard pop chart, ushering in the era of the emcee with all of its lyrical battles and authorial challenges. 154 APPENDIX 1980 The Times Square Graffiti Show indicates the mainstream’s brief love affair with hip-hop’s visual art. 1980 The High Times Crew is arrested for break dancing. The first photos of break dancing enter mainstream circulation. 1980 The first rap radio show debuts on WHBI, Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack. The Golden Age (A Stopwatch Timepiece) 1983 Run DMC’s “Sucka MC’s” signals the end of the Old School Era and the dawn of hip-hop’s first “pop” stars. 1984 “Roxanne, Roxanne” released by UTFO spawning hundreds of response “dis” records. KDAY becomes Los Angeles’s and United States’ first rap-formatted radio station. 1984 Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons form Def Jam in a dorm room. 1986 Run DMC’s “Walk this Way” enters heavy rotation on MTV. 1988 NWA’s first album, Straight Outta Compton , introduces Gangsta Rap to the mainstream (ICE-T, Schoolly D, and BDP have defined the genre earlier for hip-hop culture). 1988 Basquiat (the first hip-hop visual artist to be recognized by “high culture” art circles) dies from a heroin overdose at the age of 27. 1989 Public Enemy scores Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing (the single is titled “Fight the Power”) positioning political rap and the director at the center of urban culture. 1990 2 Live Crew is arrested for performing songs from As Nasty as They Wanna Be . First Amendment advocates testify on their behalf and they are released, but explicit lyrics labeling is born. 1990 September The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air debuts on NBC, marking the first sitcom starring a rapper. 1991 Soundscan technology becomes widespread and rap music usurps pop/rock as America’s most eagerly consumed music. 1991 Rapper/actor Ice Cube, actors Cuba Gooding Jr., Lawrence Fishburne, and Morris Chestnut star in the film Boyz N the Hood , directed by John Singleton. 1991 Lyricist Lounge in New York City starts its open mic sessions. APPENDIX 155 1991 Sway, King Tech, and DJ Joe Quixx broadcast the “Wake Up Show” in the Bay area on KMEL. 1992 FUBU Clothing is launched. 1992 Karl Kani begins production of his distinctively logoed, loose-fitting, street-chic sportswear. Within two years, aided by ads that feature art- ists like Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur, the company will earn between $30 million and $40 million. The NOW Age (a Platinum Timepiece) 1993 Hip-hop’s greatest producer releases his first masterpiece ( The Chronic featuring Snoop Dogg and Tha Doggpound). Dr. Dre also produced NWA’s first two albums as well as various R&B artists’, prior to this release. 1993 VIBE magazine is launched with Snoop Doggy Dogg on the cover. Snoop subsequently appears on the cover of Rolling Stone dated September 30 (with Dr. Dre), even though his highly antici- pated Doggy style debut hasn’t come out yet. 1994 Sean Puffy Combs establishes Bad Boy Records. The notorious B.I.G. releases Ready to Die (Bad Boy). 1994 February Wu Tang Clan releases their debut album Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers) (Loud/RCA). 1994 Snoop Dogg releases his debut album Doggy Style (Death Row/Interscope). 1995 The Roots album Do You Want More brings live instruments back into hip-hop popularity. 1996 September 13 Tupac Shakur dies after being shot at while driv- ing through Las Vegas with Death Row CEO Suge Knight. 1997 March Rapper Notorious B.I.G. dies of gunshot wounds while sitting in his car after attending a Vibe magazine industry party. 1998 Dre discovers Eminem and produces Em’s debut album, on Interscope Records, The Slim Shady LP (1999). 156 APPENDIX 2000 –present Popular hip-hop artists reduce lyrics to Dionysian exploits and experiences. Jay-Z and other artists sup- plant Biggie and Tupac as “the emcees” of hip-hop cul- ture. The well-recorded battle between Nas and Jay-Z, coupled with the popularity of Hollywood’s version of Eminem’s life story (8 Mile ), reinvigorate the domi- nance of emcees in hip-hop and popular culture. NOTES 1 Roots, Rhymes, and Rhizomes: An Introduction to Concepts of the Underground in Black Culture 1 . Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia , translated by Brian Masumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). Originally published as Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophreni II (Paris: Minuit, 1980). 2 . James Baldwin, “A Review of Roots,” in The Price of the Ticket (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), p. 553. 3 . James Baldwin, “Alas, Poor Richard,” in The Price of the Ticket , p. 273. 4 . Ibid., p. 278. 5 . Ibid., p. 556. 6 . Kevin Young, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2012, p. 36. 7 . William Andrews, ed., The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 67. 8 . Ibid., p. 69. 9 . Young, The Grey Album, p. 38. 10 . It must be noted here that Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Woman collec- tion enters here through the story of Po’ Sandy, a conjure-man/root worker. Chesnutt’s Conjure Woman is taken up directly in the socio- linguistic identity chapter of this book. 11 . Kimberly Bentson, “The Topos of (Un)naming,” in Black Literature and Literary Theory , ed. Henry Louis Gates (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 164. 12 . My critical discussion of nostalgia in African American culture ( chapter 7) is informed by Houston Baker’s notions of the Black Public Sphere in The Black Public Sphere Collective, eds., The Black Public Sphere (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), and Michael Eric Dyson’s discussion of nostalgia in Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). 13 . Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage International, 1995), pp. 264–7. 14 . Ibid., p. 266. 158 NOTES 15 . Please review the comprehensive Timepiece Time-Line in the appen- dix (with accompanying images) in order to grasp the chronological trajectory of the development of hip-hop culture. 16 . Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 131. 17 . I spend much more time with definitions of hip-hop culture and the concept of the underground in hip-hop later in this book and in vari- ous aspects of the appendices. For more information on hip-hop cul- ture’s predisposition to the postindustrial urban landscape, please see Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994). 18 . Cornel West, Prophetic Fragments (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988), p. 185–6. 19 . “Tip the Scale,” Undun, The Roots. 2 Verbal and Spatial Masks of the Underground 1 . Sadly, Gangstarr’s front man, GURU (Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal) nee Keith Edward Elam, passed away in April of 2010. 2 . For more detail on repetition in Black Culture, please see James Snead, “Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture,” in Black Literature and Theories , ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New York: Routledge Press, 1990). 3 . Schloss, Joseph. Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004, p. 138. 4 . Murray Forman, The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip Hop (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002), p. 17. 5 . Houston Baker, Black Studies, Rap and the Academy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 33. 6 . Henry Louis Gates, Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p 172. 7 . This point puts into bold relief one of the most interesting connec- tions between hip-hop and Bebop cultures: “In Bebop we see the rise of Black musicians creating publishing companies to protect their ‘compositions’ which are, in many instances, simply the improvised chord progressions of jazz standards where the harmonic emphasis produces a ‘new’ song, but which is always already the old song made over.” Herman Beavers (personal communication). 8 . Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994).