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Philadelphia was writing before the world was listening. Names on walls from North Philly to the zoo, the Sound of Philadelphia on every radio in America, rhyming DJs on the AM dial, and, in 1979, the city's first words on wax.
Philly Hip Hop History1965 to 1979
Now playingFirst Words
Before anyone called it hip hop, Philadelphia had the writers, the records, the rhyming radio DJs and the party DJs.
It was a city of row houses, shrinking factories and hard politics, where youth gangs were a crisis and police counted more than 200 of them during the decade. Out of those same blocks came kids writing their names on walls, a soul sound that rivaled Motown, radio DJs rhyming between records, and party DJs working parks and basements.
When the sound came together up the turnpike in the Bronx, Philadelphia already spoke the language. This chapter is how the city got ready.
Writers
Brewerytown and Strawberry Mansion, North Philly
At 12, Darryl McCray was sent to the Youth Development Center, where a cook nicknamed him after he kept asking for cornbread. He started writing the name there. Back at Strawberry Mansion Junior High, he wrote "Cornbread Loves Cynthia" across North Philadelphia to get a girl's attention, and kept going.
In 1971 a newspaper reported that "Cornbread" had been shot dead. It was another young man. McCray answered by climbing into the elephant enclosure at the Philadelphia Zoo and painting "Cornbread Lives" on its side. He is widely credited as the first modern graffiti writer.
Writers
North Philadelphia
With Cool Earl, Kool Klepto Kidd and others, writing became a North Philly youth culture by the end of the 1960s: names as public art and private fame, tracked from neighborhood to neighborhood. The form traveled to New York, where subway writers took it around the world.
Before rap, before scratching, the culture's first element was a name in paint. These are some of the Philadelphia writers who put it there.
Label
309 S. Broad Street
Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell launch Philadelphia International Records with CBS distribution, in the former Cameo-Parkway building on South Broad. They cut most of their records at Joe Tarsia's Sigma Sound Studios on North 12th Street, open since 1968, with the house band MFSB: drummer Earl Young, bassist Ronnie Baker and guitarist Norman Harris under strings and horns.
Record
The O'Jays, 1972
The O'Jays' first Philadelphia International single reaches No. 1 R&B and No. 3 on the Hot 100, and "Love Train" goes to No. 1 early the next year. Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones" spends three weeks at No. 1 and wins a Grammy.
Listen to Back Stabbers on Spotify (opens in a new tab)Radio
WDAS 1480 AM and 105.3 FM
WDAS-FM turns to soul in 1971 and backs the label's records. In 1972 its general manager sues Arbitron on behalf of every Black station over the undercount of Black listeners; Arbitron settles and changes its methods. That same October, Soul Train goes into syndication, and Philadelphia is one of its first eight cities.
Record
MFSB, Sigma Sound
The house band steps out under its own name. Recorded at Sigma, "Love Is the Message" stretches into long instrumental passages, and DJs learn to ride them; it stays a DJ record for years.
Listen to Love Is the Message on Spotify (opens in a new tab)Record
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes
On "The Love I Lost," Earl Young puts his open hi-hat and four-on-the-floor kick right up front. It reaches No. 1 R&B and is cited as one of the first disco records. The dance beat hip hop's DJs inherited starts here.
Up the turnpike
1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the Bronx · August 11, 1973
DJ Kool Herc plays his sister's party and stretches the break, the part of the record where the drums take over, so the dancers can go off. The date is the one the culture celebrates as hip hop's birthday. Philadelphia was ninety miles away and already listening.
Record
MFSB featuring The Three Degrees
Written as the theme for Soul Train, "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" tops the Billboard Hot 100, the first TV theme to do it, and wins a Grammy. Every Saturday, a Philly record opens the most important Black music show on television. The sound has a name, and the name is the city's.
Listen to TSOP on Spotify (opens in a new tab)The city
House of Umoja, West Philadelphia · January 1, 1974
Falaka and David Fattah had taken their son's gang into their home, the House of Umoja. On New Year's Day 1974, at their call, hundreds of gang members meet and sign the Imani pledge: no gang war in '74. Dozens of gangs sign on over the year, and gang killings fall over the next three. The parties of the next decade happen in a city its young people made safer themselves.
The Sound of Philadelphia ran down one avenue. Ride it south.
Schematic, not to scale.
The DJs
North and West Philly
Disco fills the clubs, but in the neighborhoods the party is wherever a DJ can plug in. Party veterans remember most of it happening in church basements, rec centers and parks. Around 1975 a ten-year-old named Jeffrey Townes, later DJ Jazzy Jeff, spends a block party sitting beside the DJ instead of dancing.
Black-owned Carman Gardens on Germantown Avenue and the Elmwood rink in Southwest Philly keep young people skating to the same records.
Radio
WHAT and WDAS, on the AM dial
Long before anyone rapped on a record, Philly radio DJs rhymed on the air. Jocko Henderson talked in rhyme through his "Rocket Ship Show" from 1954 to 1964, and is widely named as a forerunner of the MC. Georgie Woods, on WDAS from 1953, mixed music with civil-rights talk, chartered buses to the 1963 March on Washington and promoted the revues at the Uptown.
Record
Sigma Sound · May 1976
Double Exposure's "Ten Percent," a Philadelphia group's record cut at Sigma Sound and stretched out by DJ Walter Gibbons, is sold to the public on a 12-inch single, the first ever. The format DJs would cut and scratch for the next fifty years starts with a Philly record.
Record
The Trammps
A Philadelphia group cuts one of disco's biggest anthems. The city's studios and players are behind a huge share of the dance records of the decade.
Listen to Disco Inferno on Spotify (opens in a new tab)Hip hop was built out of records, and a lot of them were made in Philadelphia. Thom Bell and Linda Creed's "People Make the World Go Round" for the Stylistics turns up under Naughty by Nature, Westside Connection and Scarface in the 1990s. The Delfonics' "Ready or Not Here I Come" becomes the Fugees' "Ready or Not" and a Missy Elliott single. The strings and drums cut on North 12th Street in the 1970s became raw material for the next generation.
The city
The White House · June 7, 1979
Kenny Gamble and broadcaster Ed Wright founded the Black Music Association in 1978 and proposed a month for Black music. On June 7, 1979, President Carter hosts the association at the White House and recognizes June as Black Music Month. Broadcaster Dyana Williams, who moves to Philadelphia the next year, is credited as a co-creator.
Record
Sigma Sound
Recorded at Sigma, McFadden & Whitehead's single reaches No. 1 R&B and No. 13 on the Hot 100 in the spring, and is called a new Black national anthem.
Listen to Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now on Spotify (opens in a new tab)Record
Philadelphia International
After decades of rhyming on the radio, Jocko cuts "Rhythm Talk" for Philadelphia International, backed with an instrumental of "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now": the radio rhymer's style, finally on a record.
Listen to Rhythm Talk on Spotify (opens in a new tab)Up the turnpike
Sugar Hill Records, Englewood, New Jersey
"Rapper's Delight" takes rap from the parks to the pop charts in the fall of 1979. Labels everywhere start looking for rappers, and Philadelphia already has them.
Listen to Rapper's Delight on Spotify (opens in a new tab)Record
TEC Records, Philadelphia
Wendy Clark of Wynnefield, an Overbrook High student who had just started on the radio, heard "Rapper's Delight" in New York and went home to record "To the Beat Y'All" as Lady B for the local TEC label. Sugar Hill reissued it in 1980. It is widely credited as the first single by a solo woman rapper, and with Jocko's "Rhythm Talk" it is one of Philadelphia's first two rap records.
This record isn't on any streaming service. If you have a copy, the archive wants to hear from you.
Radio
November 1979
WDAS, the city's leading Black station, is sold to the Black-owned Unity Broadcasting Network.
More of the people who were there at the start. From the founder's own list of Philly names. Know someone we missed? Tell us.
The words are on wax. In the 1980s Philadelphia's DJs take over, a West Philly record changes the map, and the first rap Grammy comes home.
Next1980s · City of DJsOut now
Compiled from oral-history interviews with the people who were there and from published histories and discographies. History told by the culture is argued about by the culture: if you remember it differently, or you have the flyer, the tape or the photo, tell us or add it to the archive.
Photo credits for this chapter are on the credits page.
