With hip-hop now a multi-billion dollar industry, there is no excuse for the founding fathers not getting their due. Most notably, the man who started it all; Kool Herc. How is the founder of his genre working at Fed-Ex when so many living off his legacy are pulling in millions? Roots drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson is looking to put an end to that.
“I’m on a one-man mission to start a foundation that will honor the forefathers of hip-hop, especially Kool Herc,” ?uest told the Dallas News. “Nobody knows who he is. There’s no reason why the man who invented hip-hop should be working for Fed-Ex right now.”
Hip hop was born at Kool Herc’s legendary block parties in the late ’70s in the Bronx, but Herc never got into the commercial aspect of rap and never saw a dime from his creation. This is what ?uest is out to change. “I’d like to present Herc with a $ 1 million award, and I’m gonna spend the next year hitting up anyone in hip-hop who makes over $ 10 million net in a fiscal year, the Jay-Zs, the Eminems, the Russell Simmons. I think they can afford to put up $ 100,000 each, and if we got five or 10 of them, we could have a sort of MacArthur Award for hip-hop. … I know you can’t compensate intellectual property, but it would be nice if Kool Herc could pay his electric bill.”
