Not sure if it was growing up in close proximity to Ontario housing or the lack of an older sibling with a penchant for Ozzy, but my formative music discovery years (from age 8 to 14) were more about funk, top 40 pop, disco and early rap than hard rock/metal. Don't think it's worthwhile listing any disco tracks, for obvious reasons (I'm not doing cardio, dancing at a wedding, or doing lines off Truman Capote's ass at Studio 54). If I were to list the top 5 seminal hip-hop recordings of this period (1978-84), to the forementioned Sugar Hill Gang track, I'd add:

• "Buffalo Gals" - Malcolm Mclaren (1983)
• "Planet Rock" - Afrika Bambaataa (1982)
• "The Message" - Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five (1982)
• "Beat Box" - The Art of Noise (1984)

The Malcolm McLaren video was not only the first video I recall ever seeing on tv, but also was the first breakdancing I'd ever seen. The use of scratching, loops, and samples are pretty much the building blocks of all future hip hop tracks. The Afrika Bombaata and Art of Noise tracks owe more to Kraftwerk and 70s German synth/electronica than they do perhaps to the music coming out of the emerging urban (black, inner city) American music scene but again, the sampling, and in the case of the former, the emphasis on black consciousness, mark the significance of their contributions to this genre. Grandmaster Flash's 'The Message', on the other hand, continues the trend of bringing the diy, rhyming over beats live performances and cassette recordings of the northeastern US 'street' into the mainstream, or at least mainstream enough for a late pre-teen, early teen in Scarborough, ON to catch wind of it.

Hope you enjoy the clips and sorry for not posting sooner. Three back-to-back west coast business trips, followed by catchup and prep for a mini vacay next week has left me w/ little spare time for posts. Will try to be a little more active here. Thanks to Mike and Bri for picking up the slack.