“That’s actually my favorite song on the record [Check Your Head], now that I think about it. I remember putting those samples in the MPC-60 [sampler]...I remember that the main groove, aside from the bass, is from a Yamaha DX-7 keyboard.” - Adrock

“That’s my favorite song from the album. That’s my favorite of all the songs I’ve ever made, actually. I just like the adrenaline of it.” - Big Daddy Kane

“I knew that song would be a big record because people out there was just waiting for something new.” - Biz Markie

“We recorded [the song “Criminal Minded”] in a studio on Broadway and I think Seventy-ninth Street. It was a little setup in somebody’s home and about twenty-five dollars an hour to record…to this day I’m not proud when people say that [the album] Criminal Minded was the beginning of gangsta rap. That’s not something I put on my resume. But it was true.” - KRS-One

“Hip is to know, it’s a form of intelligence…Hope is a form of movement, you can’t just observe a hop, you gotta hop up and do it. Hip and hop is more than music. Hip is the Knowledge, hop is the Movement. Hip and Hop is Intelligent movement.” - KRS-One

“The concept was just dope. EPMD was making music, but we didn’t even know that we were making actual music. While the world was sampling James Brown, we was over here venturing out on something that was other.” - Erick Sermon

“When we got the deal with 4th &Bway, we got the check and it said PAID IN FULL on it, so we was lookin’ at it and Eric said, ‘Yo, that’s what we’re gonna name the album…With that track, I always used to rhyme off that Dennis Wards [“Don’t Look Any Further”] in the park. Eric put that beat up under the bass line.” - Rakim

This track will probably found familiar to you - it’s been reused, referenced, and sampled by almost 200 songs.

“They had a natural comic flair and a sense of humor as well as warmth,” photographer Ernie Paniccioli, who photographed the duo throughout the 1980s.

“In a way, around 1986 and ‘87, Run-DMC, LL, Fat Boys, and others had gotten so big…those artists weren’t considered ‘street’ anymore. They had videos and were on MTV.” - KRS-One

“The album version…had a house vibe to it….The video for that was fun, but I remember it was really grueling: It was like six a.m. to six a.m…The premise was me going through a time warp and fitting into any era that I was in.” - MC Lyte

“[Public Enemy] put on their ‘Rebel Without a Pause as a 12-inch and I remember coming that out ‘Brothers and sisters! I don’t know what this world is coming to’...it was haunting, it was eerie, it was rabble-rousing, it was just agitating.” - Q-Tip, a Tribe Called Quest

“[Run-DMC member Jam Master Jay] was the first DJ to DJ for the rap cause. We didn’t use no band, we didn’t use no tape playback, we never had a DAT. Jay DJed vinyl, live.” - DMC

“With the keyboard playing on there and other songs, it was definitely nothing too complex. Just a one-finger thing. I would envision bringing in a whole orchestra, but do it one track at a time. Stuff like that is done in layers.” - Slick Rick

This could be what Hank is thinking of when he comments on his parents’ R&B (page 11).

It’s difficult to write a play taking place in 1988 without referencing 1987’s biggest hit and - potentially - artist.

Another 1987 hit, INXS is name-checked in How We Got On

I choose to believe this song is indirectly referenced as the over-the-top 80s metal on pages 24-25. (Yours truly the dramaturg has enjoyed the process of researching 1980s hip-hop, but this is, apologies to Hank, her jam)

Definitely in the realm of the ‘Dance type R&B’ referenced on page 28

Referenced on page 34 - and possibly, the greatest contributor to hip-hop who wasn’t actually a hip-hop artist. Sampling essentially revived interest in Brown’s career in the late 70s and 1980s.

80s hit - the band New Edition is referenced on page 45. Not exactly hip-hop, but a classic music video. Luanne talks about how they’re eventually going to break up, which was prescient: they did break up, but not until 2004.