{"id":328023,"date":"2026-08-23T23:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T23:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/328023\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T23:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T23:04:07","slug":"news-12-connecticut-bronx-hip-hop-trailblazer-of-the-funky-4-1-dies-at-64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/328023\/","title":{"rendered":"News 12 | Connecticut | Bronx Hip Hop Trailblazer Of The Funky 4 1 Dies At 64"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Bronx hip-hop trailblazer Keith Caesar, aka &#8220;Keith Keith&#8221; of the Funky 4 + 1, passed away due to medical complications on Friday, his family says. He was 64.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Caesar made history with the Funky 4 + 1 as the first hip-hop crew to perform on Saturday Night Live. They took the stage on Valentine&#8217;s Day 1981 and were introduced by Debbie Harry.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The hip-hop pioneer was born on Feb. 15, 1962, and grew up with four siblings.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Caesar was a lifelong Bronx resident and lived at the Frederick Houses in Morris Heights at the time of his passing.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">He is survived by his brother, Kevin Caesar, aka &#8220;Caesar the Poet.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bronx hip-hop trailblazer Keith Caesar, aka &#8220;Keith Keith&#8221; of the Funky 4 + 1, passed away due to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-328023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}