The Labels Are Not Responsible for Kool Herc

Whats up everyone? I took the previous week off, and I am here to berate knowledge into your awaiting heads. Also, look out for my Marsha Ambrosius interview dropping to DJBoothTV really soon.

Unless you have been checking dead blog sites, Dj Kool Herc - the creator of the genre which has brought all of us together - is in the hospital and in need of your donations in order to pay for his surgery. Sadly enough he, like many Americans, did not have health insurance. This is a harsh reality for many citizen's across this great country, and I urge you all that if you can afford it, get health insurance. You never know.

Anyway, many people have been donating to Kool Herc’s bills. This is great to show how the whole community can come together under one goal in order to help one of our own survive. Especially the creator! However there is a select few of you all who are salty at the Labels for not footing the bill of his hospital surgery. This article is dedicated you all.

Even if you hate everything a record label represents, in no way can you expect them to pay for the hospital bills of someone that is not even signed to their conglomerate. Some of you expect so because they profit off of a genre that he created. That idea is flawed in so many ways. You all are forgetting that at the end of the day this is a business. The labels are here to make money...not pay homage. Some of you feel that this is wrong, disgusting, and terrible - but it is the world we live in.

How could you expect Warner or Sony to pay for Herc’s bills while they announce lower CD sales as the years go on? They barely have enough capital to fund projects from their own artists or sign new ones! Just because they make money off of the industry does not MEAN they are RESPONSIBLE to pay for the man who CREATED the genre. If this went down, then every Hip Hop great that partied too hard will be asking for dues on everything. Child support, etc...where does it stop?

Technically Herc’s bills are not any one's responsibility but his, however I can say that we as the fans SHOULD cover them. If anyone were to have to come out of pocket it must be US the fans and not the people who provide us the music. WE are the ones who listen to this music everyday - who use this music to get past our troubles - to help us GET BY. It is our duty to help out some of the remaining fathers of our genre. Not the labels. Get real people.

I also want to say this too..the whole “donate me money so I can go on tour, pay for a feature, beats etc”...I don’t fuxks with it at all. I am a friend to many underground Rock bands who PAY OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS for their OWN TOURS...MERCH...CD’S....ETC. With NO REAL INTERNET blog game to PROMOTE THEM but THEMSELVES. Essentially, if we attend a show on tour that is the same to “donating” to your next tour.

Tune in for my next article, “Hip Hop - the most unfriendly genre of music”

Just throwing that out there...

(Jacques Morel is the creator of IFuxksWithThat.com. A journalist, interviewer, and personality he is a College Senior, he attends St Johns University in Queens.)