Keef Cowboy

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Robert Keith Wiggins was born on the 20th of September 1960. He died on the 8th of September 1989, and he is widely credited as having invented the term hip-hop. Fans knew him by his stage names, Keef Cowboy and Cowboy, during his years as a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. A single joke aimed at a friend who had just joined the United States Army gave an entire genre its name. What was that joke, and how did a dancer and hype man end up shaping the vocabulary of American music?

• 2. Coining Hip Hop

  ›

  In 1978, Wiggins teased a friend who had just enlisted in the United States Army. He did it by scat singing made-up syllables, hip, hop, hip, hop, mimicking the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers. He is credited with turning that tease into the term hip hop. Cowboy later worked that same cadence into his own stage performances. That joke aimed at one soldier's departure would end up giving the wider world its name for an entire genre of music.

• 3. Furious Five Years

  ›

  In 1977, Grandmaster Flash, then still performing as DJ Flash, recruited his friend Wiggins to serve as an MC for the group. Wiggins worked as a dancer and hype man for the act. He became a pioneer of the call and response style used to draw the crowd into the show. In 1983, he left Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and joined Melle Mel, recording the single White Lines (Don't Don't Do It). In 1985, the pairing released the album Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five under a newly billed name. That renamed act carried Wiggins through his final years of recorded music, before addiction narrowed what remained of his career.

• 4. A Life Cut Short

  ›

  The Furious Five continued without Wiggins, releasing the 1988 album On the Strength. Cocaine addiction marked the last two years of his life, and he died of a drug overdose in 1989. In 1998, Gang Starr named him in the song In Memory Of…, a track that lists multiple hip hop figures who have died. That tribute kept Cowboy's name in circulation, years after the group he had helped build carried on without him.