Hip-hop pioneer Lovebug Starski dies

Kevin Smith, aka Lovebug Starski, a pioneering DJ and rapper who is widely credited with coining the term hip-hop, died of a heart attack Thursday in Las Vegas, Variety.com reports, citing his manager who talked to NPR.

Smith was 57.

A native of the Bronx borough of New York City, along with Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, Starski was a key member of the late 1970s scene that spawned hip-hop. As he told it, the term came about during a farewell party for a friend who was going into the military when he and Keith Cowboy of Grandmaster Flash’s Furious Five were playfully imitating a drill sergeant calling off marching orders.

He later used the term to rock parties where he DJ’ed, and it was co-opted by the Sugarhill Gang on their groundbreaking 1979 single “Rapper’s Delight,” which is considered to be the first modern hip-hop recording. He was the house DJ at Disco Fever, the club immortalized in the 1985 film “Krush Groove,” until the late 1980s.