I can tell you where I was when I first heard "The Music ain't loud Enuff".  A house party in Clinton Md.  The record came on and ..the place went crazy. 

Back in the day when rapping in DC wasn't really the thing to do, I can remember going to Breeze's Metro Club on Tuesday night.  DJ Kool was spinning there, as local rap acts took the stage.  Little did we know he was planning on dropping some major flavor for DC.  DJ Kool was the first to put DC on the map for hip hop and has represented for GO-GO as well.  He is known worldwide and respected by many inside of the hip hop community and entertainment field period.  DJ Kool has won 10 Washington Area Music Awards, 7 DC Street Awards, Living Legend Award and Independent Artist of the Decade award.  Kool is known mostly of his platinum selling hit "Let me clear my Throat".  His single with Redman, "Lets get Dirty" went gold.  He surely will drop more hits for us to move to, because he's not  done just yet.

Lets give you some history on DJ Kool.

A fusion of feel-good go-go music with hip-hop's original block-party aesthetic led DJ Kool to the fore in rap's return to the old school during the late '90s. A veteran of D.C.'s go-go circuit who worked as a warm-up DJ for Rare Essence during the early- to mid-'80s, Kool began recording in 1988 and early on tried to inform the studio art of hip-hop with a live feel in keeping with his experience. His first album, The Music Ain't Loud Enuff, used call and response much like early hip-hop and go-go (and also included the hip-house track "House Your Body" prefaced by a remarkably accurate monologue on the history of house music).

Kool took it to the stage in 1992 with the mini-LP 20 Minute Workout, recorded live in Richmond, VA, and released on Steve Janis' CLR Records. By the time of 1996's Let Me Clear My Throat, mostly recorded live in Philadelphia, the East Coast underground was buzzing about Kool's way with a crowd. American Records won a five-way bidding war and reissued Let Me Clear My Throat early the following year; providing remixes of the title track were Funkmaster Flex and Mark the 45 King (whose funky underground hit "The 900 Number" was the basis for the title track in the first place), helping it climb into the Top Five on the rap charts. In mid-2000, he and Fatman Scoop released the remixed Rob Base classic "It Takes Two."

I recently caught up with DJ Kool and we talked about the state of DC Hip Hop.  But you will have to wait for the interview footage, as we have something special planned for that release.  Check out the footage from the DJ Kool tribute party.

Watch Footage >>

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