Ok, so I'm going to talk a bit about the history of Hip Hop culture in Philadelphia today.

There's obviously a bunch of stuff that I don't know and moments in time that I was not around to experience.

Anyone who knows better, feel free to jump in, and make corrections:

I've been writing about Philly Hip Hop for a long time. How long you ask?

Last night, this VH1 documentary about the rapper Eve popped up while I was watching Youtube and I definitely wrote an article in the Philly Word zine that someone is holding in the thumbnail. Lol

Even before Hip Hop culture as we know it flowered out of the Bronx, Philly (like many other big cities with Black folks in the post-war era), was already equipped with a rich local culture that Hip Hop would later commingle with.

This 1967 documentary The Jungle is based on gang members from 18th & Oxford in North Philly.

Peep the 4:44 mark where they're strolling the block doing rhymed routines. This shows that Philly had an indigenous rhyming culture pre-1973.

In addition to its local rhyming, graffiti, and social dancing cultures, Philadelphia also had an existing DJ culture by the time Hip Hop came around.

This is my dad and his crew, The Mad-Hatters. They would hire DJs and throw cabarets around the city in the 70s. My pops is second from the right in the dark jacket.

This is Wendy Clark aka Lady B. She is considered to be the first Woman to release a solo rap record (1979's "To the Beat Y'all")

When I asked her how she learned how to rap, she told me that she would watch Philadelphia 76er World B. Free do it at parties.

Dr. Perri Johnson would also do rhymed routines on his radio show on WDAS

In the summer of 1984, a group of young Philadelphians performed as part of the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife.

The Philly contingent consisted of the Scanner Boys b-boy crew and a young DJ Cosmic Kev.