Kool Herc, the Bronx DJ who invented the break beat and thereby became the Thomas Jefferson of hip hop, spawned a musical genre that has made countless people millionaires. Not Herc, though; he's reportedly sick and broke.

"Birthplace of Hip Hop," 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in The Bronx, is saved from predatory developers.

Hip hop music was formally unveiled on an August night in 1973, when DJ Kool Herc started cutting two identical records back and forth to keep the freshest part playing, making the world's first break beat. It was only a matter of a few short years until the "up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie," and another few years to "Sucker MCs call me sire," and then things really started rolling, and within a decade there was Puffy rapping about money while dressed in money driving a money car made of money. And who lost out? Kool Herc himself. The man is the walking embodiment of hip hop's shunning of its quasi-spiritual roots:

Good news, hip hop fans! It looks like the City of New York is going to save the building at 1520 Sedgwick in the Bronx, a.k.a. Sedgwick and Cedar, a.k.a the BIRTHPLACE OF HIP HOP, from destruction [NYT]. It's where DJ Kool Herc first started throwing parties and cutting records in 1973, leading eventually to those sweet, sweet hip hop sounds. Bad news, hip hop fans: a nightclub in Kips Bay just agreed to pay a $35,000 fine for keeping out black patrons in "urban wear" clothing, but letting in white people in the same clothes. When will the struggle for equality in crappy nightclub admissions end? Below, a documentary clip on Herc and the founding of hip hop in the building. Do the knowledge, yall.

Yesterday, a man named Clive Campbell filed a wacky $5 billion lawsuit against rap star and partial New Jersey Nets owner Jay-Z, as well as others associated with the huge Atlantic Yards construction project in downtown Brooklyn (which includes a new stadium for the Nets). The charge was that because Barclay's bought naming rights to the stadium, and was possibly involved in the slave trade way back when, everyone involved was illegally profiting from slavery. So that will be dismissed quickly. More interesting: Clive Campbell is the real name of DJ Kool Herc, the old school master widely credited as the founder of hip hop. So outlets started reporting that Kool Herc was suing Jay-Z—intergenerational hip hop madness! But then it came out that this was a different Clive Campbell [Gothamist]. Too bad, cause that would have been crazy. Now Jay-Z can turn his attention to warding off this "Voodoo Priestest"!: