local community centers, on city blocks, and in gymnasiums that
played host to those early hip-hop parties. His response to an initial
oƒer to record the music he was helping to create was incredibly
naïve: “Let’s keep it underground. Nobody outside the Bronx would
like this stuƒ anyway.” And then he heard the Sugarhill Gang on the
radio.

It was the autumn of 1979 and Flash could not believe his ears. “I

heard this record on the radio almost every ten minutes on almost
every station that I switched to,” Flash remembered. “They said it was
these boys out of Jersey.” The success of the record haunted him; he
realized that he had missed out on an opportunity to be the first to
record the music he would eventually help introduce to the world. As
he listened with equal parts of disbelief and amazement to rap’s first
commercial hit, he sensed that what he and others were doing might
be on the verge of something big. Just how big no one could have ever
imagined in 1979.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

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