lets go like M.O. about the genesis of hip hop—shall we start at the sugar hill gang? Afrika Bambaataa? Just what did it mean to take two records and a crossfader and amp up the party?

focus on the celebratory aspect—and where does that communal impluse come from?

the block party the rent party
the revival of things lost and a new spirit

this is a world of inversions—dancing on your back, windmilling, the worm, a graffitti font no one can read, breaking beats in half and in half again until the swirling skratch takes over wrecking all of your parents records for one pure moment of flux—dancing like a robot in the America of reagan, rhyming rhyming rhyming

now, how to manifest the twin tracks, the seamless flow of dialogue (again M.O. CTS-style)

and if this is a revolution, how does the revolutionary find his way? Who is the hero? and who are his heroes? He remembers the parties that his parents had, he’s young hearing the poker games and the dice rolling and the record player going full blast and he dreams in loops of music, simple lines from james brown tracks that play over and cut up over again in his head (does hip hop get born fully in this moment? ok—but there needs to be more work attached later on, I think—or some form of birth pain)

does he recall the bumped record player? the skratched disc that his parents threw away, but he recovers? just cuz he loves that moment before he knows the skip will happen? A stevie wonder song like “pastime paradise?”

go rent “beat street”

re-read “spectacular vernaculars”—more research