It’s not by accident that DJ Clark Kent is a member of The Originals (alongside luminaries such as D-Nice, Stretch Armstrong, and Rich Medina); he was there at the dawning of hip-hop. “It had to be about 1977, at a park jam,” he tells Apple Music of his first memory of the music. “The style of mixing was different than a regular DJ; the prolonging of certain sections of records. This would become what we know as breaks. I had learned how to DJ mix in 1975, so this was the next level. I had to learn. I had to know how. That’s when it hit me: This is different.” In the years that followed, along with DJing he would go on to produce records for Junior M.A.F.I.A., Lil' Kim, The Notorious B.I.G., 50 Cent, and Rakim. “Hip-hop is a culture,” he says. "It has given me a way of life that speaks to me directly. Hip-hop is part of my identity.” In this mix, he traces some of the music’s identity, putting together hip-hop hits with the classic soul and funk songs they sampled.