The godfather of hip-hop DJ Kool Herc threw his very first party on August 11, 1973 in the community room at
“This is where it came from,” Herc told the Times. “This is it. The culture started here and went around the world. But this is where it came from. Not anyplace else.”
The reason that Herc, his sister Cindy, and the 100 residents of the building want it protected is because the owner announced that the owners would leave the city’s subsidy program, which makes the building affordable for low and moderate income families to live. The owners want to offer housing on the open market, making rent increase immensely. Even though getting the building registered with the National Register of Historic Places wouldn’t make rent go down, it would protect the building from any changes, which would be necessary if the landlords want to get families with a high income in there.
“That place means everything,” hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Caz told the Times. “You can look at it objectively and say it could have happened somewhere else. Maybe. But this is where it did happen. As far as government and what they consider important, who knows? But for something that saturated the world culture, that went from one building to the world, I would want to hold on to the historical significance of that building.”
The Real Fergie Calls Out BEP’s Fergie
When Fergie dropped her debut album, “The Dutchess”, last year, people actually thought that the real “Fergie”, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of
"When I heard that Fergie was not only calling herself Fergie, but called her album ‘The Dutchess,’ I thought: Right. She owes me. It’s one thing to call yourself Fergie, but another to take the duchess title,"
Fergie showed up at Cipriani’s in