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Hip Hop has lost another member of its foundational generation.<\/p>\n
Keith Caesar, better known as\u00a0Keith Keith\u00a0of the legendary Bronx collective Funky 4 + 1, passed away Friday, Aug. 21, at the age of 64. According to his family, Caesar died from medical complications. He remained a lifelong Bronx resident and was living in the Frederick Douglass Houses in Morris Heights at the time of his passing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For younger Hip Hop fans who may not immediately recognize Keith Keith\u2019s name, understanding Funky 4 + 1\u2019s place in the culture puts his contribution into perspective.<\/p>\n
Before rap albums went platinum, before music videos, major endorsement deals and stadium tours, Funky 4 + 1 was helping establish what a Hip Hop group could even look and sound like.<\/p>\n
The pioneering crew included Keith Keith alongside\u00a0Sha-Rock, K.K. Rockwell, Jazzy Jeff, Lil\u2019 Rodney C, DJ Breakout and DJ Baron, with Rahiem also part of the group\u2019s earlier lineup before joining Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The group emerged from the Bronx during Hip Hop\u2019s formative years and became one of the first crews to take the music from parks and neighborhood parties onto commercially released records.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Keith Keith was there for one of the culture\u2019s most important early recordings,\u00a0\u201cRappin\u2019 and Rocking the House,\u201dreleased through Enjoy Records in 1979. The group later moved to Sylvia Robinson\u2019s Sugar Hill Records and released its signature record,\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s the Joint,\u201d\u00a0in 1980. Keith Caesar is among the credited writers on the song.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Funky 4 + 1\u2019s biggest historical moment arrived on Valentine\u2019s Day 1981.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 14, the group appeared on\u00a0Saturday Night Live\u00a0at the invitation of Blondie frontwoman\u00a0Debbie Harry, becoming the\u00a0first Hip Hop group to perform on national television. With much of America still unfamiliar with rap music, Keith Keith and the crew performed \u201cThat\u2019s the Joint\u201d on one of television\u2019s biggest stages.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Think about what that meant at the time.<\/p>\n
Hip Hop wasn\u2019t yet a billion-dollar industry. There was no\u00a0Yo! MTV Raps, BET\u2019s\u00a0Rap City\u00a0or internet capable of taking a Bronx freestyle around the world overnight. When Funky 4 + 1 stepped onto that\u00a0SNL\u00a0stage, they were introducing millions of Americans to a culture that was still largely being built block by block in New York City.<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s importance also extended to\u00a0Sha-Rock, whose presence as one of Hip Hop\u2019s earliest female MCs helped establish from the beginning that women weren\u2019t visitors to this culture\u2014they were among its architects.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the Joint\u201d would continue traveling long after the group separated, eventually being sampled by artists including the Beastie Boys and De La Soul. In 2008, VH1 ranked the record among its 100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Born Feb. 15, 1962, Caesar grew up with four siblings and is survived by his brother Kevin Caesar, known as\u00a0Caesar the Poet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Hip Hop\u2019s pioneering generation continues to age, preserving these names becomes even more important. Keith Keith and Funky 4 + 1 were doing this before anybody knew how far Hip Hop could go.<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t inherit the culture.<\/p>\n
They helped build it.<\/p>\n
The Source sends its condolences to the Caesar family, the Funky 4 + 1 family and everyone who knew and loved one of the Bronx\u2019s original microphone pioneers.<\/p>\n
Rest In Peace Keith \u201cKeith Keith\u201d Caesar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hip Hop has lost another member of its foundational generation. Keith Caesar, better known as\u00a0Keith Keith\u00a0of the legendary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,123489,123490,9,24,63,129,131,130,123491],"class_list":["post-328411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-keith-caesar","tag-keith-keith-rip","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-the-funky-4-plus-1-more"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328411","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=328411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}