Busy Bee & World Famous Brucie B Promotional Portrait

Visual image Busy Bee

Visual image Brucie B.

Publisher Strong City Records

Datec. 1980

Mediumpaper (fiber product)

DimensionsOverall (HWD): 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.32 cm)

Credit LineMoPOP permanent collection

Object number1998.804.3

Text Entries

Portal Description

Brucie B (b. Unknown) was the DJ at the legendary “Rooftop” Night Club/Roller Skating Rink and known to many as Hip-Hop’s premier mixtape and club DJ. Born in Harlem and raised in the Bronx, Brucie B deejayed with Busy Bee and Lovebug Starski (Kevin Smith, b. 1960 – 2018). Known for his comedic rhymes, old school MC, Busy Bee/Chief Rocker Busy Bee/Busy Bee Starski (David Parker, b. 1962) gained a large following from MC Rap battles in the Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. Busy Bee, who was known for his fashion sense, was a member of the Cassanova Gang who was also admired for their dress style. When he became a famous local DJ, his fashion sense also added to his popularity. He was called “Busy Bee Starski” because he was known to switch from one Rap group to the next and his peers said his rhyming style was like Love Bug Starski. Busy Bee worked with several of New York’s best Hip-Hop DJs, including Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Busy Bee’s legacy as an expert jive-rapper made an impact on the early years of Hip-Hop due to his humorous and crowd-motivating rhymes.

Physical Description

Black and white promotional portrait photo of (L-R) Busy Bee and Brucie B posing. Both are wearing custom-made jackets with bumblebees and wording that reads “Running Thangs”.

CopyrightThis work is issued under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License. For more information, go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

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