Back in the late 1970s a new music genre exploded on the world stage: rap. This episode’s guest Bill Adler was right there near the beginning, first as a fan and music journalist, and then working for Def Jam Records and Rush Management. Adler recently donated his enormous treasure trove of hip-hop related artifacts to Cornell University, of which has become digitized and is available online for public use. We used some of the materials found there to talk about everything from the film Wild Style, rap pioneers like Busy Bee, Fab Five Freddy, the Funky 4+1, the massive career of LL Cool J to even the controversy over the presence of anti-semitism in the Public Enemy organization and how it touched Adler personally.

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