“It’s like reconstructing the debris of old pop paraphernalia… what’s exciting about it is that you no longer need to buy guitars. You can choose a friend up the road, put your decks together with a beatbox and make your own records, demoralising [sic] the pop myth and beginning to find a way of using material yourself .”

On November 19 1982, the UK’s national weekly youth music programme The Tube included a segment marking the occasion when the terms (and concepts of) “scratching”, “break-dancing” and “hip-hop” were introduced to a mass British audience for the first time.

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Tags: Adam & The Ants, Afrika Bambaataa, Bond's, Funkapolitan, Gaz's Rocking Blues, Grandmaster Flash, Jools Holland, Meard Street, Melle Mel, Michael Holman, Nick Jones, Sugarhill Gang, The Clash, The Gargoyle, The Tube, Tom Dixon, Wham, Zulu Nation

Beat This: A Hip Hop History is an hour-long documentary broadcast by BBC in its Arena strand in 1984 and directed by Dick Fontaine (who I interviewed for my Goldie book back in the early 00s).

In one section Malcolm McLaren talks about his August 1981 introduction to Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation in the south Bronx.

This was effected by artist/filmmaker/writer Michael Holman; his often overlooked achievements include actually naming the genre “hip hop” in his East Village Eye column, founding the noise group Gray with Jean-Michel Basquiat (Holman also wrote the 1996 Julian Schnabel-directed biopic), running the world’s first hip-hop club (Negril, on 11th Street), creating the New York City Breakers and making the films and TV shows Catch A Beat, Beat Street and Graffiti Rock.

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Tags: Afrika Bambaataa, Bow Wow Wow, Dick Fontaine, Duck Rock, Goldie, Graffiti Rock, Gray, Imhotep Gary Byrd, Jarrell Mason, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, Michael Holman, Negril, Rock Steady Crew, Rory Johnston, The Ritz, Zulu Nation