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How Hip-hop Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, and welcome to this week's UH Saturday
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Speaker 1: edition of Stuff You Should Know, the Selects edition. Uh.
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Speaker 1: This is my pick this week, and I'm gonna go
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Speaker 1: with How Hip Hop Works from July eleven, a little
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Speaker 1: more than four years ago. And I just remember this
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Speaker 1: being a great episode. Um. I learned a lot about it,
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Speaker 1: and I was someone who was into the music side
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Speaker 1: of hip hop in college. But hip hop is much
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Speaker 1: more than music. Uh, It's about an entire culture which
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Speaker 1: encombs as many different things. So give it a listen,
0:32
Speaker 1: and as always, if you've heard it once, you might
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Speaker 1: find something new upon a second listen, and I hope
0:36
Speaker 1: you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from
0:48
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:57
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan, I'm on
1:00
Speaker 1: Mike one, he's on my three. Jerry's on the Wheels
1:02
Speaker 1: and Steel And this is the Stuff You Should Know
1:05
Speaker 1: the podcast. That's right. Terminator X is to our right. Yes,
1:10
Speaker 1: that's you, Jerry. That's my favorite. DJ. Is it man?
1:14
Speaker 1: Unbelievable stuff? D J Hurricane was pretty great. Yeah, it
1:18
Speaker 1: was pretty great. True. Yeah, I mean if you go
1:21
Speaker 1: back and listen to Best Boys stuff, the stuff that
1:23
Speaker 1: he was doing. Yeah, it's like I grew up with it,
1:25
Speaker 1: so I took it for granted. But with many things
1:27
Speaker 1: as a grown up. Now I'm looking back and like
1:29
Speaker 1: that was pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm still gonna go with
1:32
Speaker 1: Terminator X, just like by fractions of a point though. Yeah,
1:37
Speaker 1: I put them at the top. Yeah, not like cool
1:40
Speaker 1: hirc Hey, cool hirk Man. He's what they call the
1:44
Speaker 1: O G Chuck spoiler alert. Yeah we should say that. Um,
1:47
Speaker 1: we're fouring in a territory where we have little no
1:50
Speaker 1: business because we're pretty square, but we can still talk
1:55
Speaker 1: about hip hop. That's not true. I was. I was
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Speaker 1: into the stuff at one point. I was into it too.
1:58
Speaker 1: I'm still square. Yeah, but I think we have business,
2:01
Speaker 1: just as much business as we would any other music. Alright, fine,
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Speaker 1: you know we're cool then, man, we're cool to cool?
2:08
Speaker 1: Is that cool? Okay, you don't have any business, so
2:11
Speaker 1: h we're talking about hip hop today. It has a
2:15
Speaker 1: very long tradition that dates all the way back to Africa, which,
2:19
Speaker 1: as we'll see, um, but then the modern incarnation is
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Speaker 1: a little more recent. Still, it's kind of old it's
2:25
Speaker 1: got some pretty surprising and interesting routes. But we should say, um,
2:29
Speaker 1: and this is something that I was always hung up
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Speaker 1: on for a long time. And Catherine Near, who wrote
2:34
Speaker 1: this article um goes to too, points us out the
2:39
Speaker 1: difference between hip hop and rap. They're not the same thing.
2:42
Speaker 1: It's like the square and the rectangle thing. Yeah, exactly.
2:49
Speaker 1: So moving on, No, hip hop is more like a
2:52
Speaker 1: it's a cultural movement. It's more than just rap. Rap
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Speaker 1: is a type of music that falls under the umbrella
2:58
Speaker 1: of hip hop. So you can say that rap is
3:00
Speaker 1: part of hip hop, right, but hip hop is not
3:03
Speaker 1: necessarily wrapped like the square in the rectangle. They go
3:06
Speaker 1: hand in hand though, you know. Uh yeah, And you know,
3:08
Speaker 1: I was trying to find out who coined, uh, the
3:10
Speaker 1: term hip hop, and it's one of those things where
3:14
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of people that that kind of get
3:16
Speaker 1: credit for it. Yeah, everyone from I mean, some people
3:19
Speaker 1: say Keith Cowboy Wiggins from Grandmaster Flash, he was definitely
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Speaker 1: the one, and then other people say, no, it was
3:25
Speaker 1: DJ Hollywood or love Bug Star Ski and other people
3:29
Speaker 1: say what about sugar Hill Gang or HERK. So I
3:32
Speaker 1: don't know if it's been pinpointed, but it was used
3:34
Speaker 1: in print in for the first time in the Village Voice,
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Speaker 1: although it was surely used in the late seventies and uh,
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Speaker 1: you know on the street. Yeah, because herk was I mean,
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Speaker 1: he coined a lot of terms like That's one of
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Speaker 1: the interesting things about this is like we can trace
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Speaker 1: it back pretty confidently and find like actual origins of
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Speaker 1: this what's become this global international cultural phenomenon. We have
3:57
Speaker 1: seen the birth of a new music for in our lifetimes,
4:00
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. We have and that's the only one. No,
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Speaker 1: that's not true. What about like electronica? Uh yeah, I
4:09
Speaker 1: guess so. But you could also say that that well
4:12
Speaker 1: sort of the same as like synthesizer from like the seventies, right, yeah,
4:18
Speaker 1: but that was like used in rock and roll. I
4:19
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe that counts. I think it counts, you do, sure,
4:23
Speaker 1: electronica hip hop, um E d M. That's electronica, right,
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Speaker 1: I think so, Yeah, electronic dance music. So yeah, but
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Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, I would say that qualifies. Even still,
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Speaker 1: it doesn't diminish the birth of hip hop, No, of
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Speaker 1: course not. I mean there's two that's better than one, right,
4:42
Speaker 1: that's right. So Chuck. When you're talking hip hop and
4:45
Speaker 1: you talk to a cultural historian about hip hop and
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Speaker 1: say what is hip hop? They're pretty much going to
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Speaker 1: give you four aspects that combined make up the cultural
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Speaker 1: movement of hip hop? Right. Yeah. And Catherine who wrote this, uh,
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Speaker 1: is a his historical cultural historists historian UM, and I
5:05
Speaker 1: can't remember her her graduate degree, but it has something
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Speaker 1: to do with this very closely. I just can't remember
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Speaker 1: exactly what it was in. So that's why when you
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Speaker 1: read this, you're like, man, Catherine really got into this
5:16
Speaker 1: article for sure. You know it's pretty broad and there's
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Speaker 1: a lot of info here. Yeah, so we should get
5:21
Speaker 1: to it the four things. And it started out it's
5:25
Speaker 1: just like graffiti, break dancing, MCing, dejaying, and rapping. These
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Speaker 1: days you might see it portrayed more as visual arts.
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Speaker 1: Graffiti included in that, but film and other graphic arts,
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Speaker 1: written and spoken word UM. So not just rapping and
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Speaker 1: m seeing, but performance poetry. Uh. Physical movement UM, which
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Speaker 1: is not just breakdancing, but a lot of dance styles,
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Speaker 1: including my favorite crumping. Crumping is pretty cool. It's unbelievable.
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Speaker 1: Somebody going nuts. It's awesome, and so like herkey jerky
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Speaker 1: yet controlled and I just I could never in my
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Speaker 1: wildest dreams do it, So I think that's why it
6:03
Speaker 1: appeals to me. But that's yeah, that's the fact that
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Speaker 1: it's not controller, doesn't appear controls what differentiates it from
6:08
Speaker 1: the Herky Jerky Dancer from Mr. Show, remember, Yeah. And
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Speaker 1: then the final one is a style, which is of
6:15
Speaker 1: course fashion and you know, just the hip hop style
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Speaker 1: in general, everything from clothing to to bling and you know,
6:23
Speaker 1: the lifestyle all right. Like we said, the history of
6:27
Speaker 1: of hip hop, especially the music um can be traced
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Speaker 1: all the way back to Africa, and we would trace
6:35
Speaker 1: the modern birth of it to the South Bronx, the
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Speaker 1: South South Bronx. But leading up to that, you would
6:42
Speaker 1: join the slave ships coming into the West Indies as
6:47
Speaker 1: they were called back then, and these slaves who were
6:50
Speaker 1: captured and transported to the New World, making air quotes um,
6:55
Speaker 1: brought with them this tradition called greati is um a long,
7:00
Speaker 1: which was a form of like familial storytelling. It was
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Speaker 1: an oral tradition yea very frequently set to drums, yeah,
7:07
Speaker 1: and there was also very frequently dancing, yeah, and a
7:11
Speaker 1: lot of that dancing as you showed me. Um very
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Speaker 1: much resembles dancing that you see today hip hop style dance,
7:18
Speaker 1: not very much like absolutely yeah, you know. Right, so
7:21
Speaker 1: you've got um this presence of this what's now an
7:26
Speaker 1: African American um I guess style or um cultural identity, right,
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Speaker 1: that's evolved out of Africa, and music and movement and
7:37
Speaker 1: drum rhythms are a big part of it, right Yeah,
7:40
Speaker 1: and uh of course Colin response uh in church was
7:43
Speaker 1: a big part of it, um as well as you know,
7:47
Speaker 1: gospel and calypso and salsa and of course jazz and
7:51
Speaker 1: the blues. It's all rolled up as influences that eventually
7:56
Speaker 1: made its way to Jamaica to solders who are American
8:00
Speaker 1: soldier station there in World War two. Yeah. So we
8:03
Speaker 1: made our way from Africa to the West Indies, um,
8:07
Speaker 1: up to America and then there was that boom that
8:10
Speaker 1: birth of like jazz and all that that made it
8:13
Speaker 1: then down back to Jamaica part of what we're the
8:16
Speaker 1: West Indies. Yeah. It's it's an weird little circle. Um.
8:19
Speaker 1: So when it gets taken back to the world to
8:22
Speaker 1: Jamaican World War two, there was something going on there
8:24
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean that was pretty cool and really the
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Speaker 1: birth of what hip hop and rap would become. They
8:30
Speaker 1: had DJs there who had these big portable sound systems,
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Speaker 1: and they would go play block parties and house parties
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Speaker 1: and street parties, and UM started a tradition called toasting,
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Speaker 1: which was sort of like early rap. It was um
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Speaker 1: kind of like the freestyle stuff in eight Mile, like
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Speaker 1: a lot of times they were trying to one up
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Speaker 1: other DJs or cut down other DJs, and UM it
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Speaker 1: was included over the music. And uh, have you have
8:59
Speaker 1: you ever listened to a reggae show today, like reggae
9:02
Speaker 1: fire on all media, so like you know how like
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Speaker 1: they'll just turn on the music for a second, he'll
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Speaker 1: say something, they'll turn the music back up, and they'll
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Speaker 1: turn it down again, and I think that's toasting. Yeah.
9:10
Speaker 1: I listened to some of it too, like the early
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Speaker 1: eighties toasting, Am I right? Um? Yeah? Okay uh. And
9:17
Speaker 1: that that led to two different types of new reggae music,
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Speaker 1: which is talk over and dub talkovers kind of what
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Speaker 1: we were just talking about, the toasting over music, and
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Speaker 1: then dub just you know, changed the song musically with
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Speaker 1: like echo and massive amounts of bass or trouble, reverb
9:33
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, it was like what would you'd
9:35
Speaker 1: call now, like a remix of a song, but it
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Speaker 1: usually followed certain lines, like a lot of echo, always
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Speaker 1: a lot more bass than the original version, and they
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Speaker 1: would throw that on the B sides of the record,
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Speaker 1: so you'd have the regular version and the dub version,
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Speaker 1: right right, So all this is going on in Jamaica
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Speaker 1: and in the sixties, UM there was a kid named
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Speaker 1: Clive Campbell who lived in Jamaica and grew up around this,
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Speaker 1: hosting UM street parties, portable sound systems, talk over yeah
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Speaker 1: dub you know, basically changing and altering music to make
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Speaker 1: it sound cooler with a heavier baseline. UM and this kid,
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Speaker 1: Clive Campbell, he moved to the Bronx in nineteen sixty
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Speaker 1: seven and he eventually became somebody known as Cool Hirk,
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Speaker 1: who was the DJ who most people say was the
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Speaker 1: originator of hip hop. That's right, that's cool with the
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Speaker 1: k d J cool Hirk. He's a legend. He oh yeah, yes, okay,
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Speaker 1: So cool Hirk also, by the way, started the tradition
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Speaker 1: of naming yourself as someone else. Oh yeah, you know,
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Speaker 1: he wasn't Clive he's d J cool Hirk and that became,
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Speaker 1: of course a tradition in rapping hip hop. It did,
10:44
Speaker 1: as we'll see. Uh so he had a big gig
10:47
Speaker 1: early on his sister. I've heard various things from birthday
10:50
Speaker 1: party to back to school party, and um he was
10:53
Speaker 1: well known as a tagger, like graffiti tagger, which we'll
10:57
Speaker 1: get to in a minute. How that plays the role.
11:00
Speaker 1: So people just showed up on mass to see who
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Speaker 1: this famous tagger was. Like with DJ cool Hirk is
11:06
Speaker 1: going to be there, let's go check it out. So
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Speaker 1: it was like a lot of folks there. Yeah, they
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Speaker 1: came for the tagging and stayed for the DJ though,
11:13
Speaker 1: because they what they found at that time when we're
11:16
Speaker 1: talking the seventies right then, maybe the mid to late seventies. Um,
11:22
Speaker 1: if you went to a party and the DJ was there,
11:24
Speaker 1: the DJ just played a record and then ended and
11:27
Speaker 1: you know, maybe if they were good, it was like
11:30
Speaker 1: the the next one came on right before the first
11:33
Speaker 1: one ended, and it was again if you'll listen to
11:36
Speaker 1: the How Disco Works episode, this is where you know
11:39
Speaker 1: this all came out of, Like was this block party
11:43
Speaker 1: right here? Basically this is the birth of just not
11:46
Speaker 1: just disco or not just hip hop at disco too.
11:50
Speaker 1: And um, so they went. They saw that he was
11:52
Speaker 1: doing some pretty cool stuff. He had to turn tables
11:55
Speaker 1: and a microphone and um he uh. He saw that
12:00
Speaker 1: when people were dancing, they would just kind of stand around.
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Speaker 1: Then when like a really good part of the song
12:04
Speaker 1: and come up with lots of great beats or whatever,
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Speaker 1: they dance. And he figured out along the way, and
12:10
Speaker 1: I think he figured out before this block party happened, um,
12:14
Speaker 1: that if you just take two versions of the same record,
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Speaker 1: you can keep that one part going over and over
12:20
Speaker 1: again and just switch back and forth between the records
12:23
Speaker 1: playing that same part and people will dance all the time.
12:26
Speaker 1: So when all those people turn out for a sister's
12:28
Speaker 1: party to see that graffiti tagger HERK, they came up
12:31
Speaker 1: against this djaying and that was that. Yeah, it was.
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Speaker 1: It's called a break beat, and it's typically like a
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Speaker 1: drum break and that's what the DJ is doing if
12:40
Speaker 1: you don't know anything about it. When they have the
12:41
Speaker 1: little headphones up to their ears, is there queuing up
12:44
Speaker 1: the spot on the second record so they can cross
12:47
Speaker 1: fade or toggle in the early ages right over to
12:50
Speaker 1: that next one without missing a beat, right, and like
12:53
Speaker 1: you said, the dance party would just keep going on
12:55
Speaker 1: and on. This is insane. Yeah, they were like, is
12:57
Speaker 1: this record ever gonna end? No? But cool Hirk also
13:01
Speaker 1: did something else too that would give rise to this, right.
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Speaker 1: He was big into toasting, that's right, So he started
13:07
Speaker 1: doing the talk over. Uh. Evidently the djaying became a
13:11
Speaker 1: little too complicated, because I mean this was It's much
13:14
Speaker 1: easier nowadays with your your eye devices to fake all
13:18
Speaker 1: this stuff. But back then they were like pioneering electronics
13:21
Speaker 1: and like figuring this stuff out. And in fact, Grandmaster
13:24
Speaker 1: Flash was like the real guy. Well he was invent
13:27
Speaker 1: at the cross Fader and like he was really into
13:29
Speaker 1: electronics and figuring that junk out. Right. So, because it
13:33
Speaker 1: got more and more technical, it wasn't just playing a
13:35
Speaker 1: song and then like kind of turning down the volume
13:37
Speaker 1: for a second talking over and turning the volume back up. Um,
13:41
Speaker 1: if you wanted to toast. It was tough to kind
13:44
Speaker 1: of balance those two things. So cool Hirk and listed
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Speaker 1: the aid of Cokelar Rock and Clark Kent to come
13:51
Speaker 1: toast for him. The Herculoids, Yeah, that's who they became,
13:55
Speaker 1: and they inadvertently established drapping. Yeah, Cookle Rock is generally
14:00
Speaker 1: regarded as the first rapper that's so cool. Man. DJing
14:04
Speaker 1: got too technically involved, so they had to get somebody
14:09
Speaker 1: else to toast and that became rapping. That is so
14:14
Speaker 1: cool that like you can trace it back to that instance. Yeah,
14:17
Speaker 1: and they they started freestyle dancing too, and they're known
14:20
Speaker 1: as the first b boys, which is another term. I
14:23
Speaker 1: think that Herk coined the boys and be Girls, which
14:26
Speaker 1: are breakdancwers. Um. So things start really kind of exploding
14:30
Speaker 1: from here with it. On the DJ scene, UM Africa Bambata,
14:36
Speaker 1: who like you point out, was not born with that name.
14:39
Speaker 1: He named himself Kevin Donovan. Yeah, same with Um Grandmaster Flash.
14:44
Speaker 1: His parents did not name him Grandmaster. His name was
14:47
Speaker 1: Joseph Sadler. Uh. They were early on UM in the scene.
14:50
Speaker 1: Bimbado was actually a former gang member, and so he
14:53
Speaker 1: saw the bad effects, the ill effects of gangs and
14:57
Speaker 1: decided to form the Zulu Nation, which is like an
14:59
Speaker 1: aware and scroup to steer kids in a more positive
15:02
Speaker 1: direction in life. And that was sort of the foundation
15:04
Speaker 1: of hip hop early on, was positivity and silliness. Yeah,
15:09
Speaker 1: doing the right thing talking about food you like to eat,
15:12
Speaker 1: or in contrast, talking about having a bad experience during
15:17
Speaker 1: a meal at another friend's house. Yeah, was that a
15:20
Speaker 1: song my bad Meal? I can't remember which song it was.
15:23
Speaker 1: It might have been like like the extended version of
15:26
Speaker 1: records to like, but one of those really early songs.
15:29
Speaker 1: Um like they talked about going to your friend's house
15:31
Speaker 1: and then mom can't cook because sweet, and then yeah,
15:35
Speaker 1: super and and it was all very positive to uh So,
15:39
Speaker 1: Grandmaster Flash was a key um innovator because, like I said,
15:43
Speaker 1: he was really into electronics, built the first cross vader Um.
15:46
Speaker 1: He is the first one that started punch phrasing, which
15:49
Speaker 1: is it's usually like a horn blast and just inserting
15:53
Speaker 1: a very short quick bit of another song over a song. Right,
15:56
Speaker 1: it's not. It's using two records, but not necessarily the
15:58
Speaker 1: same record, two version to the same record, but you're
16:01
Speaker 1: still working them together. That's like modern d jaye, that's right.
16:05
Speaker 1: And it's used to just like punctuate something, um scratching.
16:09
Speaker 1: He did not invent. That was Grand Wizard Theodore supposedly.
16:14
Speaker 1: And the story goes there is that he's in his
16:16
Speaker 1: bedroom playing a record and his mom comes in, like
16:19
Speaker 1: turn that stuff off and you know, he stops it
16:21
Speaker 1: with his hand. Then he's like, wait a minute, that
16:23
Speaker 1: sounded kind of cool and just started doing it and
16:26
Speaker 1: uh then grand Master Flash like, you know, really perfected it.
16:29
Speaker 1: That's awesome. As a mom came into his room to
16:31
Speaker 1: tell us the story. I love it UM and beat Box,
16:37
Speaker 1: which is not UM the Fat Boys stuff, right, No,
16:42
Speaker 1: but they're you know, they're pretty good at it. Nothing
16:44
Speaker 1: that's beatboxing. Oh yeah, he created the beatbox was just
16:47
Speaker 1: hooking a drum machine up to your turntables and just
16:50
Speaker 1: going to town. Yeah, and I think that would help
16:53
Speaker 1: UM segue from one song to another to create just
16:56
Speaker 1: like a seamless effect. Alright, So this is all going
16:59
Speaker 1: on in the in the early eighties. Then they started
17:02
Speaker 1: act These were just like parties at first. Then they
17:04
Speaker 1: actually started recording hip hop music, got played on the radio.
17:08
Speaker 1: Mr Magic's Rap Attack premier in New York City the
17:12
Speaker 1: first hip hop show, and then uh MC started kind
17:17
Speaker 1: of coming to the forefront more. It's like, you know,
17:19
Speaker 1: the leader of the band instead of the DJ. Yeah,
17:21
Speaker 1: you remember the huge confusion that DJ jer Z Jeff
17:25
Speaker 1: and the Fresh Prince ran into every Yeah, they named
17:28
Speaker 1: it like their second album, like I'm I'm the rapper,
17:32
Speaker 1: He's the DJ, yeah, because everybody thought the Fresh Prince
17:35
Speaker 1: was DJ jer Z Jeff, because they were caught in
17:38
Speaker 1: this transition where it's like, wait, I thought the DJ
17:40
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the frontman of a group. But yeah,
17:42
Speaker 1: it was was like no, no, no, no, yeah, so
17:45
Speaker 1: they named they named an album to clear things up.
17:49
Speaker 1: Do you remember that? I don't remember that. He's the
17:51
Speaker 1: perfect example of those early sweet songs though, because his
17:55
Speaker 1: were all about you know, I'm hanging out with my
17:56
Speaker 1: buddies in we're playing some games, you know. Although there's
18:01
Speaker 1: one about an extended uh, an extended story about a
18:04
Speaker 1: traffic accident that leads to a court case and he's
18:06
Speaker 1: sure that it's not his fault, but the lady's fault
18:09
Speaker 1: was like he was a double parked or something. No, no,
18:12
Speaker 1: she hit m okay about a fenderbinder. Yes, that's as
18:16
Speaker 1: dark as he got until the millennium. Yeah, I'm just kidding. Um,
18:22
Speaker 1: So now we're in the nineteen eighties, Um, things start
18:27
Speaker 1: kind of crossing over. Of course with Blondie's Rapture, which
18:30
Speaker 1: we all knew and loved, right and the classes, Magnificent Seven,
18:34
Speaker 1: which is very much hip hoppy in tone, and some
18:39
Speaker 1: genuine stars start to kind of pop up on the
18:42
Speaker 1: scene like Run, DMC, fab five, Freddy Hello, cool j Yeah,
18:46
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys. We already mentioned the sugar Hill Gang, right,
18:52
Speaker 1: I don't think we did we dude, we have to
18:53
Speaker 1: mention the sugar Hill of course, they had the first
18:56
Speaker 1: hit rap record ever, Rappers Delight, and it was really
19:00
Speaker 1: say think in maybe the same year as Raptat came out,
19:05
Speaker 1: and it was like that put rap on the map. Yeah,
19:09
Speaker 1: and people are like, what is this music? And chuck.
19:12
Speaker 1: Those who listened again to the Disco podcast will note
19:15
Speaker 1: that they made that record using the sheks good times.
19:19
Speaker 1: That's right. It all happened together. Yeah, sampling too. I
19:22
Speaker 1: think we cover that in Yeah boy. This is really
19:24
Speaker 1: all coming together and man it is all right. So
19:27
Speaker 1: the industry is changing a little bit at the time
19:29
Speaker 1: as well. Sugar Hill Records closes, Deaf Jam pops up.
19:33
Speaker 1: Women all of a sudden are in the mix with
19:35
Speaker 1: Salt and Pepper and uh MC light yeah, Queen Latifa
19:38
Speaker 1: of course. Um. They paved the way for people like
19:41
Speaker 1: Lauren Hill. I think just filed for bankruptcy. Did she?
19:45
Speaker 1: I think so she fell on rough time since you yeah, man,
19:48
Speaker 1: the Fuji said that one album. There there's quite a
19:51
Speaker 1: few rap groups that had like one classic album and
19:54
Speaker 1: then that was it. Yeah, like Black Star and uh
19:59
Speaker 1: Fuji's and um I was trying to think those one more.
20:03
Speaker 1: But you know, usually they would break up like they
20:05
Speaker 1: did and become their own independent artists. That's how that happens. Yeah,
20:08
Speaker 1: like Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg or n w A
20:11
Speaker 1: and Dr Dre. Yeah, or um Retain Clan Goody Mob
20:15
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, c Low that's why s game that
20:31
Speaker 1: you should know why A definitely should know Jo Clark. Um,
20:45
Speaker 1: so where are we? Oh yeah? Public Enemy comes on
20:46
Speaker 1: the scene with like the Black Nationalism movement, um MTV
20:52
Speaker 1: gets on it because it spreads from the East coast
20:54
Speaker 1: to the West coast. Yeah, yo, MTV raps came out
20:58
Speaker 1: and I remember being so happy that that happened. I
21:02
Speaker 1: remember being that age and thinking like where are the
21:05
Speaker 1: rap videos, like come on, and they'll be waiting for
21:07
Speaker 1: them to do this, and they finally did, and then
21:10
Speaker 1: after that it was like, okay, you can start playing
21:12
Speaker 1: these through the day and then they finally did about
21:14
Speaker 1: a year later, apparently according to this article, Yeah, after
21:18
Speaker 1: you it was like exclusively on your MTV graps like
21:21
Speaker 1: which was like a half hour an hour, and that
21:24
Speaker 1: was it. And I think they started making it more
21:25
Speaker 1: than just once a week. But then finally it's just like,
21:27
Speaker 1: forget it. We'll just put we'll put wrap on alongside
21:30
Speaker 1: of def Leppard, Right, I don't think the world will
21:33
Speaker 1: end or we'll put Run DMC in the same video
21:37
Speaker 1: as Aerosmart. Yeah, And I wonder if that helped pave
21:39
Speaker 1: the way to just kind of like break the cell
21:41
Speaker 1: walls between these genres on MTV. You know, yeah, I
21:45
Speaker 1: think for sure. Yeah, it knocked down some walls. Run
21:47
Speaker 1: DMC Super Pioneers knocked down walls, remember the video. Yeah,
21:50
Speaker 1: they kicked walls down. They kicked balls down literally, metaphorically
21:53
Speaker 1: and figuratively. Wait, I messed that up big time, literally
21:59
Speaker 1: and metaphorically, right, I said metaphorically and figuratively and literally. Three.
22:06
Speaker 1: So we are are now progressing onto a gangster rap
22:10
Speaker 1: um in w a of course and iced tea. Um.
22:13
Speaker 1: Snoop Doggy Dog at first, yes, now Snoop Lion, Yeah,
22:16
Speaker 1: then Snoop Dogg in between the Dirty Dirty d o G.
22:20
Speaker 1: You c So was it what I mean, was it
22:23
Speaker 1: n w A? Were they the first gangster rap um?
22:28
Speaker 1: She mentioned someone called school e D who haven't heard
22:30
Speaker 1: of So I don't know if school D was, but
22:32
Speaker 1: I've never heard of stuff. Yeah, but I mean for
22:35
Speaker 1: sure end w A was the first one to ever
22:37
Speaker 1: like take gangster rap and turn it into a hit.
22:40
Speaker 1: Nice guys with attitudes. Yeah, and then they were um
22:43
Speaker 1: they were another group that like broke up into like
22:46
Speaker 1: just really successful spinoff recordings. Easy's debut album is arguably
22:50
Speaker 1: one of the best ever made. Yeah, Dr Dree he
22:55
Speaker 1: had a pretty successful career. Well the Chronic was my
22:57
Speaker 1: soundtrack for like about eighteen months ago. And then you know,
23:00
Speaker 1: Snoop Doggs was awesome too, and he discovered him. Ice
23:04
Speaker 1: Cube had a great career to mc ran DJ poo like,
23:08
Speaker 1: like the whole group was just awesome. Yeah. They just
23:11
Speaker 1: had a show at the Fox like two nights ago.
23:13
Speaker 1: What um ll cool j de La Soul, Public Enemy,
23:19
Speaker 1: ice Cube, uh and like one or two other acts.
23:24
Speaker 1: Did I not hear about this local j put it together?
23:26
Speaker 1: I don't know. It was supposed to be pretty good.
23:28
Speaker 1: The reviews are in the a j C today. Yeah,
23:31
Speaker 1: I'll bet it was good. Yeah, it's like a seven
23:33
Speaker 1: hour show. Yeah. Well I don't think they each played
23:36
Speaker 1: that long, but I think it's like three and a
23:38
Speaker 1: half hours. It's pretty cool. Um. So, gangster rapp, like
23:43
Speaker 1: we said, that was ushered in and the original intent
23:46
Speaker 1: of hip hop started to get lost at this point.
23:50
Speaker 1: Oh yeah in a big way. Eating eating food that
23:54
Speaker 1: you liked and talking about it. Cheer he has for breakfast.
23:56
Speaker 1: Ye uh yeah, that was like, you're a pretty pretty
24:00
Speaker 1: on the outs as far as hip hop was concerned.
24:03
Speaker 1: When nw A came along and started talking about gangster rap, right,
24:07
Speaker 1: well not they were side by side there for a while, right,
24:09
Speaker 1: and then gangster wrap one out because people are cynical. Uh,
24:14
Speaker 1: and of course they gang violence and drug dealing and
24:18
Speaker 1: poverty and misogyny hallmarks of of gangster rap. Yeah, which
24:23
Speaker 1: is still very much around today. Um. Even though what's
24:27
Speaker 1: interesting it's like gangster rap was a sub genre of
24:30
Speaker 1: hip hop that eventually came over and took over and
24:35
Speaker 1: became hip hop, and then now that's broken up into
24:37
Speaker 1: other sub genres, but the source materials typically the same. Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: and I think another difference to just thinking about it
24:44
Speaker 1: is gangster rap back then was very much like I'm poor,
24:49
Speaker 1: and now it seems to be more like I'm rich,
24:52
Speaker 1: you know, but I'm still like hail from the ghetto.
24:54
Speaker 1: So I've got cred and I'm still very violent and
24:58
Speaker 1: i carry a gun and I'm not afraid use it.
25:00
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff. Yeah, But like n W and
25:02
Speaker 1: those guys, they never talked about being having money ever
25:05
Speaker 1: because they didn't write. They were there early in their careers.
25:08
Speaker 1: They were just poor guys, right, and they were being
25:09
Speaker 1: kept down and they were upset about it. That's right
25:12
Speaker 1: to say the least. So alongside it, though, you did
25:15
Speaker 1: have some great bands, um like a tribe called Quest
25:18
Speaker 1: and Day, Las Soul and Far Side who either had
25:22
Speaker 1: a positive message or were just like Far Side just
25:26
Speaker 1: having a good time. Yeah. Well they're from California. Yeah,
25:29
Speaker 1: I love those guys. They had a great Their first
25:32
Speaker 1: album was Killer Bizarre Ride to the Far Side. Oh
25:34
Speaker 1: yeah that was good. Yeah, totally. Uh Wu Tang came around,
25:40
Speaker 1: and of course they launched the careers of like a
25:43
Speaker 1: dozen guys that seemed like yeah they were I mean,
25:45
Speaker 1: they were kind of a hybrid like they would talk
25:47
Speaker 1: about violence and misogyny and all that as well, but
25:50
Speaker 1: they also it wasn't all it was about like there
25:52
Speaker 1: was there was some pretty smart guys involved in Wu
25:55
Speaker 1: Tang Clan. Oh, yeah for sure. Tupac. Yeah, she mentioned
26:00
Speaker 1: to have Warrengy and Sir mix a Lot. I wasn't
26:02
Speaker 1: so into them. Sir mix a Lot was awesome. He
26:05
Speaker 1: was like kind of a throwback, like after the transition
26:08
Speaker 1: had been made, Sir mix a Lot was still like
26:11
Speaker 1: talking about butts and buttermilk biscuits and all that, you
26:14
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like he never and he wore
26:16
Speaker 1: like floor length mink coats and stuff like that. That
26:19
Speaker 1: butt some buttermilk biscuits. In the name of your wrath, Alborith,
26:24
Speaker 1: I've got like an accordion on the cover. H cameras
26:29
Speaker 1: One was really big in my life too. I was
26:30
Speaker 1: a big fan of kras One. He was crazy on
26:33
Speaker 1: productions and then um both Gang Star and Black Star.
26:37
Speaker 1: I was a big fan of Yeah at the time,
26:39
Speaker 1: I like Gangster too. I like DJ Hurricane, but um
26:45
Speaker 1: DJ Premier's that he's the gangster DJ really yeah hit
26:50
Speaker 1: him and Guru that was gang Star, but and it
26:53
Speaker 1: was like, and I like Guru, but the two of
26:55
Speaker 1: them together it was always weird to me, Like it
26:57
Speaker 1: was so yeah, I was never like really even though
27:00
Speaker 1: I really I think Gang Stars co to the Streets
27:02
Speaker 1: it's one of the best rap albums ever made. It's
27:05
Speaker 1: just like they were each doing their own things side
27:08
Speaker 1: by side. It didn't mesh and create something together, but
27:13
Speaker 1: it was like two really talented people doing something amazing
27:17
Speaker 1: at once. I haven't pulled that one out in a while.
27:19
Speaker 1: It's it's a good one. Um, Like you said, more
27:23
Speaker 1: sub genres like combining wrap with hard rock music and
27:26
Speaker 1: metal music, body Count, Nice Tease, a little band, Yeah
27:31
Speaker 1: I saw them, did you Yeah, Lollapalooza yahah think. And
27:37
Speaker 1: then things spread down South of course, with two live
27:39
Speaker 1: Crew and groups like Outcast and Ludicrous and Timberland and
27:43
Speaker 1: Goody Mob very much like Atlanta based Dirty South two
27:48
Speaker 1: Luckru was Florida, I think. But yeah, yeah, the dirty side. Well,
27:51
Speaker 1: then you have like New Orleans Bounce, and I think
27:53
Speaker 1: that's where like Crumping came from, too. Is the South right,
27:56
Speaker 1: I think? So I'm not sure though, do you know? Okay?
28:00
Speaker 1: I asked, um, things are changing back these days. I
28:05
Speaker 1: think with um regards to the gangster thing that's still around,
28:09
Speaker 1: but there are other acts out there that Um. Darryl
28:12
Speaker 1: McDaniels of Run DMC said that, you know, it's kind
28:15
Speaker 1: of coming back around because he's like this, some of
28:17
Speaker 1: this music is great to listen to in the club,
28:19
Speaker 1: but he's like, what are you gonna do the rest
28:20
Speaker 1: of the day, Like we need this to be all
28:22
Speaker 1: day music. And like Kanye West, I was a big
28:25
Speaker 1: fan of his early on, not so much now. Um
28:29
Speaker 1: and uh, who's like a drake He's pretty good. Yeah,
28:31
Speaker 1: you listen to that now. I haven't listened to any
28:33
Speaker 1: new hip hop in a long time. Knnie get the
28:36
Speaker 1: College drop Out from two thousand four. It's unbelievable. That's
28:39
Speaker 1: the first one. Yeah, that was amazing. We'll check it out.
28:43
Speaker 1: So that's a little bit on music. I guess we
28:46
Speaker 1: should talk about graffiti some. Well. Yeah, a lot of
28:48
Speaker 1: people say graffiti is its own thing. It's not a
28:51
Speaker 1: part of the four you know pillars of hip hop,
28:54
Speaker 1: and people who are in the hip hops they shut up.
28:57
Speaker 1: It is too and uh, most people agree that graffiti
29:01
Speaker 1: is pretty much inextractable. Extractable from hip hop, but you
29:06
Speaker 1: graffiti came first. Yeah, that's true modern graffiti tagging UM,
29:10
Speaker 1: which is another word for it um. And if you're
29:13
Speaker 1: into that kind of thing, you should check out our
29:15
Speaker 1: surprisingly interesting episode on how aerosol cans work. That's right.
29:20
Speaker 1: UM started in the sixties. Uh. And you can actually
29:24
Speaker 1: trace this back to its point of origin pretty much too,
29:26
Speaker 1: to a guy named um Demetrius. Right, what was his tag?
29:32
Speaker 1: Tak t a k I not Turk two? No? But
29:36
Speaker 1: was that based on him? You think it was inspired
29:38
Speaker 1: by that? Yeah, I got you. And it was a
29:40
Speaker 1: little Greek kid named Demetrius who in the sixties started UM. Well,
29:44
Speaker 1: he was a messenger. He worked for a messenger service,
29:47
Speaker 1: and he had a marker and he put that together
29:49
Speaker 1: with his nickname Taki and the street. They lived on
29:53
Speaker 1: West Street, which is way up there, and he started
29:57
Speaker 1: leaving his tag all over the city. Ye. And the
30:00
Speaker 1: New York Times wrote an article that you can actually
30:02
Speaker 1: get on his website. It's like scanned in there. It's
30:05
Speaker 1: kind of cool to read from nineteen seventy one called
30:07
Speaker 1: Takie spawns pen Pals and uh, it was the first
30:14
Speaker 1: you know, it was people like, this guy's writing his
30:17
Speaker 1: name on things, but it's not really his name, and
30:19
Speaker 1: there's numbers. Yeah, it's so funny thing about now, because
30:22
Speaker 1: tagging is just so ubiquitous, you know. Well he got
30:24
Speaker 1: he also got kind of good at making it look
30:28
Speaker 1: a little pretty. It wasn't just you know, but he
30:31
Speaker 1: didn't write any cursive or anything like that, and he
30:34
Speaker 1: developed what became a tag like it was the same
30:37
Speaker 1: thing every time after a while. Um, and cool Hirk
30:41
Speaker 1: actually became a tagger yea. And from that sort of
30:45
Speaker 1: emulating tak and that was how people came to new
30:49
Speaker 1: No cool hurt before he was a DJ, that's right.
30:52
Speaker 1: And of course it just it of all beyond tagging,
30:55
Speaker 1: as everybody on the planet knows. Um, it became an
30:59
Speaker 1: art form of two itself, building murals, entire trains, very colorful,
31:04
Speaker 1: uh sort of three dimensional aspects. It's it's you know,
31:09
Speaker 1: I feel like you don't he spent too much time
31:11
Speaker 1: trying to describe it, because if you don't know what
31:12
Speaker 1: graffiti looks like, then just go outside, unless you like
31:16
Speaker 1: live in Kansas and they don't do that kind of
31:17
Speaker 1: stuff there. Um, it got a little reputable in the
31:23
Speaker 1: seventies when Patty Astor actually featured graffiti in the fund gallery,
31:29
Speaker 1: her art gallery. And now it's a common thing, you know, Yeah,
31:33
Speaker 1: graffiti galleries all the time. And those those hip hop
31:36
Speaker 1: historians who say, yes, graffiti is part of hip hop,
31:39
Speaker 1: point to um the convergence between hip hop and graffiti
31:43
Speaker 1: and say that it's centered around a tagger named Hayes
31:46
Speaker 1: who's got a pretty awesome website Eric has. It's like
31:49
Speaker 1: this kind of throwback to well, it's like a timeline
31:54
Speaker 1: of like hip hopping graffiti. Like if you go through
31:56
Speaker 1: his stuff, it's pretty neat. He did to check your
31:58
Speaker 1: head font Yeah, and he he was also I guess
32:01
Speaker 1: into photography too, because some of the album covers he
32:04
Speaker 1: did either he did the fonts for him or or whatever.
32:07
Speaker 1: But he did Public Enemy, he did um Young MC.
32:12
Speaker 1: Yeah he did uh Tone Lookes albums Like. So he's
32:16
Speaker 1: doing all these on covers and he's a tagger. So
32:19
Speaker 1: from that point on, people are like, Okay, well this
32:22
Speaker 1: is part of hip hop. Now, I don't care what
32:23
Speaker 1: you did. You see you up in the Air the
32:25
Speaker 1: Clooney movie. Yeah, remember I was like, hey, how it ended?
32:29
Speaker 1: You're like, that's the name of the movie. Remember that.
32:32
Speaker 1: But remember the Young MC when he did the corporate party.
32:37
Speaker 1: M he did bust a move. No, I don't remember that.
32:40
Speaker 1: They crashed the corporate party and he was like the
32:42
Speaker 1: entertainment for the night. But that was in up in
32:44
Speaker 1: the air. I thought that was an episode of Scrubs
32:47
Speaker 1: or The Office. No, I was in up in there,
32:49
Speaker 1: and it really just sort of like nailed that whole.
32:51
Speaker 1: Like the Verizon is gonna do a party and we're
32:54
Speaker 1: gonna hire a rapper. They get Young MC. It was
32:58
Speaker 1: pretty good. Yeah. Are we to dancing it? I think
33:03
Speaker 1: we are. We've covered We've covered the music, we've covered graffiti. Yeah,
33:09
Speaker 1: now we're onto dancing. Okay, Well, break dancing obviously is
33:12
Speaker 1: most synonymous with hip hop, but um, all kinds of
33:16
Speaker 1: other dancing, popping and locking, boogaloo, grinding down, rocking, Harlem shake, yeah,
33:24
Speaker 1: which an original thing, right. Yeah. There's a video from
33:27
Speaker 1: like two thousand six or something that this guy did
33:30
Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was, um, but he's like
33:33
Speaker 1: the Harlem Shake is the real one. And if you
33:35
Speaker 1: see this and then you see like all the the
33:38
Speaker 1: YouTube viral videos that that we're going on recently. You
33:42
Speaker 1: just see how far off everybody was from the actual
33:45
Speaker 1: Harlem Shake. People in Harlem are actually getting mad, like
33:48
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Like this isn't do you even
33:50
Speaker 1: know what the Harlem Shake looks like. It was almost
33:53
Speaker 1: like YouTube turned into the Bluth Family and everybody was
33:56
Speaker 1: doing the Chicken dance, even though none of them have
33:59
Speaker 1: ever seen a chicken. But for you know what I'm saying, Yeah, yeah,
34:01
Speaker 1: that's what a lot of people were doing with the
34:02
Speaker 1: Harlem shade. Gotcha. Um, But breakdancing is what we're going
34:06
Speaker 1: to concentrate on because it's pretty cool. Um headspins back
34:11
Speaker 1: spins about that video you said, the windmill, Oh yeah,
34:14
Speaker 1: just get on YouTube and look at breakdance nineteen forties
34:17
Speaker 1: and that's it. That dude is breakdancing. Yeah, and it's
34:20
Speaker 1: clearly the nineteen forties. Yeah, I've tried. I was like,
34:23
Speaker 1: am I being tricked? Here? Is this some fake? Like
34:26
Speaker 1: pretty authentic? I think it's authentic. But that was full
34:29
Speaker 1: on breakdancing. Yeah, Like at first I was like, oh,
34:32
Speaker 1: that's sort of breakdancing, and then he got on the
34:34
Speaker 1: floor and I was like, that's totally breakdance. So it's
34:37
Speaker 1: been around he does the worm. Yeah, he sort of
34:40
Speaker 1: did the worm. And he was doing that doing like
34:42
Speaker 1: windmills and stuff. Well not quite a windmill, but close
34:44
Speaker 1: to a windmill. By the way. I was obsessed with
34:48
Speaker 1: trying to learn that in my ute, and uh never
34:51
Speaker 1: came close. Obviously, I too was a breaker in my youth.
34:56
Speaker 1: Uh see, I wasn't problem, Oh I was. I took
34:59
Speaker 1: breakdancing lesson. I made it on the front page of
35:01
Speaker 1: the Peach section, which was the entertainment section of Toledo Blade.
35:04
Speaker 1: I was breakdancing and like attraction my mom made me
35:07
Speaker 1: by hand. Man, do you have a copy of that?
35:09
Speaker 1: I don't know where it is. It might be out
35:11
Speaker 1: there somewhere. Um. I had a break in Ohio t shirt.
35:16
Speaker 1: I wasn't as into the French foreign legion cat. Yeah, yeah,
35:20
Speaker 1: I had the whole man. I was a breaker, even
35:22
Speaker 1: though I sucked at it. I was a breaker. Could
35:24
Speaker 1: you do the window? No, That's what I'm saying. I
35:26
Speaker 1: saw every day. That's like really impressive still to me today,
35:31
Speaker 1: I could never do that. I get headaches from doing
35:33
Speaker 1: headspins and just fall over me. But it was fun.
35:36
Speaker 1: The suicide too, Did you already do that? No, that's
35:38
Speaker 1: a pretty cool move. That's the one where the guy
35:41
Speaker 1: basically she says backflip, but I've most often seen it
35:43
Speaker 1: as a front flip. You'd come in and you just
35:46
Speaker 1: flip and land on your back, And the whole point
35:48
Speaker 1: is to make it look painful, like the more the
35:51
Speaker 1: harder it is, and the more people go, oh, it's
35:54
Speaker 1: like the most more successful suicide. That's when you know
35:57
Speaker 1: you've got the crowd in the palm in your hand exactly.
36:00
Speaker 1: You don't stop then, no way, that's no, you can't
36:02
Speaker 1: stop breaking you know. Um. You took me to the
36:06
Speaker 1: World Breakdance Championships a couple of years ago. Like the
36:10
Speaker 1: world was awesome. It was that Relapse Theater, the old
36:13
Speaker 1: one on FOURT Street. I was in Atlanta, Yeah, and
36:16
Speaker 1: they had it here in this little theater and like
36:19
Speaker 1: people from all over the world who were like the
36:22
Speaker 1: best at breakdancing, we're just there like in breakoffs and stuff.
36:26
Speaker 1: We just stood around for like eight hours and watched
36:28
Speaker 1: like the best breakdancing you can possibly imagine. That's right there.
36:32
Speaker 1: It was very awesome. So not surprisingly, I think you
36:35
Speaker 1: even said earlier breakdancing came from West Africa, as well,
36:40
Speaker 1: a lot of the key elements, um this herky jerky
36:45
Speaker 1: all over body movement, UM interaction with the floor like
36:48
Speaker 1: not with your just your feet obviously, UM, pantomime and
36:53
Speaker 1: improvisation all came from West Africa and migrated on the
36:58
Speaker 1: slave ships kind joined up with some uh Caucasian dancing
37:04
Speaker 1: like the Lindy Hop and the Charleston Well, a lot
37:06
Speaker 1: of those grew out of African American dancing walk, which
37:11
Speaker 1: is an African American thing that actually, um like terribly
37:15
Speaker 1: you should be this blog post I wrote on it.
37:17
Speaker 1: What's the origin of the term cake walk? You'll never
37:19
Speaker 1: use it again, but the the idea of people lining
37:23
Speaker 1: up and watching other people dancing and then taking turns
37:26
Speaker 1: and all that that comes from the cake walk, So
37:29
Speaker 1: like people waiting to like jump in and all that.
37:31
Speaker 1: And it was in that Breakdancing nineteen forties video you
37:34
Speaker 1: said people just kind of standing, somebody else would come
37:36
Speaker 1: in and and put somebody else to the side and they
37:38
Speaker 1: were taken over. Like that comes from the cake walk.
37:41
Speaker 1: It's then later became the soul train, yeah, which is
37:44
Speaker 1: some of the best footage like ever. So yes, you
37:47
Speaker 1: can put any halfway decent song to like a soul
37:51
Speaker 1: train lineup, and it's just brilliant. After that, the other
37:55
Speaker 1: thing that influenced too was um uh came from the
37:58
Speaker 1: Caribbean as well in South America in the form of
38:03
Speaker 1: and I even saw a video on how to pronounce this.
38:06
Speaker 1: It's Brazilian martial art. Uh. Capaccia, cap you capaira. I
38:17
Speaker 1: don't think that's right, that's what he said. Are you sure, dude?
38:20
Speaker 1: It was a video on how to pronounce the word.
38:24
Speaker 1: But I'm sure I didn't do it quite right, but
38:25
Speaker 1: yours is definitely wrong. Um. But martial arts as a whole,
38:29
Speaker 1: like kung fu was really big in that community, and
38:32
Speaker 1: so like Bruce Lee and all these guys like tried
38:34
Speaker 1: to like emulate those dance moves. Yeah, that's why you
38:37
Speaker 1: see so much like fake fighting in breakdancing, because they're
38:41
Speaker 1: all really just kind of good kids. They spend all
38:44
Speaker 1: their time practicing dance moves, and so like all the
38:47
Speaker 1: fighting is all just like hey, I'm getting in your face.
38:50
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm getting in your face now, and oh
38:52
Speaker 1: no you're not. And it's that's it. That's as far
38:54
Speaker 1: as it goes, good clean, fun. Yeah, I'm gonna outdance
38:57
Speaker 1: you Yeah, and like there's probably no other part of
38:59
Speaker 1: the hip hop culture that more carries on the original
39:02
Speaker 1: tradition of like just you know, I don't mean any
39:06
Speaker 1: real harm or anything like that. Where was having a
39:08
Speaker 1: good time and like this is all this is what's cool. Yeah.
39:11
Speaker 1: Then then the break dancing aspect of it. Yeah, agreed
39:14
Speaker 1: and crumping today, I used to see the same thing,
39:17
Speaker 1: Like it's battling each other to see who's the best.
39:20
Speaker 1: It's kind of fun to watch. Um. In the eighties,
39:23
Speaker 1: it was like break dancing became a across the board
39:27
Speaker 1: commodity big time again. I had a Breaking Ohio T
39:33
Speaker 1: shirt that my mom purchased for me. Yeah, probably like
39:36
Speaker 1: pennies or something. Yeah. Um, the movie Wild Style, which
39:39
Speaker 1: is the first hip hop movie, UM led to Style Wars,
39:42
Speaker 1: Breaking of course, Breaking two Electric Boogaloo. I got that
39:46
Speaker 1: soundtrack in my Easter basket one year Beat Street. I
39:49
Speaker 1: was a little too old, I guess for Breaking maybe
39:52
Speaker 1: so or now. I was just I was listening to
39:54
Speaker 1: the Almond Brothers and stuff. That was the deal. I
39:56
Speaker 1: clearly remember my Tooler sisters having a conversation while we
40:00
Speaker 1: were all watching Break in two and they agreed that
40:04
Speaker 1: the girl was really more of a flash dancer than
40:06
Speaker 1: a breakdancer. I'll never forget that. Well, the other one
40:09
Speaker 1: went flashdance, had a little uh breaking style. Everything had
40:14
Speaker 1: to burger King commercials. Apparently Wrangler had a line of
40:18
Speaker 1: jeans ready to go in nineteen eighty four called rapid Transit,
40:22
Speaker 1: starting with the W like a Wrangler that didn't get
40:25
Speaker 1: off the ground. The moonwalk, of course, which was not
40:28
Speaker 1: invented by Michael Jackson. No, but he was good at it. Well, yeah,
40:31
Speaker 1: he was great at it. Um. The the guy I
40:34
Speaker 1: could find was in nineteen fifty five, Bill Bailey at
40:37
Speaker 1: a showtime at the Apollo Show. It's on YouTube, is it?
40:40
Speaker 1: Is it as good as Michael Jackson's Can anybody top
40:42
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson's moonwalk? It's not as good, but he clearly moonwalks.
40:46
Speaker 1: It's not like, well this is a version. I mean
40:48
Speaker 1: he moonwalks off the stage in nineteen fifties. Well, okay,
40:51
Speaker 1: so moonwalking goes back to the fifties. They say, uh,
40:54
Speaker 1: and they being I think cool Herker Africa Boombada. One
40:57
Speaker 1: of the two said that they think break dancing finds
41:01
Speaker 1: its origins and a James Brown dance to get on
41:03
Speaker 1: the good Foot from that song, yeah, which is from
41:06
Speaker 1: the from I believe the sixties. It's based on that
41:10
Speaker 1: and backsliding is what they the originators callman walking by
41:13
Speaker 1: the way. Um. So, like we said, it's commodity, it's
41:17
Speaker 1: a video games, it's clothing lines. They start selling you know,
41:22
Speaker 1: gear and kneepads and special mats to use. You know,
41:25
Speaker 1: when all you needed was a refrigerator box. Exactly what
41:29
Speaker 1: was that for it for? Or slicker or whatever. So
41:34
Speaker 1: you're not like doing a um like a headspin on gravel. Yeah,
41:39
Speaker 1: that was a dumb question actually, But like I said,
41:43
Speaker 1: I wasn't into it. Things started to die down in
41:46
Speaker 1: the eighties though, but it came back big time in
41:51
Speaker 1: the nineties. It did, like the latest nineties and it's
41:54
Speaker 1: still around like it never really went away. Yeah, and
41:57
Speaker 1: that led to crumping, like we said, which is my
42:00
Speaker 1: favorite thing to watch on the internet right now. Did
42:02
Speaker 1: you see the crump off on Venice Beach that one?
42:06
Speaker 1: I did see that one. That was pretty great. That
42:08
Speaker 1: was good. It's just not well, it looks just so
42:11
Speaker 1: out of control, but it's it's not. That's what makes
42:14
Speaker 1: it so great to me. I think Crumpin is pretty great.
42:16
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree. So are we onto fashion?
42:20
Speaker 1: I think we are a pillar four. Well, let's talk
42:23
Speaker 1: about it. Comfy clothes is really how it started. Yeah,
42:26
Speaker 1: if you have ever seen the TV show What's Happening
42:30
Speaker 1: remember rerun? Yes, he was dressing pretty hip hop at
42:33
Speaker 1: the time, suspenders. He wore a beret, but it could
42:36
Speaker 1: have very easily been a kanga hat. I think he
42:39
Speaker 1: wore a converse, you know, comfy shoes, adid this is
42:42
Speaker 1: really the brand though, or was it was? UM? But
42:46
Speaker 1: at the time that was super hip hop. Yeah, just loose,
42:50
Speaker 1: comfortable clothing with a T shirt underneath that you could
42:53
Speaker 1: break dance to. Um. She even contends that the comfort
42:57
Speaker 1: level of the sneakers was why they left them untied
43:01
Speaker 1: early on, just to be even looser in the shoes
43:04
Speaker 1: and not have like your shoes tight. I don't know
43:06
Speaker 1: about that though. Apparently out west it was military inspired
43:11
Speaker 1: and boots were a little more popular on the West Coast?
43:14
Speaker 1: Is that where public enemies from? Are they West Coast? Um?
43:18
Speaker 1: They're New York right? Yeah? I mean Chuck de lives
43:21
Speaker 1: in Atlanta now and has for a while I would
43:23
Speaker 1: like to meet Chuck d too. But they were not Um,
43:26
Speaker 1: Chuck b meet Chuck Dyah. Yeah, but they they weren't
43:34
Speaker 1: from Atlanta obviously, where it was Republican me from I
43:37
Speaker 1: don't know, I guess New York. But they weren't one
43:39
Speaker 1: of those that they didn't talk about where they were from.
43:42
Speaker 1: They weren't like they were. They were worldwide exactly. Uh.
43:46
Speaker 1: And then run DMC of course brought in the cool
43:49
Speaker 1: black jeans and black leather and they had the movie
43:53
Speaker 1: Tougher Than Leather. Was that a movie? Yeah? I never
43:56
Speaker 1: saw that. I'm sure you did. I didn't, didn't know.
44:00
Speaker 1: And one of the few movies I've ever walked out
44:02
Speaker 1: on in my life was Disorder at least the Fat Boys. Yeah,
44:06
Speaker 1: I was in sixth grade and I was like, this
44:08
Speaker 1: is unwatchable. Well, everyone was trying to tap into that
44:11
Speaker 1: thing crush Groove thing. Yeah you've seen that one. Oh yeah,
44:14
Speaker 1: Crush Groove was pretty good. None of these Age well
44:17
Speaker 1: by the way, Oh no, I haven't seen any of one,
44:20
Speaker 1: the Long Team, even the good one Stone Age well. Um,
44:23
Speaker 1: and then the Adidas of course with run DMC, and
44:25
Speaker 1: they also ushered in the the kan goals in earnest
44:30
Speaker 1: in the big rope gold chains and lots of them,
44:35
Speaker 1: and who else did she credit with that? Oh? Um,
44:40
Speaker 1: Curtis Blow. That's right, Curtis Blow. We got to the
44:45
Speaker 1: bottom of that one. Uh. And along with the black
44:47
Speaker 1: nationalism and the sort of remember our roots back to
44:50
Speaker 1: Africa came a big clothing boom. I remember very well
44:54
Speaker 1: in high school. Um, African inspired clothing and the red,
44:58
Speaker 1: yellow and black and green huge. Yeah, everything that every
45:02
Speaker 1: everybody was wearing in the late eighties was super African inspired. Yeah,
45:06
Speaker 1: just bold prints and all that, Like everything cann play
45:09
Speaker 1: we're wearing. Yeah, remember that dance too where they like
45:12
Speaker 1: jumped through that they'd hold their foot. I could never
45:16
Speaker 1: do that. There's no way I could do it. Now.
45:19
Speaker 1: I would like hill myself in that way. But criss
45:22
Speaker 1: cross of course, Um, we're backwards clothing. Yeah, one of
45:26
Speaker 1: those guys just died, I know, very sad. And then
45:29
Speaker 1: the basketball jersey. Um, really baggy baggy clothing started to
45:34
Speaker 1: become the norm through the nineties and that's still sort
45:37
Speaker 1: of the style today. Yeah. And supposedly that that comes
45:41
Speaker 1: from a like prison ware where you're not allowed to
45:45
Speaker 1: wear a belt Yeah, that's the where the seg came from. Yeah,
45:49
Speaker 1: that's the CNN is quoted as the sourcer, So take
45:52
Speaker 1: that with a grain of salt. Uh. And also with
45:55
Speaker 1: the do rag supposedly is another prison wear thing. Yeah.
45:59
Speaker 1: And then just like with breakdancing, hip hop style became
46:03
Speaker 1: a pretty big business commodity to Yeah, like Russell Simmons
46:07
Speaker 1: started a fat farm, which is I think still around today. Right. Yeah,
46:12
Speaker 1: if you look at most any rap mgul now it'll
46:13
Speaker 1: say like producer, rapper, clothing designer, like they're too smart
46:18
Speaker 1: to maximize their brand. Yeah. It says here that jay
46:22
Speaker 1: Z sold rock Aware for two hundred four million bucks.
46:27
Speaker 1: Everything that guy touches turns to gold, yeah, or platinum
46:33
Speaker 1: because platinum, Josh, is where the gold went. It kind
46:38
Speaker 1: of transformed transformed into platinum, right, It's like alchemy. Yeah,
46:44
Speaker 1: like shiny silvery platinum and diamond encrusted grills, bling grills
46:50
Speaker 1: very popular that started out as just like the one
46:52
Speaker 1: gold cap and then turned into like the girls that
46:56
Speaker 1: you can get today are just unbelievable. And I don't
46:58
Speaker 1: think we could ever have a converse sation about hip
47:00
Speaker 1: hop fashion without mentioning wearing a huge clock as a
47:05
Speaker 1: pendant around a necklace, yeah, or wearing a stolen Mercedes
47:12
Speaker 1: hood ornament as a necklace. The Beast boys. I thought
47:17
Speaker 1: you were going to say the multi finger ring. Yeah
47:20
Speaker 1: you got that too. That was that was big because
47:23
Speaker 1: of uh and do the right thing, love and hate?
47:28
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the two rings? Who was that? The guy
47:30
Speaker 1: with the radio rachime? Yeah? Yeah, I saw that again
47:33
Speaker 1: the other day. Man, that movie just blows me away. Still,
47:36
Speaker 1: it's very powerful. I like his later work more. Yeah,
47:39
Speaker 1: he liked it when he got away from like inside
47:42
Speaker 1: man in it was a lot. I still like to
47:46
Speaker 1: do the right thing, but it's like him branching out,
47:49
Speaker 1: I hear you. Um. And also designer labels became a
47:54
Speaker 1: big thing, like a Tommy Hill figure and stuff like
47:56
Speaker 1: that became really popular. Uh. And now, of course, you
48:00
Speaker 1: go anywhere on planet Earth and you're gonna see hip
48:05
Speaker 1: hop and pretty much any country you go to. Sure
48:08
Speaker 1: it is all over the world. Is a global product.
48:11
Speaker 1: And hey, squares and parents, it ain't going anywhere, so
48:16
Speaker 1: just get used to it. That's right. I think a
48:18
Speaker 1: lot of people thought it was a flash in the pan.
48:21
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know, like this rap won't be around long. Yeah, suckers. Yeah,
48:27
Speaker 1: it's outlasted a lot of other stuff, agreed. So we
48:31
Speaker 1: got electronic music to do next, or we did that
48:36
Speaker 1: that dubstep article. Yeah, I don't know. Uh. If you
48:40
Speaker 1: want to learn more about hip hop, you can type
48:43
Speaker 1: those words into the search part how Stuff works dot
48:45
Speaker 1: com and it will bring up this extremely large article
48:49
Speaker 1: on it um and I think I said hip hop.
48:52
Speaker 1: So it's time for message and now listen to mail
49:17
Speaker 1: Time Josh. Since we're talking about international things. Towards the
49:22
Speaker 1: end of that show, I'm gonna give a couple of
49:24
Speaker 1: international shouts because we like hearing from my listeners and
49:28
Speaker 1: foreign lands. So the first one is from France, and
49:32
Speaker 1: we actually asked that our Three Musketeers cast if we
49:34
Speaker 1: had French listeners. Hi, guys, I just wanted to drop
49:37
Speaker 1: you a few lines because I was just listening to
49:39
Speaker 1: your podcast and the the Musketeers. You were wondering if
49:41
Speaker 1: there were any French up there listening to you. I
49:45
Speaker 1: am one of them. I've been listening to all of
49:48
Speaker 1: your podcasts from the beginning when even the podcast was
49:51
Speaker 1: not even the great pair of you. I am talking
49:55
Speaker 1: about your podcast to all my friends, and I feel
49:58
Speaker 1: that I know you well from all these hours spent
50:01
Speaker 1: with you. I always laugh when you make fun of
50:04
Speaker 1: the French and our accent. I do not always understand
50:07
Speaker 1: your US references, but love to hear about new things.
50:12
Speaker 1: Take care from Paris and that's Julie. Thanks a lot,
50:15
Speaker 1: uh and then uh, Hi, guys, Josh, Chuck and Jerry.
50:18
Speaker 1: My name is Daniel. I live in Jerusalem, working at
50:20
Speaker 1: bakery in the city and love listening to you guys
50:22
Speaker 1: while I work. I want to share a funny little story.
50:24
Speaker 1: One day at work, my boss got mad at me
50:26
Speaker 1: and told me I can't have my headphones during work.
50:29
Speaker 1: And then I told him I was listening to a
50:30
Speaker 1: learning podcast and not music, so to prove I'm not distracted.
50:34
Speaker 1: Is the boss like nurds ratchet or something like that,
50:36
Speaker 1: I guess so uh. To my surprise, he asked, what's
50:40
Speaker 1: the name of the podcast? Confused me a little bit,
50:42
Speaker 1: but I told him it was s Y s K
50:44
Speaker 1: and I was really shocked when he took out his
50:46
Speaker 1: own phone and showed me his iTunes library was packed
50:49
Speaker 1: with the stuff you should know. So you guys will
50:51
Speaker 1: help me get through long depressing shifts with your humor
50:54
Speaker 1: and knowledge. And that is from Daniel in Israel. Nice Daniel,
50:58
Speaker 1: thank you for that. Daniel and Julie, Yeah from France.
51:01
Speaker 1: Thanks guys. We appreciate you listening over there and standing
51:05
Speaker 1: up to your boss and he's all like, hey, you
51:07
Speaker 1: can listen to music. They can listend the stuffer should
51:09
Speaker 1: Know and bake. We're like international ambassadors, basically agreed. Uh,
51:14
Speaker 1: if you want to tell us how we're ambassadors in
51:17
Speaker 1: some weird way, we want to know that. Okay, what's
51:20
Speaker 1: the problem. Just do it. You can tweet to us
51:22
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can go to
51:24
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com. You can go to Stuff Podcast at
51:29
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. I'm ready for this one to be done,
51:32
Speaker 1: and you can join us at our home on the web.
51:34
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
51:42
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works
51:45
Speaker 1: dot com