60 acast.com Provenance https://shows.acast.com/provenance en Provenance rap,old school,golden era,sampling,DJs,MCs,Bronx,culture,vinyl,music trivia,true crime Provenance Hip-hop history gets told two ways. Either it's a fan retrospective trading on nostalgia, or it's an insider interview show where the guest tells their own version of events. Provenance is neither. It's a researched, sourced, single-narrator documentary podcast that treats hip-hop's history with the same rigor a music historian would bring to jazz or rock and roll.


No guests. No opinions. No beef-baiting. Every episode traces a chain of custody, who actually built what, on top of whose idea, backed by documented sources, not just the version of the story that happened to stick. That includes the flagship names everyone already knows, Wu-Tang Clan, Dr. Dre, Nas, and it includes the founders history has a habit of writing out of the story, the women, the queer artists, the international scenes, and the executives whose names never made it onto the credits despite building the business the whole genre stands on.


Every episode runs 25 minutes and up, released weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

]]> Hip-hop history gets told two ways. Either it's a fan retrospective trading on nostalgia, or it's an insider interview show where the guest tells their own version of events. Provenance is neither. It's a researched, sourced, single-narrator documentary podcast that treats hip-hop's history with the same rigor a music historian would bring to jazz or rock and roll.


No guests. No opinions. No beef-baiting. Every episode traces a chain of custody, who actually built what, on top of whose idea, backed by documented sources, not just the version of the story that happened to stick. That includes the flagship names everyone already knows, Wu-Tang Clan, Dr. Dre, Nas, and it includes the founders history has a habit of writing out of the story, the women, the queer artists, the international scenes, and the executives whose names never made it onto the credits despite building the business the whole genre stands on.


Every episode runs 25 minutes and up, released weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

]]> false Provenance info+6a6ae1dc501e98151489aa7d@mg-eu.acast.com 6a6ae1dc501e98151489aa7d provenance episodic https://assets.pippa.io/shows/cover/1785389166775-807c46fb-4f96-4432-a882-5dbda82f68cc.jpeg https://shows.acast.com/provenance Provenance <![CDATA[Ep:3 DJ Kool Herc & the Birth of Hip-Hop]]> Thu, 30 Jul 2026 05:47:19 GMT 30:48 6a6ae567a585d3be78c16429 false https://shows.acast.com/provenance/episodes/ep3-dj-kool-herc-the-birth-of-hip-hop 6a6ae567a585d3be78c16429 6a6ae1dc501e98151489aa7d ep3-dj-kool-herc-the-birth-of-hip-hop The back-to-school party that gave an entire genre a documented birthday full 3 Most genres of music don't have a birth certificate. Hip-hop does: a hand-drawn party flyer, a specific Bronx address, and a date, August 11, 1973, that the culture itself points to as where it all began.


This episode traces DJ Kool Herc's path from Kingston, Jamaica's sound-system culture to a rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where he invented the Merry-Go-Round technique, isolating and looping a record's instrumental break to keep a crowd dancing indefinitely. That single technique became the breakbeat, the foundation underneath almost every form of hip-hop that followed, and set off a chain, MCing, b-boying, entire crews, that runs in a straight line to hip-hop as it exists today. It's also a story about how long recognition can take: Herc lived through real financial hardship for decades before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Grammys finally caught up, fifty years later.


Sources include 50th-anniversary retrospective interviews with Herc and his sister Cindy Campbell, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction coverage, and contemporaneous accounts of the Bronx party scene.


Next episode: the Jamaican sound-system culture that shaped Herc years before he ever touched a turntable in the Bronx.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

]]> Most genres of music don't have a birth certificate. Hip-hop does: a hand-drawn party flyer, a specific Bronx address, and a date, August 11, 1973, that the culture itself points to as where it all began.


This episode traces DJ Kool Herc's path from Kingston, Jamaica's sound-system culture to a rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where he invented the Merry-Go-Round technique, isolating and looping a record's instrumental break to keep a crowd dancing indefinitely. That single technique became the breakbeat, the foundation underneath almost every form of hip-hop that followed, and set off a chain, MCing, b-boying, entire crews, that runs in a straight line to hip-hop as it exists today. It's also a story about how long recognition can take: Herc lived through real financial hardship for decades before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Grammys finally caught up, fifty years later.


Sources include 50th-anniversary retrospective interviews with Herc and his sister Cindy Campbell, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction coverage, and contemporaneous accounts of the Bronx party scene.


Next episode: the Jamaican sound-system culture that shaped Herc years before he ever touched a turntable in the Bronx.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

]]> <![CDATA[Ep:2 Sylvia Robinson & the Making of "Rapper's Delight"]]> Thu, 30 Jul 2026 05:45:18 GMT 30:32 6a6ae4ee6043035f894e8468 false https://shows.acast.com/provenance/episodes/ep-2-sylvia-robinson-the-making-of-rappers-delight 6a6ae4ee6043035f894e8468 6a6ae1dc501e98151489aa7d ep-2-sylvia-robinson-the-making-of-rappers-delight The record executive who put hip-hop on the radio, and never got full credit for it full 2 Before Sylvia Robinson ever heard a rap record, she'd already had two number-one hits in two different decades. This episode tells the story of the record executive who put hip-hop on the radio for the first time, and the record most tangled up in disputes over who actually deserved credit for making it.


It covers Robinson's own career as a singer and producer going back to the 1950s, the struggling label she built Sugar Hill Records out of, the pizza-shop discovery that became the Sugarhill Gang, and the legal fight with Chic over an unlicensed bassline that ended with almost everyone who actually wrote and performed "Rapper's Delight" left off the official songwriting credits. It's a story about who gets remembered as a founder, and who doesn't, themes this show returns to often.

Sources include contemporaneous music press, Sugar Hill Records' business history, and interviews with the Sugarhill Gang's surviving members and Sylvia Robinson's family.


Next episode: the back-to-school party that started it all, six years before this record existed.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

]]> Before Sylvia Robinson ever heard a rap record, she'd already had two number-one hits in two different decades. This episode tells the story of the record executive who put hip-hop on the radio for the first time, and the record most tangled up in disputes over who actually deserved credit for making it.


It covers Robinson's own career as a singer and producer going back to the 1950s, the struggling label she built Sugar Hill Records out of, the pizza-shop discovery that became the Sugarhill Gang, and the legal fight with Chic over an unlicensed bassline that ended with almost everyone who actually wrote and performed "Rapper's Delight" left off the official songwriting credits. It's a story about who gets remembered as a founder, and who doesn't, themes this show returns to often.

Sources include contemporaneous music press, Sugar Hill Records' business history, and interviews with the Sugarhill Gang's surviving members and Sylvia Robinson's family.


Next episode: the back-to-school party that started it all, six years before this record existed.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

]]> <![CDATA[Ep:1 Wu-Tang Clan — Origin & Mythology]]> Thu, 30 Jul 2026 05:42:20 GMT 24:34 6a6ae43c6043035f894e5921 false https://shows.acast.com/provenance/episodes/ep1-wu-tang-clan-origin-mythology 6a6ae43c6043035f894e5921 6a6ae1dc501e98151489aa7d ep1-wu-tang-clan-origin-mythology Nine kids from Staten Island built a hip-hop empire out of kung-fu films and a five-year plan full 1 Nine kids from Staten Island's housing projects built one of the most influential business structures hip-hop has ever seen, out of kung-fu films, chess strategy, and a philosophy called the Five Percent Nation.


This episode traces how RZA turned a failed solo deal into a five-year plan for the entire Wu-Tang Clan: a self-financed single, a negotiated freedom clause no other rap group had, and an album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), that turned nine competing solo careers into one shared brand. It also follows the story forward two decades, to a single copy of an album locked in a hand-carved silver box, sold at auction for two million dollars, seized by the federal government, and fought over in court as recently as 2025.


Sources for this episode include RZA's own writing on the group's business history, Library of Congress archival material on 36 Chambers, and recent legal reporting on the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin litigation.


Next episode: the record executive who heard hip-hop's future behind a pizza counter.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

]]> Nine kids from Staten Island's housing projects built one of the most influential business structures hip-hop has ever seen, out of kung-fu films, chess strategy, and a philosophy called the Five Percent Nation.


This episode traces how RZA turned a failed solo deal into a five-year plan for the entire Wu-Tang Clan: a self-financed single, a negotiated freedom clause no other rap group had, and an album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), that turned nine competing solo careers into one shared brand. It also follows the story forward two decades, to a single copy of an album locked in a hand-carved silver box, sold at auction for two million dollars, seized by the federal government, and fought over in court as recently as 2025.


Sources for this episode include RZA's own writing on the group's business history, Library of Congress archival material on 36 Chambers, and recent legal reporting on the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin litigation.


Next episode: the record executive who heard hip-hop's future behind a pizza counter.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

]]>