As the world prepares to celebrate hip hop’s 50th anniversary on Aug. 11, rap icon Chuck D is taking a look back at a seminal moment that led to the birth of the music.
The 1971 murder of a Bronx gang member known as Black Benjie resulted in rival gangs agreeing to lay down their arms, and is said to have sparked a new era of creative collaboration in the black community.
The event is the focus of a new Audible podcast titled “Can You Dig It? A Hip Hop Origin Story,” narrated by Chuck D and set to launch Aug. 10.
The “historical mixtape” as Chuck calls it, covers “the germination of the seed behind hip hop, and what really led to it,” he told the Daily News.
For Chuck D, the story of hip hop is intertwined with his own story. Co-founding the rap group Public Enemy with Flavor Flav in 1985, Chuck has been a fixture in the industry ever since.
In 2013, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and in 2020 received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award as a member of Public Enemy.
He’s also remained an outspoken activist throughout the years, testifying before Congress in 2004 to advocate for peer-to-peer music sharing, making political statements in his music and even publishing essays on the state of hip hop.
“In the beginning, for hip hop to have any voice, it had to be a collective effort. It was a community effort,” said Chuck, who was 13 years old when the music was beginning to take shape.
Now, Chuck says, he’s proud to be part of a community working to illuminate an important cultural history.
The podcast delves into the 1971 Hoe Avenue Peace Treaty, which brought together hundreds of rival gang members who committed to cease hostilities and redirect their energies towards the creative arts.
Chuck says it’s the seed that led to a legendary night: When DJ Kool Herc is credited with instituting a new technique at a 1973 dance bash in the Bronx, spinning the same record on twin turntables.
Soon, other deejays in the Bronx were using the same technique, and a movement was born.
“Can You Dig It?” speaks to really pulling down the facts that led to hip hop,” Chuck said.
“It’s one thing to have mythology, but mythology has to be pulled down out of the air and documented because people can believe anything. When you actually pull down the facts, you honor the pain of the pioneer.”
