I’m going to do my best to take you on a chronological aural tour of KC hip-hop. It is incomplete (as completion is impossible) and draws heavily from excellent pieces by KCUR and The Pitch, linked below, as well as my upcoming discussion with Reach on Dat Fury Radio. What I’m hoping to add is the chronological aspect, and to embed the music being discussed to the extent that it’s currently available.
KCUR – 50 Years Of Kansas City Hip-Hop, From The Golden Age To Modern Masters
The Pitch KC – 50 Years Of Hip-Hop In KC – No Coast Rap Culture Runs Deep
I will focus on recordings, which are my main interest, with examples every year or two; radio, promoters, breakdancers, graffiti artists, and others are certainly important to the larger story of hip-hop in our area, but are not the focus here.
The earliest mention of KC hip-hop that I have found comes from 1978. Vonzell Bryant, “Captain Vonzell,” was already a DJ and businessman, but according to The Pitch:
Bryant’s entire approach to spinning music at parties changed after a trip to New York City in 1978. While in the Big Apple, he was introduced to the culture of rapping, beatboxing, DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti. He witnessed what is called the five elements of hip-hop and brought back what he heard and saw—an importer of the sights and sounds of Blackness future. Like all things new, early adopters experienced a few… hiccups. “I started scratching and mixing records at my parties,” says Bryant. “But the people wasn’t with all that. They would yell at me, ‘Hey, quit fucking up the music.’ It eventually caught on, but it took a while.”
Gary Edwin, the legendary “DJ Fresh,” was creating pause tapes by the following year. Throughout 1980, Captain Vonzell along with DJs including Arthur Davis and Marcyl Goode (AKA DJ Kut-Fast) were bringing hip-hop music and DJ performance to parties in the metro.
The Pitch describes the scene around 1980:
Arthur Davis, a former session drummer for Stax Records, worked as a substitute teacher for the Kansas City Missouri School District starting in 1980 … Davis organized and performed from behind a latex Richard Nixon mask. “Mr. President” knew how to throw a party, and these evenings served as the launching pad for a burgeoning music scene.
Affectionately called “The Castle on the Hill,” Lincoln High School was the epicenter for early hip-hop culture in Kansas City—long before it became a pinnacle of academic success … Davis himself was not a DJ. He hired a crew of turntablists (Vincent D. Irving, aka DjV, and Delano “Silky Smooth” Walker) who played the music. Soon these parties spread to other high schools, and DJ crews like Robert Harris and the Knights of the Sound Tables, Sergeant Oooh-Wee, Shawn Copeland, The Inner City Player Macks, and D. Mustafah began promoting parties at Paseo High School, Southeast High School, and Southwest High School.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, the first Kansas City hip-hop recording is 1981’s “Laugh and Dance” by Omer Coleman II, AKA “Starship Commander Wooooo Wooooo.”
