During an interview with Vlad TV, Hip Hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa was asked to share his thoughts on Lord Jamar previously stating that white artists “are guests in the house of Hip Hop” and need to pay respect to those before them.
In response to Jamar’s comments, which were made in 2013, Bambaataa revealed that anyone who comes into Hip Hop, regardless of their race, should pay respect to the originators of Hip Hop. He then added that although the movement started with Blacks and Latinos, race isn’t as important now that Hip Hop is part of the “world community.”
“Well, that’s true with anybody that really gets in Hip Hop,” Afrika Bambaataa said in response to Lord Jamar’s comments. “Whites definitely was guests, but now they’re part of Hip Hop. Cause Hip Hop now is a world phenomenon. And it’s respected in many different countries, towns, and cities on our great planet. And yes, it started in the Black, Latino community…It started from our community and now it’s a world community.”
Bambaataa also spoke on the moment he began to see white emcees and deejays in Hip Hop. He says the introduction of white Hip Hop artists came with those in the punk rock scene.
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“Well, that came more when we started doing many of the travels into many different places,” he said. “Hitting the downtown scene. When we started playing like Club Negril, The Roxys, Tramps, and all the punk rock scenes. That’s when a lot of Europeans started getting into it. Cause the punk rockers are the first of the whites that started grabbing hold to the Hip Hop. And that’s when you started seeing European rappers coming out of England…Big-ups a lot to the punk rock movement that helped bring about that cause.”
Prior to speaking on matters of race and Hip Hop, Bambaataa spoke on the origins of the word “Hip Hop.” He revealed that the actual term comes from Keith Cowboy and Lovebug Starsky, a fact also mentioned by Grandmaster Caz in a recent interview, but was chosen as a word to represent the movement by the Universal Zulu Nation.
“The term itself comes from the clichéd raps of Keith Cowboy and Lovebug Starsky, who was using it in they raps,” Afrika Bambaataa said. “When we decided to call the culture Hip Hop, it came from us. When they wanted to give it a name. I looked back at what they was saying and I said ‘You know what? This is Hip Hop. Cause it’s something that’s hip and it makes you hop to the groove, to the beat.’ Cause we didn’t have no name before it. We was calling it [bo-yong-yong], the go-off, and all types of other names we used to call it. So, it was really Universal Zulu Nation that we decided to call the whole culture, movement, Hip Hop. Cause it was no culture. It was nothing under that until we decided to say ‘Come on, b-boys. Come on, deejays. Come on, emcees. Come on, aerosol writers.’ And adding that fifth element to it, called knowledge. And calling it elements came from the Universal Zulu Nation.”
