At the dawn of hiphop's modern period (1987–1993), veteran rapper Just-Ice released "Going Way Back," a track that was not only a huge hit but the most impassioned declaration ever of the MCs, the DJs, the clubs, the parks, and the neighborhoods that constituted hiphop's history (or closer yet, its origins). For Just-Ice, it all began in the Bronx. He knows this because he witnessed the birth of the culture with his own eyes. "No disrespect intended," he says against the concrete of a boom-bap beat and a weirdly looped, blues-like piano phrase, "but I have to show ya/if I didn't say your name it means I did not know ya/to get to the point, to make it clear/if I don't say your name it means you was not there [at the start of hiphop]."

With the force of a god laying down the law, Just-Ice names who was there, who was spinning records, and exactly where they were spinning these records. Near the end of "Going Way Back," to validate his credentials as a "barer of the truth and nothing less," Just-Ice offers two impressive references: "You can ask Kool Herc or my man Red Alert/He can tell ya, because he knows for sure, about Flash, and the Furious Four."

Like all histories, Just-Ice's history is selective. Whom it includes and whom it excludes has much to do with whom he was down with at the time—the Boogie Down Productions collective, which had at its center Kool DJ Red Alert, the mixer and scratcher for a radio show called Dance Mix Party on KISS FM. Dance Mix Party was in competition with a program on WBLS, The Mr. Magic Show, which had the legendary Marley Marl on the turntables and was connected to the powerful Juice Crew (MC Shan, Craig G, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Roxanne Shante). In "Going Way Back," Just-Ice deliberately excludes the influential Mr. Magic (arguably the first DJ to play rap on the radio) from his story of hiphop because Mr. Magic's show was at war with Kool DJ Red Alert's Dance Mix Party. In short, Just-Ice was a foot soldier in what became known as the Bridge Wars, which not only involved competing radio stations and crews but also neighborhoods: Boogie Down Productions' South Bronx versus the Juice Crew's Queensbridge.

But despite the exclusion of Mr. Magic and others (the Sugar Hill Gang, who introduced hiphop to the mainstream, are excluded because they came from New Jersey), Red Alert was certainly there at the very beginning of things and was responsible for launching some of the most important crews in the '80s. A Tribe Called Quest, Mark the 45 King (who produced Queen Latifah's "Ladies First" and Chill Rob G's "Court Is Now in Session"), the Jungle Brothers, and De La Soul are by no means all of the groundbreaking groups that owe their very existence to KISS FM's Dance Mix Party. Red Alert, who was born in Antigua and got his name because of his reddish hair and complexion, not only broke new acts, but was also a formidable scratch DJ.

In 1984, Red Alert released Hip Hop on Wax Volume 2, which was nothing less than a seminar in the science of scratching and cross fading. The technical complexity of the cutting and the otherworldly originality of the beat acrobatics on this record, and also DJ Chuck Chillout's Hip Hop on Wax Volume 1 (Chuck Chillout regularly cut records on Red Alert's show), were so stunning that many people around the world began to wonder if a shadowy government agency was somehow injecting a powerful hallucinogen into the systems that supplied water to New York's black neighborhoods.

So why should one see Kool DJ Red Alert perform in 2006? Not because he is a talented turntablist, but simply to be in the presence of hiphop history, to bask in that living presence, to look at it, to be amazed by it, and even, if the opportunity presents itself, to touch it. Touching Kool DJ Red Alert is like touching an actual piece of hiphop history that goes way, way back.

charles@thestranger.com