Who Discovered Rap Music?

The person who started rap music is alive and well.  We'll learn a little bit more about him here.

Asking who "discovered" rap music implies that the form predated the individual who discovered it. However, a person created rap music, so what we are really studying is the person who started rap music, not the person who discovered it. DJ Kool Herc, also known as Kool Herc, Kool DJ Herc, and his birth name Clive Campbell, is the individual who started rap music.

DJ Kool Herc

Kool Herc was born on April 16, 1955, in Kingston Jamaica. When he was 12, he moved with his family to the Bronx, a borough of New York City. During that time period, the Bronx was experiencing a lot of turmoil, and a great deal of violence found its way into the streets of the community.

Youth gangs plagued the region, and DJ Kool Herc saw himself as a type of response to those problems. Instead of engaging in that culture, he and his sister would throw back to school parties where he would spin music for the crowd. He started to mix his own music as he got older, and by the time he was 18, he was working as a DJ and MC in the Bronx.

Through his various performances, both the styles of rap and hip hop were born. Perhaps you are a little bit more familiar with Grandmaster Flash, and think that he was actually the one who started rap. Well, he certainly had a major role in popularizing the music, and he will always be remembered as one of the founding fathers. However, guess who he was inspired by and heavily influenced by? That's right. DJ Kool Herc.