KRS-One

How to accurately describe the asteroidlike impact KRS-One had on Hip-Hop... your might say it's a cross between that of Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols. In the way the snarling British punks, with one monumental album, laid the marketing blueprint for punk rock. KRS set the standard for the packaging and selling of gangsta rap. And just as Marley was responsible for breaking reggae in the Black American market, melding it with the danceable rhythms of R&B, KRS a child of Caribbean ex-pats and his Boogie Down Productions crew were crucial to expanding Hip-Hop's stylistic vocabulary with the sounds and chants of dancehall reggae, opening the musical taste buds (and the consciousness) of Hip-hop Generation. Today, marrying these two types of music doesn't seem a stretch, especially when considering that rap, born from break-beat DJing, is the first cousin of dancehall reggae (thanks to rap's Kingston-born founder, Kool Herc). But as any American-raised West Indian over the age of 35 Kool Herc included will tell you: Back in the '70s and early '80s, being from the islands and flashing your native music just wasn't cool. Besides, for a whole generation of U.S.-reared Caribbean kids, rap was just as vital a sound to their urban experience as the emerging bump of dancehall.