DJ Kool Herc

CTL-E-6111 · Person · musician · 1955–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07330 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6111.

DJ Kool Herc, born Clive Campbell on April 16, 1955, in Kingston, Jamaica, is a Jamaican American disc jockey credited by Britannica as the founder of hip-hop. Campbell immigrated to the Bronx in 1967, and his family settled at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. On August 11, 1973, his sister Cindy Campbell hosted a back-to-school party in the building's recreation room and hired her brother to deejay. There he introduced his two-turntable technique, which he called the merry-go-round, using two copies of the same record to loop the percussive breaks in funk songs and extend the passages dancers loved, while calling out dancers he named B-boys and B-girls. Music historians credit the innovations at that party with providing the foundation for hip-hop, and August 11, 1973, is now considered the music's birth date. Herc's style influenced Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. He stopped performing after a 1977 stabbing, appeared in the 1984 film Beat Street, and was recognized by Congress in 2021. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 2023.

The record

• Also known as: Clive Campbell, Kool Herc

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 4 — 747 Program, Wave 11; fourth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no DJ Kool Herc entity in the live graph at 3,763 entities (exact / normalized / alias match + token containment; CLEAR). ID CTL-E-6111 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 3 packet ordered reserve, position 26 of 35 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1876). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Canon record — Bronx hip-hop founding figure; no Chicago tie claimed. Vital status: Living: born April 16, 1955 (Britannica, accessed 2026-10-16); he gave an interview to Spin magazine in 2023 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023 (Britannica; Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, both accessed 2026-10-16). No death is reported in any source opened. STATISTICS — STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Britannica (accessed 2026-10-16) dates Campbell's birth to April 16, 1955, and records Herc's own recollection that the 1973 party charged 25 cents for girls and 50 cents for fellas. A 2021 congressional resolution recognized August 11 as Hip Hop Celebration Day, and a 2023 resolution commemorated August 11, 2023, as the 50th anniversary of hip-hop (Britannica). CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: derivative summaries of Campbell's biography variously describe him as 16 and as 18 years old at the August 1973 party; Britannica's birth date (April 16, 1955) makes him 18, and one authority-file listing also carries an alternative birth date of April 16, 1952. This packet states no age for the party and keeps Britannica's 1955 date. MEDIA: photo HELD (Photograph of DJ Kool Herc performing on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library's Central Branch on June 14, 2008, captioned on the Britannica biography page (cdn.britannica.com) — a later PHOTO-001 pass to verify credit and rights; no license claimed here. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6111-dj-kool-herc.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (person record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Persons carry no map in the packet standard.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged.) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged.)

Relationships

• Grandmaster Flash — related to
  Britannica: Herc's techniques and style influenced the earliest hip-hop artists, including Grandmaster Flash.

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "DJ Kool Herc" (published 2023-08-24; accessed 2026-10-16) — born Clive Campbell, April 16, 1955, Kingston; immigrated to the Bronx in 1967; family at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue; August 11, 1973 back-to-school party hosted by Cindy Campbell; merry-go-round two-turntable break technique; B-boys and B-girls; influence on Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash; 1977 stabbing; Beat Street (1984); 2021 congressional recognition; 2023 Rock Hall selection — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kool-Herc (primary source · build store)
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, "DJ Kool Herc" (accessed 2026-10-16) — inducted 2023, Musical Influence category, inducted by LL Cool J; credited with inventing 'the break' with two turntables and a mixer and creating the blueprint for hip-hop; Jamaican sound-system 'toasting' tradition brought to a Bronx party in 1973 — https://staging.rockhall.com/inductees/dj-kool-herc (primary source · build store)

More person records

• John Drake
• John Duke Kisch
• John Fountain
• John Glenn
• John Gray
• John H. Johnson

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-6111 · Combined Graph record U-07330 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.