Banned Hip Hop from Brooklyn

In a spare moment, I recalled a song my brother and I had on cassette tape from around 1988 that was a cut up assemblage of JFK assassination sound bites into a sort of rap song. Ever since we taped that song off of Dallas community radio, we always kept it around for us and our friends to hear. We had heard it was *banned*, which made it exceptionally strong arsenal in our tape collection.

So I was trying to find it again, and as it turns out, the authors of the song were known as Double Dee and Steinski, aka Doug DiFranco and Steve Stein, a couple of media biz 20/30 somethings in NY at the time. There's plenty of info about them, including interviews and a spot in the turntablism movie Scratch.



Given the common broadcast origin of cut-ups and samples in songs, I find it remarkable that a Brooklyn DJ duo could put their ideas into a song that resonated so well for us for completely different reasons. Growing up in Dallas, we found it ominous and on some level subversive to hear a song that flagrantly spun a day of infamy into an arty rap song. Plus you could kind of spaz out to it.



You don't need pirate radio to get Steinski anymore, it's available at Amazon. Following decades of legal obstacles, it has recently been released for the first time.


Or hear it here.