{"id":47572,"date":"2026-04-08T12:11:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=47572"},"modified":"2026-04-08T12:11:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:11:24","slug":"chase-executives-fondly-recall-financial-companys-hip-hop-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/chase-executives-fondly-recall-financial-companys-hip-hop-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Chase Executives Fondly Recall Financial Company\u2019s Hip-Hop Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Published: September 5, 2014 (TheOnion.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEW YORK\u2014Sitting in the multinational corporation\u2019s boardroom, Chase executives reportedly spent most of Friday afternoon nostalgically recalling the financial company\u2019s hip-hop roots, reminiscing about being young bankers who helped create the vibrant music, cultural, and investment scene in the South Bronx.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChase came from the streets, and we were part of this real underground banking movement that was thriving in hip-hop culture,\u201d said Chase Consumer and Community Banking chairman Todd \u201cBizzy B\u201d Maclin of the FDIC-insured institution\u2019s early days in the late 1970s, before it became a household name. \u201cBack in the day, our financial crew was down with Afrika Bambaataa, Morten Arntzen, the Cold Crush Brothers, Winthrop W. Aldrich\u2014all the hip-hop pioneers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were pushing the boundaries of providing lending services and experimenting with a lot of funky-ass fund transfers,\u201d Maclin added. \u201cEverybody in the Bronx knew that Chase had the freshest deposits, the freshest withdrawals, and the freshest adjustable-rate mortgages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maclin, who explained that the five pillars of hip-hop include DJing, rapping, graffiti art, breakdancing, and banking, spoke reverently about Chase\u2019s origins at \u201cold-school block parties.\u201d While describing the lively culture that thrived from 1977 to 1983, before hip-hop banking had gone mainstream, Maclin told reporters that a diverse crowd of b-boys, fledgling financiers, and local residents attended the huge blowouts to listen to music, dance, and refinance debt at lower APRs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking wistfully about one particular \u201cwild bash\u201d in 1978, Maclin smiled as he recalled how a packed dance floor erupted into a frenzy when a 19-year-old Chase teller \u201cgrabbed the mic\u201d and started holding forth on loan modification provisions while DJ Jazzy Jay spun stripped-down electro-funk breaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone was out there doing their thing, whether it was boogieing, performing transactions, investing their money, or opening checking accounts,\u201d said Maclin, recalling the hours sitting on stoops with friends and developing dope ways to increase dividends. \u201cI still remember giving out my first loan at a house party to Grandmaster Flash.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can still see early hip-hop\u2019s influence on some of Chase\u2019s more recent CDs,\u201d Maclin added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maclin reportedly expressed a feeling of longing for an earlier time when hip-hop was in its infancy, Chase was just starting out, and financial executives were \u201cbanking from the heart.\u201d Maclin admitted that Chase had lost touch with its hip-hop roots over the years, claiming that the bank, with more than 5,100 branches and 16,100 ATMs in the U.S., became \u201ctotally corporate\u201d and sold out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chase president Jamie Dimon told reporters that the formative years of hip-hop were a period when the bank was \u201creally tearing shit up.\u201d According to Dimon, Chase was heavily influenced by ancient tribal money lending and often sampled the policies of innovative German banks from Dusseldorf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat whole period was a renaissance, and I still have vivid memories of coming home late from bank parties where we\u2019d have Kool Herc spinning in the lobby,\u201d Dimon said. \u201cThen I\u2019d spend all night digging through this massive collection of financial records and doing some revolutionary underwriting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was a lot of energy in the community and everybody was there, like Bank of America, First Federal, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Crash Crew, Bank One Corp., and the Fly Five,\u201d added Dimon. \u201cPNC and Washington Mutual were always hanging around, too, before they ended up going off to the West Coast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Dimon confirmed that Chase played an integral role in hip-hop\u2019s \u201canything goes, party atmosphere,\u201d the executive said that banking was the only way out of \u201cthe hood\u201d for many young financial professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a tough place, and the cops wouldn\u2019t even go there, but banking provided hope for a lot of our clerks and loan officers who came from violent street gangs,\u201d Dimon said. \u201cNobody thought a financial institution could come from the ghetto. And banking in Manhattan didn\u2019t even happen until they found out we were making money doing it in the Bronx.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afrika Bambaataa, who is widely regarded as the grandfather of hip-hop culture, was sentimental while discussing Chase\u2019s role in the evolution of hip-hop, admiring how the bank developed talent and created unconventional amortized loans and groundbreaking transaction fees that forever transformed the financial and artistic movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChase would always come straight with it,\u201d Bambaataa said. \u201cDidn\u2019t matter if they were issuing traditional IRAs or a home equity line of credit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of hip-hop trailblazers came out of the Chase crew,\u201d added Bambaataa. \u201cDuke Bootee, Willard C. Butcher, Melle Mel\u2014all started out at Chase. They always had the best graffiti artists designing their deposit slips. And I\u2019ll never forget watching Morten Arntzen rapidly cutting back and forth between two present value ordinary annuity tables.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reached for further comment, Chase executives admitted they were still embarrassed by the financial institution\u2019s ill-conceived 1986 collaboration with Aerosmith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published: September 5, 2014 (TheOnion.com) NEW YORK\u2014Sitting in the multinational corporation\u2019s boardroom, Chase executives reportedly spent most of Friday afternoon nostalgically recalling the financial company\u2019s hip-hop roots, reminiscing about being young bankers who helped create the vibrant music, cultural, and investment scene in the South Bronx. \u201cChase came from the… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47573,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47572\/revisions\/47573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}