‘It was freaking bananas!’: rap luminaries on the defining moments from 50 years of hip-hop

DJ Spinderella on the ‘community spirit’ of block parties

I must have been only five or six when I attended my first block party in the mid 1970s. I was riding on my big wheel bike and from behind the handlebars I looked in awe at these turntables that were out the front of my high-rise, building number nine of the Pink Houses projects in Brooklyn. The power leads went all the way up through a window to an apartment on the fifth floor. The turntables belonged to this crew called the Together Brothers. It was like one big free party – all the adults were dancing and partying, smiling, drinking alcohol.