For years, rap was just live party music, with MCs chattering over the breaks that their DJs put together. Hip-hop, as a form of music, had its semi-official beginning in 1973, when Kool Herc, the Jamaican-born teenage DJ, played records at a back-to-school party in the rec room of his Bronx apartment building, cutting between the percussive breaks of funk singles and accidentally birthing a whole genre.
A rap song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
