Outside the Lines With Rap Genius - OTL 45: Michael Holman Excerpt #4 - Cafe Negril lyrics

Michael Holman: I had the first hip-hop club, called Negril SameOldShawn: Attended, it should be noted, by a then probably college-aged Rick Rubin MH: Oh yeah. I didn't meet Rick at the time. I didn't know him. I was the big cheese at the time, you know? What had happened was, much earlier than Negril, you had clubs uptown like The Fever, which were some of the pioneering rap clubs. But see, to me, hip-hop is not rap. Rap is an element of hip-hop. Rap is rap. Rap, turntablism, DJing, b-boying, aerosol art -- to me, that's what makes hip-hop So The Fever was an early rap club. But I would argue this with anybody, that the first true hip-hop club, when you're talking about all the elements, was Negril. That's where I presented, at the invitation of Ruza Blue, whose night it was -- she saw this event that I put on at the behest and the request of Malcolm McLaren, to open up for his band Bow Wow Wow at the Ritz in New York City, September 15th, 1981. I put together an all-hip-hop revue. Bambaataa, Jazzy Jay, Ikey C on the mic, Rocksteady Crew rocking the floor, my film Catch a Beat, which was the first hip-hop short film. Kel 1 doing graffiti, who was Debi Mazar's boyfriend at the time. And I put on this revue, which arguably was the first time all the elements of hip-hop were put together onstage in front of a paying audience Ruza Blue saw the show, asked me to bring it to Negril. I brought that whole show intact, even my film, and had it set up at Negril, and it was performing there. It was the first hip-hop -- when you talk about hip-hop as a multi-faceted culture -- it was the first hip-hop nightclub in the world