Coke La Rock and being hip-hop’s first rapper

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Illustrations by FA. Coke La Rock<br>The Bronx’s unsung hero has the distinction of being hip-hop’s first rapper<br>“It started in a spot we called the Twilight Zone<br>This is where Herc and I became men of our own<br>We took it down to a spot we called the Exec<br>That’s where we started demanding respect<br>Then we took it to the Park side, created a landslide<br>That’s where we seen we owned the Bronx”<br>-Coke La Rock, circa 1977

published online Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Originally published in Issue 51

By Michael A. Gonzales

It was August 11, 1973, and a lanky teenager from the Bronx, New York, named Coke was helping his homeboy Clive “Kool Herc” Campbell set up stereo equipment for a party scheduled for that night. Coke, a self-professed “stylish street dude” who wore thick glasses, a parted Afro, and a slick wardrobe, had befriended Herc a few years after the hulking Jamaican moved to the “Boogie Down” in 1967.<br>With the festivities set to begin at 9:00 PM inside the recreation room located in Herc’s building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, his mom prepared snacks while little sister Cindy decorated and dad picked up the beverages. The gathering was Cindy’s venture, a “back to school” bash where ladies were charged a quarter and “fellas” paid fifty cents.

“I wrote out the invites on index cards, so all Herc had to do was show up,” recalls Cindy Campbell almost four decades later. Earlier that week, Herc bought new records from a shop called Sounds and Things, and practiced spinning discs as the soulful music screamed from his pop’s Shure speakers.<br>Come nightfall, Coke, who told hip-hop historian Troy Smith that his nickname came from having to drink cocoa-flavored milk when he was a baby, showed up to the jam dressed in spotless Pumas, new double-knit pants purchased at the playa emporium A. J. Lester’s in Harlem, and sporting a fresh haircut from Dennis’ Barbershop on Featherbed Lane.<br>“Herc had a lot of friends, but Coke was always around,” Cindy says. “He was like our brother.” As Herc spun “beat after beat after beat,” something possessed Coke to pick up the microphone from the table and start talking shit. Although the mic was connected so Herc could control the crowd, no one had used it for any other purpose.<br>“Man, when I first started, I didn’t know anything about rapping,” Coke explains. “I just got on the mic playing around. I was a quiet guy, but when the music started playing, it just brought out another person. The talking just came out of me.<br>“Our friends Pretty Tony, Easy Al, and Nookie Nook were all there,” Coke continues. “At first, I just called out their names. Like Cheers, everybody likes to hear their name called out. ‘My mellow is in the house,’ I said. Though we were only fifteen or sixteen, I pretended dudes had double-parked cars; that was to impress the girls.”<br>Grandmaster Caz was just one party patron changed by the event. “That first party was epic. Afterwards, everybody attempted to recreate the energy of that night, because that sparked everything.”<br>Beginning that summer night—and lasting four years until a bloody confrontation with some rowdy party people—Herc and La Rock were the guiding force behind a new music scene, not yet called rap or hip-hop. Yet, while the focus has often been on Herc’s innovations, the contributions of rapper Coke La Rock’s vocal improvisations are often ignored.<br>“Coke is an unsung hero,” says DJ Red Alert. “He was a party rocker who could keep the party going. He didn’t rap like guys do today. Coke had his own vibe, a different sound. Herc and Coke were like Batman and Robin. Everyone knows that Batman was the main man, but Robin helped his ass out too.”

I read these things, and it hurts when you say Herc and don’t mention Coke La Rock. Coke La Rock<br>Performing throughout the Bronx, Herc and Coke introduced the world to the musical combination of the DJ and rapper at numerous outdoor jams. “The Bronx wasn’t nothing back then,” explains DJ Mean Gene, formerly of the L Brothers. “There were no houses; kids were snatching pocketbooks and doing all kinds of stuff that wasn’t good. One of the reasons DJs started playing in the park was to give kids something to do.”<br>AJ Scratch, who later became the DJ for Kurtis Blow, recalls, “If Coke shouted your name out on the mic, it made you an instant neighborhood celebrity in the parks.”<br>Coke remembers those early shows well. “We gave parties everywhere. We did one at Dodge High School, and they shut the party down after a half hour because there were just too many people. The same thing happened at Taft High School. Everybody wanted to hear the new sound; that’s how we made hip-hop, and it felt like we owned New...