Google Helps Hip Hop Celebrate 44 Years

wwetvsports21
Aug 11, 2017
2 min read

Today we take time to celebrate one of the greatest inventions of the modern era. Today we pay homage to the birth of hip hop and give thanks to DJ Kool Herc for starting a genre that has changed so many lives and touched so many people. Who would have thought that hip hop would be what it is today from that fateful party in 1973 on a hot summer day in New York?

August 11, 1973 is widely considered to be the founding date of what would eventually become Hip Hop culture. On that day, Clive "DJ Kool Herc" Campbell hosted his sister's back-to-school party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in The Bronx, New York.

That event in '73 birthed a global phenomenon that went on to influence music, fashion, art, film, politics, and many other facets of society. The world's most popular search engine Google is also celebrating the genre today with an animation with Fab Five Freddy.

“Today we’re celebrating one of the most important innovations in Hip Hop music: the break,” an animated Freddy says in the video. “On August 11, 1973, a DJ named Kool Herc threw a Back to School party in the Boogie Down Bronx that changed music as we know it. Using two turntables, he extended the instrumental breaks, allowing people to dance longer … a style that came to be known as breakdancing.”

Team Google Doodle includes lifelong fans of hip-hop spanning from California to Indiana to Louisiana, and its artists and engineers reached east to the legendary graphic artist and designer Cey Adams and the pioneering artist/host Fab 5 Freddy to create this piece of artwork.

The Bay Area-based team also tapped the talents of Lyor Cohen, the global head of music for Google-owned YouTube and the former Def Jam president. Cohen says on Google’s blog that hip-hop “shows that people in any situation have the ability to create something powerful and meaningful. The progression of this culture and sound — from Kool Herc spinning James Brown breaks at a block party to Jay-Z, Kanye West and Drake being some of the biggest forces in music 44 years later — is something that few people at that first party could have anticipated.”