Generally speaking, people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

I try to avoid any conversation about Hip-Hop or “the culture” at all costs. It’s beneficial for all parties involved. We’re not playing on equal grounds. That being said, as we move further away from the beginning of recorded rap, the gulf grows wider and wider.

Which brings us to our first field of study — The Pre-Recorded Rap era or the Jams Movement.

Not only do few people know about the years 1969 to 1979, the seminal years that formed what actually was “the culture,” few seem to care.

A scholar of this era would break Pre Recorded Rap up into five concentrations: gangs, writing, dancing, DJing, rapping — all of which culminated into the Jams Movement.

Any study of The Pre Recorded Rap Era would have to focus on “gang” culture, first. Without understanding gangs — it’s impossible to understand the role that writing (graf) had.

Long before Cornbread and long before Taki, gangs were getting up — marking their territory.

To be a non affiliated writer, you had better been cool with someone or you had better been dealing with Islam (more on that another time).

The movement of tagging which brought together youth from various (often time warring) parts of the city is often ignored. But it’s this movement, where teens were finding their identity, seeking fame, taking on new risks, it was this movement that paved the way for the Jams Movement.

That’s why it comes as no surprise that most early DJs like Kool Herc were writers and writers were DJs like Dez in the above photo.

A study of gangs will also present the historian with a rarely documented fact — b-boying or breaking started with the gangs. This hasn’t been properly explored as it is mostly oral history but it makes sense. If DJs in the South Bronx were playing music to the public, and the youth came, a large part of the youth population was gang affiliated.

Hence, James Brown classic, “Soul Power,” being morphed into a Black Spades chant, “Spades Power.” And it also explains why it was of the utmost importance that the DJ played what kept the people dancing — the breaks. And it goes without saying that the MC would be the next natural progression, shouting out the gang members, throwing their names in rhymes.

(Despite the fact that it happened at a later date in Los Angeles, their movement, minus the writing component, matured along the same line.)

That world continued untouched until 1979.

I would love to see more history dedicated to that era but the truth is, most people skip over it. And, truth to tell, they leap frog over the next era as well.

The next field of study would be the Backing Band Rap Era.