La Rock was born in The Bronx, New York City on April 24, 1955, with family roots going back to North Carolina.

"[10] Nonetheless, La Rock's raps would, as with much else at Kool Herc's parties in the mid-1970s, serve as a basic model for other hip-hop artists that would come onto the Bronx music scene by the end of the decade.

La Rock himself has argued, in a reference to two pioneering New York City narcotics dealers, that "me and Herc were to hip-hop what Nicky Barnes and Frank Lucas were to drugs.

[11] After Kool Herc was stabbed at a party, La Rock went looking to kill the perpetrator, who was part of the Executive Playhouse crew.

Gary Harris, an employee of the first hip-hop record label, Sugar Hill, noted that "people respected Herc and Coke, but by the early eighties those guys were like specters—they just weren’t visible on the scene anymore.

[8] In 2021, after years of being absent from the hip hop scene, Coke La Rock returned to the microphone with a verse on the DJ Kay Slay posse track "Rolling 110 Deep".