This story is part of That’s My Word, KQED’s year-long exploration of Bay Area hip-hop history, with new content dropping all throughout 2023.

Dave “Davey D” Cook is a cornerstone of hip-hop culture.

He currently co-hosts KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio and serves as a processor of Africana studies at San Francisco State University, where he teaches popular courses on hip-hop and African American music. Davey D is a practitioner of the culture as well as a critic. Over the span of five decades, he’s been an MC, DJ, journalist, activist — the list goes on.

Originally from The Bronx, New York, Davey D was there when this thing we call hip-hop was in its nascent form, before it even had a name. When he arrived in the Bay Area in the early ’80s, one of his missions as a UC Berkeley student was to lend some insight to this burgeoning culture. So he put on a few events, one of which was The Day in Hip-Hop on Oct. 24, 1984. With the 50th anniversary of hip-hop at the front of mind, I spoke to Davey D about what the culture was like back then and how far it has come.

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