Bronx Hip-Hop Pioneer Keith Keith of Funky 4+1 Dies at 64

Keith Caesar, the Bronx-born MC known to hip-hop fans as Keith Keith of Funky 4+1, died on August 21 at age 64 from medical complications. He had spent his life in the borough that birthed him, most recently living at the Frederick Douglass Houses in Morris Heights, and his death has sent a wave of tributes through the hip-hop world that raised him.

Caesar was best known as a member of Funky 4+1, the South Bronx crew that formed in 1977 and became one of the earliest hip-hop groups to sign a record deal, according to News 12 The Bronx. He is survived by his brother, Kevin Caesar, who performs as Caesar the Poet, per the same report. Grandmaster Flash, the legendary DJ and fellow Bronx hip-hop originator, told NJ.com that Caesar was “one of the culture's originators” and said he was left speechless by the news, adding that Caesar “will not be forgotten.”

From South Bronx Park Jams to Vinyl

Funky 4+1's early lineup included Caesar alongside Sha-Rock, K.K. Rockwell, DJ Breakout, and DJ Baron, with Jazzy Jeff, Lil Rodney C, and Rahiem joining as the roster evolved over the years, the Bronx news station's report notes. Before the group ever signed with Sugar Hill Records, it released the sprawling 16-minute track “Rappin' and Rocking the House” in 1979 through Bobby Robinson's Enjoy Records, making Funky 4+1 one of hip-hop's earliest commercially recorded acts, as reported by Yardbarker.

That early breakthrough set the stage for the group's defining single. Released in 1980 on Sugar Hill Records, “That's the Joint” interpolated A Taste of Honey's “Rescue Me” over basswork from Doug Wimbish, with Caesar credited as a co-writer on the track, the station's report states. Music critic Robert Christgau gave the song an “A” rating in a 1981 Village Voice review and later named it the best single of the entire 1980s decade. In 2008, VH1 ranked it No. 41 on its list of the 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop.

The Night Hip-Hop Reached Saturday Night Live

On February 14, 1981, Funky 4+1 became the first hip-hop group to perform live on national television, taking the stage on NBC's Saturday Night Live after Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry personally invited them and introduced their performance of “That's the Joint,” Yardbarker reports. It was a milestone moment that helped carry hip-hop beyond the block parties and park jams of the South Bronx into American living rooms.

The triumph came with a bitter footnote. Following the broadcast, Harry invited Funky 4+1 to open for Blondie on tour, but Sugar Hill Records CEO Sylvia Robinson prohibited the group from accepting, according to a report from Rolling Out. It remains one of the era's clearest illustrations of how tightly early record executives controlled the young hip-hop artists they signed, even as those artists broke new ground for the genre.

A Legacy That Outlived the Group

Funky 4+1 disbanded in the early 1980s, but its members scattered into hip-hop's next chapter. Lil Rodney C and K.K. Rockwell went on to form the duo Double Trouble and appeared in the 1983 film Wild Style, while Sha-Rock joined US Girls and appeared in the 1984 film Beat Street, according to the Museum of Pop Culture.

The group's fingerprints reach further than the music itself. Philadelphia hip-hop historian Tony Santiago told NJ.com that Funky 4+1 helped create the slang word “jawn,” widely used in the Philadelphia area, explaining that the term was taken from “That's the Joint.” Judah Israel, a 72-year-old DJ from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, told the outlet that Funky 4+1 was one of his favorite groups, a reminder of how far the crew's sound traveled beyond its home borough.

Grandmaster Flash said he had recently seen Caesar before his death, a detail that underscored just how present the Bronx pioneer remained within the community he helped build. As NJ.com's Brian Linder, a journalist with more than 20 years of newspaper experience, reported, tributes to Caesar have poured in from across the hip-hop world that Funky 4+1 helped shape in the late 1970s, according to AllHipHop.com.