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There’s nobody better to speak with ahead of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary than the world-renowned Kid Capri.
Of course, the stellar DJ proudly hails from hip-hop’s birthplace — a spot that we know locally as the Boogie Down Bronx. He has been an instrumental force in music since the late 1980s, making smash hits for such artists as Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Heavy D, 50 Cent and even the Queen of Pop, Madonna herself.
As Aug. 23 approaches — the fateful date that DJ Kool Herc first broke a beat at a back-to-school party in 1973 — Kid Capri took time on “Renaissance Man” to reflect on the pioneers responsible for the genre’s explosion throughout the past half-century.
Kid especially sounded off on the influence of his good friend from The Bronx and occasional show partner Grandmaster Flash.
“He will [still] come to my shows to see this pandemonium going on,” Kid told me. Giving the DJ his propers, he told me Flash will “just turn around and say, ‘Yo, I’m so proud of you, man. You just took it and made it what it is [now]. You took it to another level and were able to bring money to it.’”
“Keep in mind, these dudes [like Flash], they’re my heroes,” Kid added, “because they didn’t get the money, the accolades and all the stuff that they should have gotten that I got.”
Flash, who began his career dumpster-diving around Hunts Point to find DJ equipment, also motivated Kid in his trade.
By the time the 1990s rolled along, Kid’s mixtapes made it abundantly clear that a DJ was as important if not more than being an emcee.
“I wanted to be looked at as an artist. I didn’t want to be looked at as somebody just playing records or standing behind somebody,” Kid said. “I wanted to be a force to be reckoned with against the guy that has the big hit platinum record. And that was my focus.”
As the genre evolved to a global enterprise, so did Kid Capri’s repertoire. He gained national recognition as the DJ for Russell Simmons’ series “Def Comedy Jam.”
“I owe a lot of lessons to that,” he said. “I’m appreciative for what [Simmons] did with that because it was a big, big moment for me … It changed my life in the craziest way.”
Kid’s time on the HBO staple led to the zeniths of his star-studded career.
The first was winning a Grammy for producing on Jay-Z’s 1998 album, “Vol. 2 … Hard Knock Life.”
The other was narrating Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album, 2017’s “Damn.”
It remains the only hip-hop album to receive that award.
“I told [Kendrick], ‘Why did you come and get me?’” Kid recalled. “He said, ‘I know what you did, Kid, for music. I know what you did for the DJ business. I know what you’ve done, period.’”
Throughout his several decades in the hip-hop game, Kid — a devout lover of battle rap — has also preached a message essential to the culture and one we can all get behind: cutting violence out of the music.
To do so, he’s signed on to the relaunch of the Stop the Violence campaign — an artist-led movement that started in the late 1980s that advocates sending a better message through hip-hop.
“That’s not what music is. You shouldn’t have to die over music — something that’s supposed to be fun,” Kid said. “I hope people really get what’s at stake … When you go and make these gang records or these records about killing people, inciting these things, it just makes [hip-hop] go down further.”
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