walking upstream…
Grandmaster Caz
photo: michael raasch · cc by 3.0 ↗Grandmaster Caz
sourcesWikipedia — Grandmaster Caz (general biography) · Passion of the Weiss — "The Cornerstone of Culture · NY1/Spectrum News — "Grandmaster Caz, a rap pioneer, reflects on the origins of hip-hop" (Hevalo and Rapper's Delight quotes) · NYC Tourism — "Grandmaster Caz Talks the Bronx and Hip-Hop's Early Days" (Bronx origin, Sedgwick Avenue proximity) · The Washington Post — "They took Grandmaster Caz's rhymes without giving him credit" (Rapper's Delight backstory, birth-name caption) · NPR — "Lovebug Starski, Rapper And DJ Who Stood At The Vanguard Of Hip-Hop, Dead At 57" (Starski biography and era corroboration)
Caz grew up on Phelan Place, a block from 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, close enough to hear about Kool Herc's parties years before hip-hop had a name. He renamed himself Casanova Fly, then Grandmaster Caz, and wrote the sharpest rhymes on the block for the Cold Crush Brothers. He is also the genre's most famous ghostwriter: his manager, Hank Jackson, spent months memorizing Caz's rhymes off cassette tapes at a New Jersey pizza shop, then rebranded himself Big Bank Hank and spat them, uncredited, on "Rapper's Delight." "I'm the poster child for getting fucked over in hip-hop," Caz says now, laughing. Even his birth record is contested — sources split on his surname, Brown or Fisher, and his birth year, 1960 or 1961 — a rare gap in a life otherwise thoroughly told.
the sound in question
1983
South Bronx Subway RapGrandmaster Caz
walk the tributaries ↓
Love Bug Starski1980s · Hip hop
Caz says the whole idea of naming himself in rhyme came from another man's chant. Before he wrote a line of his own, he was reciting Love Bug Starski's crowd call, the way everyone at the parties did, without knowing whose it was. "When I found out it was a dude, Love Bug Starski, I was like, oh, shit!" Caz remembers. "And that's where I'm the C-A-Z, and the O-V-A-N, and F-L-Y came from. Because I didn't want to be saying nobody else's shit." Starski gave him not a style but a structure: spell your own name and make the crowd finish it.
listen: upstream & here
1976
No known recordingLove Bug Starski
1981
Live MC Battles from Harlem World 1981Grandmaster Caz
listen forNo recording of Starski shouting "I'm the LOVE BUG!!!" survives — it lived in parks and clubs before anyone had a cassette deck running. What's audible is the model he left behind: on the bootlegged tape of Cold Crush's July 1981 Harlem World battle, listen for Caz spelling himself out letter by letter, daring the crowd to finish each syllable with him — the same call-and-response structure, aimed now at his own name instead of somebody else's.
DJ Kool Herc1970s · Hip hop / Funk / Breakbeat
Caz lived close enough to 1520 Sedgwick Avenue to hear about Herc's parties before he was old enough to attend one. A couple of years later he was sneaking past the door of the Hevalo, a Bronx nightclub where Herc held court, just to watch him work. "When I saw the culture, when I saw the music, when I saw the dance, I saw the DJ, I was like, this is it. This is what I want to do," Caz says. What he watched Herc do, in Caz's own words, was find "the parts of the songs" — the breaks — and build the whole party around them.
listen: upstream & here
1975
No known recordingDJ Kool Herc
1983
Punk Rock RapGrandmaster Caz
listen forNo tape survives of the Hevalo nights Caz describes — Herc's earliest Bronx sets predate cheap cassette recording by a couple of years. What you can hear instead is the technique outliving the moment: on Cold Crush's 1983 single "Punk Rock Rap," listen for one propulsive riff looped under the MCs instead of a song left to play through — the same isolate-and-repeat logic Caz watched Herc run on turntables, just extended from a funk break to a punk guitar.