Jeff Chang

so that he can go from one record's break, and then when that's going back to the main music part, he switches the fader over to the second turntable, which is also playing that break, and he cues it up at the beginning.

Yeah, it really was.

I mean, it was something that everybody left the party that night talking about.

Like, here's Herc and he's playing the breaks and this is the stuff that we love and want to get down to.

And so...

He builds this reputation very quickly across the entire borough.

This is fresh.

They're going to get something completely different.

And that's why the scene begins to take off.

When the gangs were at their peak, people segregated themselves by neighborhood, by block, and by ethnicity, by race, right?

So you had black folks, African-Americans on this side, you had Puerto Ricans on that side, and then north of them were white folks.

And you didn't mix.

Like if you went to another block, you were actually probably in danger.

People didn't know you from that hood, then you might be in danger.

There's a massive gang peace treaty that happens in 1971.

And so the gangs have kind of peaked and they're kind of going away.

And so HERC actually gives a way for a new rising generation of young folks in the Bronx, places to be able to gather.

He'd hear these guys doing what they call toasting, right?

What these guys were were masters of ceremony, right?

They were literally on the microphone talking over the music, shouting out people in the crowd, maybe talking about like, oh, there's somebody, he's going off now, or there's somebody, she's looking great tonight, or oh, that's that person from this neighborhood, or that's that person from that neighborhood, shouting out the neighborhoods.