The records included in this exhibition - many of them inscribed with Herc’s graffiti - are those he used to capture this early sound.

They wanted to be energized by funk, and disco, both of which were characterised by the drum break, when everything but the drums dropped out and a frenzy of dancing blew through the room. They were raised in the golden era of soul - with labels like Motown, Atlantic and Stax Records dominating the airwaves of the 1960s - and they went out to clubs where disco and R&B were the sounds of the party. In the Boogie Down, as the borough became known, people wanted to move. King, Herc’s records - on sale at Christie’s from 4-18 August in DJ Kool Herc and the Birth of Hip-Hop- are pieces of American musical history that changed the world’s perception of what music was, what it could be.

They contain breaks - the portions of the song that Herc would convert to drum loops in his signature ‘merry-go-round’ technique - whose grooves charged the makeshift dancefloors of the Bronx during the earliest hip-hop parties in the 1970s, and are still used today. In DJ Kool Herc’s record collection, we see more than the musical interests of the Jamaican-American DJ recognized as the Father of Hip-Hop: these vinyl records are the genre’s essential building blocks.

Top breakbeat djs in year 2000