Flip back to Hip-hop's glorious Golden Age with Gray and Pipitone's new book, No Half Steppin': An Oral and Pictorial History of New York City Club the Latin Quarter and the Birth of Hip-hop's Golden Era.
No Half Steppin' entails an extensive amount of historical accounts anchored upon the earliest years in Hip-hop. Accounting 212 pages and over 175 colored photographs and images, the text also includes personal narrations from a laundry list of iconic figures, including Special K and Teddy Tedd, KRS-One, MC Shan and Eric B, Daddy O, Fab 5 Freddy, Just-Ice, Positive K, DJ Clark Kent, Chuck D, Sadat X, Prince Paul, Kurtis Blow, Big Daddy Kane, Queen Latifah, Kool G Rap, and the list goes on.
As written on the text's title, passages look back to a certain time during the 1980's, wherein a certain Manhattan salsa club became a cornerstone venue which birthed several of today's Hip-hop legends, such as KRS-One, Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, as well as Stetsasonic, to name a few.
Daddy-O of Stetsasonic also contributes his own insight regarding those times, “One moment that I always think of when people ask me about the Latin Quarter was Red Alert playing Eric B & Rakim's 'My Melody' for the first time. That might even be my most magical moment in Hip-hop,” representing one passage among the many written by a myriad of other artists.
In regard to the authors, Claude “Paradise” Gray is best known for co-founding the X Clan and their historic album To The East, Backwards, which reaped tremendous acclaim as a socio-politically-conscious Hip-hop classic, born in the Golden Age. Before this, Gray portrayed both entertainment manager and host for the Manhattan club, the Latin Quarter, and became a key figure responsible for the large impact it would make within the industry.
Paradise Gray works alongside auhtor, activist, and fellow Hip-hop enthusiast Giuseppe “u.net” Pipitone, best known for his previous books, Bigger than Hip-hop, Renegades of Funk, Louder than a Bomb, and his most recent Don't Believe the Hype.
The book is scheduled to release mid-November, this year, published under Wax Poetics. For more information and pre-order options, click here.
By Jods Arboleda for RAPStation.com
