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 B R EA K I N ’
 I S S U E  01 4
 TO N Y  D  R. I. P. KOO L  K I M TO N Y  B U T TO N S
 L I V E O N  S E T ! 
 
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back to burn
speakerbussin’ up
in the bronx...
BY T LA ROCK
The rst time I heard
any music similar to hip-hop music waswhat’s now called break-beats. It was actually my father who
I rst heard playing records with breaks on them – though hewasn’t paying attention to the breaks! But the rst time I heardthem in a hip-hop context was through Kool Herc
(
pictured
),
who was from my area of the Bronx. This was in the early ‘70s,in the community centre of an apartment building. I’d heardbreaks before that, but it was just called funk. But Kool Herchad that system where you could really hear the pounding ofthe drums along with the bass part of the record.Kool Herc’s system didn’t consist of 10 or 20 speakers – hejust had huge speakers that packed a powerful punch. He alsoused to drive around with a speaker sticking out the trunk ofhis car. Back then you didn’t have built-in car sound-systems, soall around the Bronx you had people driving around, blastingthe music from speakers placed in the trunk of their cars. Theother thing we did – and this was before we’d go out to theparks to play – was I’d put out two big speakers in front of mybuilding, a two-family house, and play music that way.
A friend of mine at that time was a b-boy named Vincent
Thompson – he didn’t have a colourful name! – who was abreak-dancer; and also a deejay named Harold Jackson akaDJ Skeeter: these were people who were playing music in theneighbourhood. There was also one very well known b-boycalled Sah-Sah who denitely had the biggest local reputation
out of everyone.
I also studied kung-fu at an early age, just like DJ Breakout,
the deejay from the Funky Four [Plus One]
. He was a friend ofmine – I believe he lived in Edenmoore projects. We’d hang out,practice, spar together, and he, like Kool Herc, had speakersthat were so powerful he named them Sasquatch!Other deejays from that era who never get mentioned arePrince and Blackjack – who, by the way, was the rst ever personthat Kool Herc let on his system outside of his immediate crew.Blackjack played a lot of break records. There was also a hip-hop duo named DJ Pee-Wee and DJ Punch who were relevantat that time. These were all deejays from the Bronx, all from
the section where hip-hop started.
 
Tony D R.I.P.
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Recalling the Careerof the trenton icon…
ByJohn W McKelvey
On April 4th 2009,
word that Anthony Depula had passedaway started to spread across the internet and make roads
throughout the hip-hop community. It looked like a hoax atrst – for reasons we’ll come to later – but nally an article onNJ.comconrmed the tragic news.
Depula started out as one half of the Partners In Rhyme, as
Grand Poobah Tony D, releasing a two-song 12-inch record withCool Gino G in 1987: ‘It’s My Day’ b/w ‘I’m Terrifyin’’ on BodyRock Records, a division of Tommy Boy. It’s a fun ‘random rap’-sounding little record, produced by Vandy C, and with a distinct
 
LL Cool J inuence. Later, Tony dropped the Grand Poobahpart from his name, in deference to the Masters Of Ceremony’sGrand Puba Maxwell.
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