It’s August 11, 1973, and an apartment in the Bronx, NYC is abuzz with hip-hop beats. Inside, Jamaican born turntablist DJ Kool Herc is spinning the decks for a community gathering. In a moment of experimentation, Herc extends an instrumental beat to keep the party going.

The wordsmiths in the crowd start rapping over it, and a group of dancers get their groove on. While hip-hop’s roots are spread far and wide, and there is room for debate on when the genre was really ‘born’, this party is widely accepted as the day the genre came into being. To commemorate the day, we charted out hotspots in the city where hip-hop never sleeps.