This day, Google’s doodle pays homage to hip hop. In fact it commemorates the 44th anniversary of the party which is widely credited as the birth of the Hip Hop movement. The party took place at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx and the disc jockey was DJ Kool Herc
It is an interactive doodle which takes down history lane when you click on it.
It takes you through a tutorial about being a DJ; using a turntable and more.
The Googlers behind this project were Kevin Burke, Ryan Germick and Perla Campos. And they partnered with Fab 5 Freddy, former host of “Yo! MTV Raps” and narrator of the Doodle, and Cey Adams, visual artist and founding creative director of Def Jam records, who designed the Doodle logo image.
According to Kevin in a blog post, “It all started with DJ Kool Herc, an 18-year old Jamaican DJ in the Bronx. He and his sister threw a party in August 1973, and when he DJ’d the party, he used two turntables to extend the instrumental break in the music where people did their craziest dance moves (that’s actually how “break” dancing got its name!). And the Hip Hop movement was born.”
Google’s Ryan Germicksaid the project is one of the most complex the company’s done. Perla added; “We’ve never done a Doodle like this before, both because of the technical challenges and the many voices and collaborators we wanted to include. It was both unnerving and exciting to tackle this because so many people have been touched by Hip Hop in some way—so how do you do it justice?’
Want to know more about hip hop, go over to Google’s home page and play with the doodle.
2 Comments
This project is a great project by Google. I love the fact that it is an interactive doodle. Great one.
Wow. There’s really no end to learning. And I was more surprised because I thought hip hop started with Michael Jackson.
This is me saying: happy anniversary to hio-hopers worldwide.