Malcolm's spirit was constantly being invoked because back in the days popular deejays, in particular Afrika Bambaataa would lay excerpts from his speeches over popular break beats Years later people like myself as well as numerous others would follow suit on air. To this day I still pull out 'Message To The Grass Roots' or Ballot of the Bullet' and rock them over funky beats. Playing Malcolm was done on the regular, it didn't matter whether it was his birthday or not. Malcolm was a constant companion to the early Hip Hop generation. Just to give you an idea of how popular Malcolm X was,there were pressing of some of his famous speeches on Paul Winley records that sold like hot cakes during Hip Hop's early days. In these reissued recordings a fictional announcer had been inserted asking Malcolm pertinent questions on all sorts of pressing issues ranging from his views on non-violence to the concept of Black Nationalism. The answers to the announcers questions were of course taken from various Malcolm X speeches, in particular The Ballot or the Bullet speech. The ironic thing about Malcolm being recorded on Paul Winley records was the fact that this small label was one of the first to compile popular break beats and issue them on a series of albums. I still have my collection and to this day I play cuts like 'Cheeba Cheeba', 'Bra' and 'Scratchin' and the 'Funky Penguin' to name a few. Everyone who was into Hip Hop back then had at least one Paul Winley record.. His releases proceeded Sugar Hill by more then a few years..