Announcer: Listener-supported WNYC Studios

Arun: This week the New York-born culture of hip-hop turns 50. August 11th is the day that Bronx-based DJ Kool Herc threw a party in the community room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue using a couple turntables and focusing on the percussion or breaks in the records. That style of DJing would become the blueprint for a musical revolution. In celebration of this milestone, hip-hop luminaries like Run-DMC, Nas, Snoop Dogg, and a lot of others are going to converge on Yankee Stadium this Friday for a concert called Hip Hop 50 Live.

We have one local luminary here to tell us a little bit about it as well as share some of his favorite tracks from the last 50 years. He started DJing when he was just eight, was spinning at Studio 54 by the time he was a teenager, and became known for his mix tapes. He's also produced tracks for artists like Heavy D, Jay-Z. Please welcome DJ Kid Capri. Hi, Kid. Welcome to the show.

Kid: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Arun: All right. You've been into music since you were pretty young. It's basically in your DNA. What drew you to hip-hop at that young age?

Kid: Well, the soul music always have been around my house. My dad is a soul singer. My grandfather is a trumpet player and he played with some of the best jazz players out there from Thelonious Monk to Miles Davis and Count Basie, sat in with a lot of guys at different shows so it was inevitable that his son was going to be in music, which he was. He was a sole singer. Music was always around the house since I was a kid. I started playing drums at four years old. At that time, I'm listening to James Brown and all the different soul and R&B music that was around the house so I grew up with it.

As a little kid, I would just play with the turntable and do things. This was way before hip-hop became into fruition as we knew it. Then when it came around, I went to a party and seen a DJ playing and I ran home and told my mother I wanted to be a DJ. She bought me this little mixer that had no headphone hold and that's how I got better than everybody in the neighborhood because I had no headphones to listen to what I was doing. I had to guess every spot that I was on that I was playing and it just made me a little bit more incredible than all the older dude and I'm this nine-year-old kid doing this.

I just started sticking with it. There was a girl that was in our circle that grew up with his name, Auga Carter. She was going to class with me one day and she said, "Kid Capri sounds like a good name for a DJ. You should try it." I got a sweatshirt, put Kid Capri on a sweatshirt. Maybe eight, nine months later, she was shot by accident by a stray bullet and died so I kept the name in her memory and it took me to the top. I became worldwide with that name. It was a lot of work, but it was beautiful.

Arun: I'm just remembering the scene from the NWA movie. You're looking down on Dr. Dre, this young man, and he's listening to Roy Ayers on his headphones. I'm just wondering for you at a young age, were there certain legends of music, the stuff that you grew up in, any particular songs or artists that you really helped inform the direction that you would take?

Kid: Besides the regulars that we all love, like James Brown was my number one of all time, but artists, there's many artists. Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and we can go on and on and on, but there's the artist that wasn't so known that made great music. I have a lot of that and I grew up with that and I listen to those things to this day. With all the things that's going on, I stay real balanced, in what's going on out here with the young kids and with the older people.

Being in the music business as long as I have, you have a wide broad spectrum and a wide thought process of what music is because you collect so many things. With me traveling around the world, traveling to new shows, I collect so much music around the world way ahead of the internet game so when the internet came out, it really got crazy. I got a chance to learn with things that I never knew about coming up. It's a big world with a lot of things in it.

I got a chance to just explore different things and find out different things. It's really big out there, but it's a lot of music that I grew up with that was the base of what everybody would love, which is regular soul music.

Arun: All right. I want to play a few songs that mean something to you to honor hip-hop's 50th birthday. Let's start with one of them. This is your number one pick. The Bridge is Over by Boogie Down Productions from 1987. Let's take a listen then we can talk about it on the other side.

MUSIC- Boogie Down Productions: The Bridge Is Over

I say, the bridge is over, the bridge is over, biddy-bye-bye

The bridge is over, the bridge is over, hey, hey

The bridge is over, the bridge is over, biddy-bye-bye

The bridge is over, the bridge is over

You see me come in any dance wid de spliff of sensei

Down with the sound called BDP

If you want to join the crew well you must see me

Ya can't sound like Shan or the one Marley

Because Shan and Marley Marl dem-a-rhymin' like they gay

Pickin' up the mic, mon, dem don't know what to say

Arun: All right. That's KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions with this classic track dissing Queens. What makes this a special record to you and to hip-hop?

Kid: Well, that record was so special because, first, it was a Bronx battle going against another battle. It wasn't really the battle going against a battle, it was crew going against crew but because the be loved KRS so much, it became a battle against be thing. It was a battle record, that record right there. When you make battle records, it's very tricky because not most battle records become hits so when a battle record become a hit, you got to hear this battle record all the time.

This battle record is going against somebody and that person that is going against, they got to hear this all their whole life, especially a record like The Bridge is Over. That record right there meant a lot to us because, one, it showed that you just can't run through people and people going to defend theyself if it was on wax, but that's where it stayed on, wax. That's what's great about our era back then, is that it didn't get valid, it didn't get crazy, people didn't get hurt. It was just a sport like any other sport, like boxing or anything else.

It was a sport and it was battling. Quick story. KRS-One, me and him have a special relationship because he's the godfather of my daughter being a love, the singer being a love. We did so many shows and so many things together. We have something coming up, as a matter of fact, tomorrow, right before I do Yankee Stadium. Then the next day, we're doing something. He's special in my life. He is really great at what he does and that record is really a monumental record.

Arun: Let's talk about another record, Run-DMC's Walk This Way. It's on your list. Revolutionary video. Also featuring Aerosmith and Steven Tyler's enormous mouth. Can you explain the importance of this record to you?

Kid: Yes. Yes. That Aerosmith record, we had a certain amount of essential break beats that when hip-hop started, before there was rap records. We used to rap over breakbeats. It'd be the MCs and the DJs in the party cutting the breakbeats and the MCs would rhyme over the breakbeats. That breakbeat walked this way. Aerosmith was one of the essential breakbeats and that's why Run-DMC used it because it was so popular in the street with hip-hop.

What they did was they went and got the actual group and remade the record and used the same words that was on the record, but they wrapped it. They wrapped it, Steven Tyler sang it and it just became something special. They knocked down the doors aboard because they was the first hip-hop group to go platinum and then the first hip-hop group to come out with a rock record and it becomes a hit the way it did. First of all, to take that type of chance at that time, it was a legendary move.

Hip-hop was brand new. We had to make careful moves because they told us that it wouldn't be here long. It was just a bunch of noise so we had to make careful moves. That was a real edgy move to do and it worked and it worked in a big, big way. When you're talking about top fives and all these different lists, you got to put Run-DMC as one of the top fives up there because without them, we probably wouldn't be where we at right now.

Arun: Let's play another clip from your best playlist from hip-hop's 50 years. This is Heavy D, Nuttin' But Love from 1992.

MUSIC - Heavy D: Nuttin' But Love

I know you want lots a jewels and stuff

Backyards with swimming pools, bar with stools and stuff

Fancy foods, lobster, sushi

Gear, Versace, Gucci, crazy Lucci

I know your MO, you do demo on a paycheck

You get hair from the barber, show him no respect

Middle name Price Tag, first name Got You

Start a scope, got on a roll, now they can't stop you

Talking about hey Boo, how you do?

Some clown uptown said you ran through his crew

I give you props and credit 'cause it's due

But I ain't that clown, and my crew ain't that crew

Times too hard to be faking like

Arun: That's Heavy D who sadly passed away in 2011. Tell us a little about Heavy D's style as a rapper and why he meant so much to you.

Kid: Well, let me tell you. First thing, that record right there, Nuttin' But Love, I produced that record and I wrote half of it. Heavy D was a good friend of mine and it was his last big hit before he passed away so I'm so proud and glad that I had a chance to contribute to his career with that record and it was a significant record for him.

Arun: Absolutely.

Kid: Heavy D was the type of rapper that you could listen to his music with your son and your grandfather. You know what I'm saying? Have a good time and enjoy it. He was very safe. He understood what it took to put people in the right state of mind. He didn't want things to be dangerous, that's why he never cursed on any of his records. He just had a vision and a sense of direction that he knew where he wanted to go and it worked for him. Everybody loved Heavy D. He was the nicest guy. Just the coolest dude.

He wanted everybody to always do good and always be in good positions. I used to go to his house and just play pool with him. You look at him and you talk to him, and the way he think and his ideas and how he wanted people to be good, it was just amazing. If the world was like him all the way around, we'd be in a much better place.

Arun: Let's go to another track from your list, 50 Cent's Into Club, 2003. Let's hear that real quick.

MUSIC - 50 Cents: Into Club

Go, go, go, go, go, go

Go, shorty

It's your birthday

We gon' party like it's your birthday

We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday

And you know we don't give a fuck it's not your birthday

You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub'

Look, mami, I got what you need, if you need to fill the buzz

I'm into havin' sex, I ain't into makin' love

So come give me a hug, if you into getting rubbed

You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub'

Arun: DJ Kid Capri, what was it that 50 Cent brought to the scene, especially with this song?

Kid: First of all, me and 50 Cent was on the same record label, Columbia Records, and I produced a record for him called Rowdy Rowdy, which was the first single of the LL Cool J, Omar Epps' movie, In Too Deep. At the time, Columbia Records didn't know what to do with 50 Cent, but he had this passion about him. I wanted him on my album that I was doing at the time, Soundtrack to the Streets, but for some reason, the company didn't let him be on the album. I don't know what happened. He had this passion about him that I've seen in him that he was going to be something, but I didn't know he was going to be as big as he got.

From him being a hustler in the street, he took that and applied it to the music business and the entertainment business. That's why he's doing so well because he knew this early on with being the street guy. You know what I'm saying? Look at Jay-Z. Same thing. Their hustle and street mentality is just a little different than because they got to make it, they got to do it. The way he does things, it works. When he came out with that record in the club, I would have to play that record five, six, seven times back-to-back because the crowd would lose their mind every time I played it.

It just changed the game. Dr. Dre gave him something special. He was destined because he knew exactly what he wanted to do and he had the right team, Eminem, Dr. Dre behind him, Jimmy Iovine. You couldn't ask for nothing better. You know what I'm saying?

Arun: Kid Capri, we got to leave it there. Thanks so much. Performing tomorrow at Yankee Stadium, that's DJ Kid Capri. Thanks so much for making time for us today.

Kid: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.