50 Cent

The 26-year-old South Jamaica native born Curtis Jackson is one of the biggest names in hip hop.

The Andrew Jackson High School dropout’s first major-label album, released Feb. 6, 2003 broke records by selling more copies in the country in its first week—over 872,000 according to SoundScan, the reporting agency used to make the industry-standard Billboard sales chart—than any other artist since 1991, the year SoundScan started tracking the numbers.

More likely than not, 50 Cent sold more copies of “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” in that first week than any other artist in American history.
And he’s been in and out of the country’s number-one spot for record sales since then. Every new single brings a spike in his record sales, a bigger lump in his wallet and just more national spotlight on what he calls “Southside Jamaica Queens.”

The Ramones

Hey Ho Let’s Go! The leather-clad foursome, whose speedy guitar driven songs gave birth to “punk rock,” formed in Forest Hills in 1974 and the original members attended Forest Hills High School.

In their early days, the band would lug their equipment in plastic shopping bags aboard the subway to commute to the lower Manhattan night club CBGB’s. It was there where their blistering and furious 20-minute musical sets—sometimes culminating with band members destroying their guitars—earned them their first record contract.
The band immortalized their native borough in the songs “We’re a Happy Family” and “Rockaway Beach.”

Run DMC

Considered to be pioneers in the genre, this rap threesome hails from Hollis and are credited with being the first rappers to reach number one on the R&B charts and the first to score a platinum selling album. Members Joseph Simmons (a.k.a. Run), Darryl McDaniel (a.k.a. DMC) and Jason Mizell (a.k.a. Jam Master Jay) immortalized their hometown with the the 1980’s holiday song “Christmas in Hollis” and the song “Hollis Crew” from the Krush Groove soundtrack.

The names Run-DMC and Jam Master Jay are synonymous with rap music.

“The first time I got onstage with [Run] was at some teenage club on the corner in Hollis,” McDaniels said in a published interview. “He just handed me the mic and said, ‘Rhyme for an hour.’ I ran out [of rhymes] pretty soon, but I got better.”

The two continued to talk to each other while both studied mortuary science in college – Simmons attended LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City and McDaniels went to St. John’s University in Jamaica.

In 1983, the duo asked their friend Mizell, who knew how to play bass guitar and drums, to back them up as their DJ.
That same year they released their first single, “It’s Like That.”

The group went on to unheralded acclaim and experienced crossover success by recording a remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” a song that became the first rap single to enter the Top 10.

Mizell was shot and killed inside a Jamaica recording studio in October, 2002.

Paul Simon

Half of the famous folk duo Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon attended P.S. 164 in Flushing and graduated from Forest Hills High School in the late 1950’s. After parting ways with musical partner and Forest Hills High classmate Art Garfunkel in 1971, Simon went on to have a lucrative solo career. Simon captured the spirit of his home borough in the lyrics of “Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard,” which gives a nod to Corona.