Your Favorite Rapper is Poor: Long Live Kool Herc Special Edition

This weekend DJ Premier announced the sad news that hip-hop godfather Kool Herc had to undergo a serious surgery and, lacking medial insurance, needed the rap community's support to pay his medical bills, a situation that sheds a sad light on the fates of those who paved the road modern rappers drive down in Maybachs.

For those who don't know (shame on you), as much as a worldwide cultural phenomenon can be attributed to one man, hip-hop can be attributed to Kool Herc. It was Herc who starting throwing parties in the Bronx in the late 70s, inventing a technique using two turntables to extend the "break" of soul and disco records, allowing people to dance to only the heaviest and most percussive portions of every record. It's a concept so integral to hip-hop few even notice it anymore, but the same could be said of electricity and the telephone. One man invented it, his name is Kool Herc, and every rapper who's ever lived wouldn't be here if it weren't for him.

I obviously can't claim to know anything about Herc's personal finances, and he did develop a serious drug habit (which he's reportedly kicked), but regardless, Herc's story of financial hardship is only too familair. When Herc was plying his trade hip-hop as we know it literally didn't exist. It'd be more than a decade before anyone seriously believed it was anything more than a fad, and more than two decades before anyone in the industry started to make serious, sustainable money.

Like Chuck Berry and countless others who worked in the early days of rock n' roll, there simply wasn't much money going around, and what little money was available was tightly controlled by shady promoters and label execs who conned artists into signing almost unimaginably poor deals. In other words, it almost never pays to go first.



There's no hip-hop union, and no retirement plan, which is why through this series I've stressed the need for rappers to be smart about their money - the profits they're making today, if they're making any profits at all, have to last them for the rest of their lives. But for the guys who laid the foundation that kind of long term planning isn't even an option. In many ways it's not unlike the first NFL players who were lucky to make a few dollars a game, then found themselves with broken bank accounts and broken bodies later in life.

Also like the NFL, it's shameful that those who are making millions are seemingly so unwilling to help those who built their profession into such a profitable enterprise. Those young athletes and rappers seem to have a "I got mine, it's their fault they didn't get theirs" attitude that's shockingly selfish, and in many ways historically ignorant. Herc is absolutely responsible for living his own life, but for the price of one flight on a G4 jet some rich rapper could secure Herc health insurance for the rest of his life. Frankly it's the least they could do.

As so often seems to be the case though, it's the common man who actually helps the common man. So until one of these giant diamond pendant wearing rappers actually steps up, those who want to support the man who started it all can attend Tony Touch's benefit concert in NYC (February 1st), donate via paypal to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) , or send donations to Kool Herc Productions PO Box 20472 Huntington Station, NY 11746.