“Like Afrika Bambaataa and Kraftwerk, Newcleus made music that anticipated a high-tech future. Decades before Wikipedia became a household name, Newcleus introduced ‘Wikki wikki wikki’ to the pop lexicon by using it as onomatopoeia to denote a D.J.’s scratching a needle back and forth on a record.”
-Nice to see the Times going so big with an obituary of Robert “Chilly B” Crafton, a member of the early-’80s electro-rap group Newcleus, whose 1983 hit “Jam-On Revenge (The Wikki Wikki Song)” was one of the very first rap songs to reach Markham Place grade school in suburban Little Silver, New Jersey. Also nice to see Rob Kenner, a founding editor of Vibe magazine (and always a force for good writing there) in the Paper of Record.
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I grew up in New Jersey. I live in New York. I write for the Awl, and also a book called Public Apology, for Grand Central Publishing.