“The Bridge”, MC Shan’s landmark mid-1980s homage to Queensbridge, one of New York’s Hip-hop history centers, is a staple in Hip-hop and an ancestor of countless challenge and battle records. It doesn’t get much more New York than this:
Aside from setting off a war with Hip-hoppers in The Bronx took the impression that MC Shan was claiming the Hip-hop movement as a Queensian invention and firing the opening shot in The Bridge Wars, MC Shan and Marley Marl built a rock-solid Bboy Hip-hop Classic.
As you probably noted in Bboysounds’ In the Lab post on Marley Marl’s production, “The Bridge” draws on the opening dum loop from “Impeach the President” by Honey Drippers. For beatmakers, listening to “The Bridge” is a history class unto itself, as the format of the track (a dope drum loop plus military-style snare add-ons and various samples) has been built on and improved on over the years, often imitated and reinvented, but none compares to Marley Marl’s original.
From Allmusic’s MC Shan bio:
According to legend, MC Shan (b. Shawn Moltke) got his big break in 1983 when the future boss of Cold Chillin’ Records caught Shan trying to steal his car. Although the fact that old-school super-producer Marley Marl was Shan‘s cousin probably didn’t hurt either, Shan took advantage of the opportunity to become a member of Marl’s Juice Crew All-Stars. After several singles (including the old-school classic “The Bridge”), his 1987 album debut Down By Law established a b-boy persona over tracks produced by his cousin. The same held for the 1988 follow-up, Born to Be Wild; on 1990’s Play It Again, Shan, he opted for a more mature outlook and a new producer, but it proved to be his final effort. Though he moved into production work, he made a return on “Da Bridge 2001,” from Queensbridge’s Finest, a 2000 LP released by Nas.
