No. 9 “The Juice Wars”
Battling is a cornerstone of hip-hop culture. In the mid-1980s, as hip-hop continued to rise as a genre, the Bronx-based Boogie Down Productions proved that, on wax, battling could make a career. BDP’s KRS-One and DJ Scott La Rock took exception to the Queens-based MC Shan releasing “The Bridge,” a song about his home turf that seemed to indicate that Queens was the birthplace of hip-hop, not the Bronx. BDP struck back with “The Bridge Is Over,” and a war of words escalated for the next few years that helped KRS-One build his reptutation as a battle rapper, and helped raise the visibility of Shan’s associates in the Queens-centered Juice Crew.
