Original Concept
American hip hop group

Original Concept was an American 1980s hip-hop group from Long Island, New York, best known for their single "Can You Feel It".
History
In the early 1980s, a group of young men at WBAU FM formed a group called the "Concept Crew". Their show "The Operating Room" was broadcast on Monday nights from Adelphi University on the same station which featured the Spectrum City DJs (Chuck D and Flavor Flav) who later went on to form Public Enemy. The members were Doctor Dré, T-Money, Rapper G, Easy G. By 1986, the group began calling themselves Original Concept and had released their first record, "Knowledge Me" in February of that year. The B-side of "Knowledge Me" went on to become their first single, "Can You Feel It". The single has since gone on to become one of the most sampled source records in hip-hop music.
In 1988, the group was signed to Def Jam Records and late in that year they released their first and only album, Straight From the Basement of Kooley High! on Def Jam. The album featured a cameo by Beastie Boys member, Mike D. on the track "She's Got a Moustache". The album featured samples from The Jackson 5, The Fat Boys, Run DMC, and P-Funk.
“Original Concept” enters the record as american hip hop group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Original, Concept and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7102530. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Original Concept” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.