And so we knew that Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Four won because of that. We felt like Raheim threw the battle because he said he didn't wanna sing - he was the singer and the harmonizer of the group. One day we had a battle and we come to find out that Rahiem from our group was thinking about going over to the Furious Four. I never felt no kind of way because my group had always let people know, out there in New York City or wherever we travel - whether it was Connecticut, Washington, D.C., any place up and down the I-95 corridor - that MC Sha-Rock was the best female MC, and that they had the best female MC ever. In order to compete with my group, a lot of other groups were scrambling trying to find female MCs that can be able to deal with Sha-Rock. I was the first and the only female MC to ever battle anybody. That means groups going against each other. So the Funky 4 and the Furious Four - before we became the Funky 4 + 1, and before they became the Furious Five - we created the first rap battles in the history of hip-hop culture.
Then you had the Furious Four, which was Grandmaster Flash's group. This is how we became the original Funky 4. And then at the beginning of '78, we add another MC to the group, Rahiem. In late 1977, I became the first female MC, but at the time there were only two male MCs - Keith Keith and K.K. But because they loved the way that I wrote my rhyme and how my cadence was, I became the MC for the organization.įlyers for early hip-hop events featuring Sha-Rock, including one as a member of the original Funky 4. I had to go home from school that day I wrote the rhyme on the bus and just recited it over and over and over again heading back uptown. Everybody uptown knew where he worked, where he lived. And so I took a friend with me uptown in the Bronx and auditioned. Would you wanna come and audition for MC?" I said, "Sure, why not?" The audition was held in the basement at DJ Breakout's house. He said, "Listen, you know, we're having an audition. It just empowered you as a woman.Ī young man that was a part of the organization called the Brothers Disco Work was passing out flyers. I mean, just being out there in the street and just listening to some of this, the sounds and the music and the percussion - it just gave you a feeling like you could just take on the world. So when we came within that circle, that was our way to get away from all the other negative stuff. Some of us was living in poverty, politicians always doing their own thing. But there was just a feeling that you knew you had to be a part of. I traveled all over the Bronx just to be a part of the whole scene.
I used to travel around with them to B-girl, to every park jam, every DJ that played, every house party, every hip-hop venue. They taught me what it was to uprock, what it was to just hit the beats whenever you hear that certain break beat.įrom there, you know, I used to travel and watch the famous twins perform, back then were called the N**** Twins, now they are called the Legendary Brothers, Keith and Kevin. The first person that I saw breakdance was friends of mine that had went to junior high school with me. The very moment my taste for hip-hop is 1976 as a B-girl - you know, being out there, break dancing, watching young kids move around throughout the Bronx, traveling as nomadic B-girls and B-boys, just to hit those breakbeats. Yet she is not given her due as a trailblazer.
She was such a titanic force in early rap communities that even DMC, one third of the game-changing group Run-DMC, cites her as an influence. The retelling of hip-hop history centers men, often excluding the women in the same frame, so if you haven't heard about MC Sha-Rock, original member of Sugar Hill's Funky 4 + 1, and the first woman MC, you're not alone. These are familiar figures in recaps of rap's ascent into a global phenomenon, but who gets to leave a legacy and who gets left out? The late 1970s and early 1980s were a formative time for MCing with seminal acts from Sugar Hill Records leading the charge: Keef Cowboy, of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, is often credited with coining the term "hip-hop," and, in 1979, the trio The Sugarhill Gang released "Rapper's Delight," which broke the music for a national audience.
#80s hip hop female artists tv
Hip-hop was born in the Bronx at a back-to-school party in 1973, when DJ Kool Herc started scratching for the crowd, but rapping didn't become the music's primary form until it transitioned beyond the party - with record deals, singles, tours and TV spots.
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