Oral History Interview with Lovebug Starski, New York, NY, September 29, 1998

Lovebug Starski , (Kevin Smith, b.1960 – 2018), was an American MC, musician, and record producer. He began his career as a record boy in 1971 as hip-hop first appeared in the Bronx, and he eventually became a DJ at the Disco Fever club in 1978. He is one of two people who may have come up with the term "hip-hop". Starski claimed that he coined the phrase, while trading the two words back and forth, while improvising lines with Keef Cowboy of the Furious Five, at a farewell party for a friend who was headed into the Army. Lovebug Starski, a versatile D.J. and rapper who was a key figure in the development and early evolution of hip-hop in the South Bronx throughout the 1970s. He was famously mentioned as part of the roll call of influential early hip-hop D.J.s on the Notorious B.I.G.’s seminal 1994 single “Juicy.