Nightclub Roxy in Chelsea, New York City, was one of the most important places to dance music. In the early eighties, hip hop was starting to spread around the world and it was becoming a popular phenomenon regardless of race. Roxy was the stage for this to happen. It was the melting pot of hip hop culture and other alternative movements, such as punk. To many rappers, graffiti artist and hip hop deejays Roxy was the first venue to perform in downtown New York. The venue was made famous worldwide by the movie Beat Street with its unforgettable breakdance battle scene, which was filmed of course in Roxy:

The Roxy phenomenon collected all the important figures of the scene(s) together. I’m going to introduce some of them here.

Fab 5 Freddy is a renaissance man of hip hop who has involved in many many things during his career. He was helping Ruza “Kool Lady” Blue to found Roxy. This graffiti artist and hip hop journalist also made an influential record, Change The Beat. The B-Side of the record is a french female version of the main track. The effect of the song is due to the small vocal clip at the end: “Ahhhhh, this stuff is really fresh”, which became the most used scratch sample of all time.
Fab 5 Freddy – Change The Beat (Female Version) (Celluloid, 1982) (Mediafire 320)

The most famous use of that scratch sample is of course due to a turntablism pioneerGrandmixer D.ST in Herbie Hancock’s Rockit (Youtube). Here’s an awesome music video of Grandmixer D.ST’s Cut’s It Up (Thanks Riku):

Grandmixer D.ST – Cuts It Up (Celluloid 1982)

Fab 5 Freddy co-operated with other graffiti artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Futura 2000. These few people were the first to bring graffiti into the NYC art context. Futura is responsible for graffitis in Grandmixer D.ST’s video above. Futura 2000 was touring with The Clash in their ’81 European tour making graffiti painting live on stage. The Clash had made their first (surprise) gig in the States a year earlier, at Roxy – surprise, surprise. The artist and the band made also other co-operation in these two songs:

The Clash feat. Futura 2000 Overpowered By Funk (From the album “Combat Rock”)
Futura 2000 With The Clash – Escapades Of Futura 2000 (Celluloid 1982)

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