Hip Hop 101A

Fela! On Broadway

2010-05-15T20:34:00.001-07:00

Been meaning to blog about this, while I was in New York I went to go see the Broadway musical Fela! This is a musical produced by Will and Jada Smith as well as Jay Z. If you don't know who Fela is go get a late pass.

He's to African music what James Brown is to funk. What Bob Marley is to reggae and what Malcolm X is to Black Power. When your in NY go see Fela! It was just got nominated for 11 Tony awards.

Quote of the Week...

2010-05-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

The other day, there was a heated discussion on Facebook. Former Furious Five MC Rahiem rattled a few cages and shook a few nerves with his remarks about who and what a pioneer is.

I won't go into everything he said but his ideas do merit note. First, there are very few "true" pioneers in hip-hop. He says outside of Kool Herc, Afrika Bam, Coke La Rock, Timmy Tim and DJ Hollywood, there are no pioneers. Why does he say that? Because the previously mentioned brothers were the ones who blazed the trail and started this thing of ours. What blew me away was a Bronx cat gave Wood credit for starting rap as we know it today. Usually, it's the cats from Harlem that cite Wood as an influence, the Bx dudes have been frontin' for years.

Second, he says that Grandmaster Flash, Grandwizard Theodore and Grandmixer DST are not just pioneers, but they are innovators. Flash, innovated the theories and practices of the quick mix. Theodore, added the scratch, and DST was the one who took all of that and made the turntable an instrument. That's innovation.

He says everyone else that came after -including himself, are legends.

That's alot to think on and maybe we'll discuss some time soon.

Anyway, Cold Crush deejay Tony Tone questioned Ra's theory. Let's put it this way, they had a very spirited discussion. Tone, says he doesn't care one way or the other, he knows what his contributions to the culture are. For those that don't know, Tone was the sound man for the Cold Crush. He started with DJ Breakout in 1974. That's a long time back. Especially when you consider that Herc's first party was in August of 1973!

Anyway, Tone gets the quote of the week, he says he was talking to a brother he's known a long time, who told him that he's "out grown hip-hop." Upon hearing that statement, Tone pondered on it a moment and then asked the brother: "...Well, what have you grown into?"

The brother didn't respond, or his response doesn't matter. Hip hop is real. It is who I am. It is who Rahiem is. It is who Tony Tone is. It's who DJ Hollywood is. And all of us that love this culture and music. I still walk with a bop - not when I'm working, wear my hat backwards - not when I'm working, and lose my mind when I hear breaks like "Listen to Me". This is forever, baby. I'm 41 now, and if God says the same, I'll still be a b-boy at 71! Ain't no outgrowing this here!

Mark Skillz and Travis Senger on WFMU

2010-04-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, now you know I ain't really into the glorification of myself, i like to highlight the music and the people, but in this case where, its about a film that i am extremely proud of, its like the old saying, "If you don't blow your own horn, no one will know you can play..."

Anyway, here is the show we did, but first a little background would be nice here.

Twenty years ago, yours truly was a struggling MC trying to get on. A good friend of mine (Damina) worked with a guy named Billy Jam who had a show on KALX. I took my demo on his show. After playing the demo he opened the lines up to the audience, audience gave it five thumbs up. Billy didn't like it. At that time Billy like a group called APG.

Anyway, Bill loves this movie. I've been redeemed.

http://www.wfmu.org/flashplayer.php?version=2&show=35472&archive=60319

...And the winner is: "White Lines and The Fever"

2010-04-30T05:22:00.001-07:00

"Wow" and "Daaaaamn" are the only words I can think of to describe my reaction to "White Lines" winning yesterday at the Tribeca Film Fest.

Let's go back a sec. I was in New York last week for the film's premiere at the Chelsea Cinema. Had fun in New York by the way. My parents were there also. Anyway, the first night, Friday night, I sat there watching the film, I've never been so focused on a film before in my life. So much anticipation. From beginning to end, it was great. I knew the story - hell, I co-wrote it with Travis, but I hadn't seen it on that big of a damn screen before. Everything was extremely well done. The editing (Michelle Witten gets a strong shout here), the audio was well mixed, the story flowed extremely well. There is nothing I would change. Absolutely nothing.

As I sat in the theatre looking at the big screen, my eyes clouded up as I remembered that day eight years ago, when I first started writing, I had given up on my dream to be an MC. I was out of work, unemployed, and had this kooky idea to take up writing, at what I felt was a little late in life. At the age of 34, i had finally decided to listen to my mother and see if there was anything to this writing thing. My wife, who was extremely frustrated with the idea, asked me as I wrote one of my first stories, "Are you gonna get paid for it?" I told her no, that I would have to do some free work for a minute, before I could get paid.

I thought back to that morning when my publisher Andre Torres called me and said, "Yo, is this Mark?"

"Yeah," I said, as it was eight o'clock in the morning and I was still asleep.

"Yo, my name is Andre Torres, I'm the editor of Wax Poetics. Hey man, I got your query, hey, you're what we're looking for at our publication. I don't know if you've ever heard of our publication before..."

Heard of his publication before? Hell yeah. I have the first issue. I kinda borrowed-it-and-still-haven't-returned-it-yet from a guy called Cool Chris at Groove Merchant Records in San Francisco. Uh, Chris, if you should be reading this right now, when I get back to the Bay I'll make every effort to get over to the city to give you back your magazine. Trouble is I don't know when I'll be back in the Bay Area...

Anyway, so Andre asks me what do I want to write about. I pitched the Fever story to him. He said, "How many words do you want? 7,000? 6,000?"

I said, "Nah, 5,000 should be enough."

"You sure, man?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said. A few weeks later I called him back and said, "Say, about those 6,000 words..."

Anyway, I wrote the story as I was transitioning from the West Coast, my home of many years, to the South. I drove across the country. I stopped at every Barnes and Nobles along the way to see Wax Poetics issue 14. I had to read it. I had to see my work in the stores. It was a great fuckin feelin. All of it was there. The little sub chapters "The Place to Be", "Chillin' VIP Style", "Junebug the Baddest Deejay Ever".

Fast forward to December 2008. I get an email from a guy named Nydrin Barnes. "The reason I'm writing to you is because I came across your article online entitled 'When the Fever was the Mecca" and wanted to know anything you can tell me about DJ Junebug, the reason I'm writing is because I'm his son, and I never got to know him. So anything you can tell me would be greatly appreciated..."

I didn't know Junebug. But I knew some guys that did. As a dad it touched my heart that there was a person out there that never got to know their dad, who was an extremely talented and celebrated person among his peers. I put him in touch with Disco Bee and Sal. And I left it at that.

When Michael Mouncer hit me up about optioning the rights to my story for a film project, i was overjoyed. Man, great, someone wants to produce this. Travis and I sounded the story out. We narrowed it down to be about Junebug. I reached out to Sal. Sal, the typical Bronx, New Yorker was a little leery at first. "Have these people ever done anything before?"

Travis and Mike sent me a link to their previous work. They did a video for a group called The Counts. What caught my attention, was that they went out of their way to make an authentic looking Sesame Street episode. They used the same camera and same graphics, that the show used way back in 1969, which was when I used to watch it. My street instincts told me to work with these guys.

"Sal, these are young, hungry, professional filmmakers. I have alot of confidence in them."

Sal agreed.

Now we needed Sweet G.

G lives in Columbia, SC just like i do. I've been here for four years and had never ran into G one time. And then one day, the day after Sal agreed to do the film, I'm standing on line at the gas station. That little voice in the back of my head started whispering to me in my inner ear. Cop. Cop. There's a cop near by. I don't know how to explain this to you, unless you've been in the streets before, but I can feel a cop or pick a cop out of anywhere. I turned around and there was a cop behind me. But this wasn't any ordinary cop. There was something familiar about this cops face. I turned around and looked at him again. Thought for a second, looked again. It was Sweet G.

"Are you Sweet G? George from the Fever?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"Lawd hammercy," I thought to myself, "there really is a Gawd."

"I'm Mark Skillz from Wax Poetics."

"Hey, I know that magazine I have it in my house."

"Yeah, I wrote the story."

We talked for a minute, I told him to give me his number. I couldn't believe how all of this was coming together.

Then we needed to get someone else who knew Junebug well. I reached out to my friend Disco Bee. "Yeah, I knew him," Bee told me. Turns out Bee and Bug were best friends.

We didn't know Junebug's real name. I called Sal, "Hey Sal, Sal, what was Junebug's real name?" In Sal's defense, he is close to 60. "Uhhhhhhhhh, I don't remember. Hey, I know look on G's record, you know that one "A Heartbeat Rap"? it's on there."

The credit reads: DJ Junebug.

I asked DJ Hollywood the man that taught Junebug how to spin. "Yo Wood, what was Junebug's real name?"

'Julio something or another."

Finally, I asked Sweet G.

"Yo G, yo man, I need your help. Yo, what was Junebug's real name?"

Without missing a beat, he said, "My friend's name was Jose Almeda."

It was at that moment that I knew that not only had I found one of Junebug's best friends, but I knew that we had a story with a lot of emotion.

And that's why we won at Tribeca....

The Road To Tribeca Pt. 1

2010-03-21T08:50:00.000-07:00

So, "White Lines and The Fever" has been accepted into the Tribeca Film Fest! Could I be happier? I dunno, I was stunned silent when we won the Grand Jury award for Best Documentary Short Film at SXSW Film Fest, and now we're heading into Tribeca?!? Wow...

http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/shorts_flashback-film31283.html

I got the call at somewhere near midnight a few nights ago. Honestly, I was sitting in my other office (the bathroom) when my cell phone started ringing. "Who in the hell is that calling here at this time of night!" I said out loud, cause I don't want my wife thinking some woman is calling me or no shit like that. Anyway, she opened the door to my other office and handed me my phone, it was Michael Mouncer.

"What in the hell is Mike doin' callin' me at this time of night?" I thought to myself. "Oh no, maybe we got booed or some shit like that at the film fest. Goddamn it.

Me: Hello
Him: (loud party noise in the background people cheering and shit like that) Hello Mark
Me: Hey Mike, what's the deal?"
Him: YOUR AN AWARD WINNING WRITER NOW, MARK
Me: Huh?
Him: YOUR AN AWARD WINNING WRITER NOW, MARK
Me: How?
Him: We won in our category, we got the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Film Short
Me: No shit?
Him: No shit buddy!

I couldn't move. Damn. We won. Still sitting on the can I called the one person in the world to whom I owe it all to.

"Hey Pop!" I blurted into the phone in the middle of the night still sittin' on the can.
'Hey!" My dad said, probably looking at his clock and wondering the same thing that I did: "who-in-the-hell-is- this, and if it's Mark calling my house at this time of night, something is really wrong."
"Hey Pop, we won."
'You won, won what?"
"Hey Pop, we won in our category at the SXSW Film Fest."
"What? Hold on a second Mom's up. Hey, Mark's film won it's category at the film fest."
"Oh shit!" I heard my mom say in the background.

Understand this, I didn't start writing until I was 34 years old. And please believe my mother has been encouraging me to write since I was in the third grade. But I couldn't see it.

"Wow," she said into the phone, "did you ever believe something like this would happen?"
"Nope, not ever," I told her.
"Hey," My dad said in the background, "bet you didn't see this comin' fifteen years ago!"
"Hell no I didn't," we laughed.

Fifteen years ago...what was I doing? I need pencil and paper. I can write my ass off, but I need pencil and paper to do math.

Oh shit, I was twenty-six years old. I was working as a telecom tech and mailroom clerk at James River. I was hustling my demo tapes everywhere and was getting nowhere. I had my heart set on my music. Glad to see I had more to offer the world than just music. And I'm even happier to realize my God given gifts, millions of people walk through life not knowing what they were put on Earth to do. It is truly a blessing....

Turntable Skillz 101 with Grandmaster Flash...

2010-03-10T16:02:00.000-08:00

I didn't get to see this back in the day, basically, cuz my family was too poor to afford cable television. I remember asking my moms, "Yo Ma, when're we gonna get cable?" To which she would look up and say something like, "When somebody around here can afford it!"

I remember hearing about HBO when I was a kid in the late 70's and early 80's, but I never saw it. I heard about MTV in the early 80's, I didn't see it until one day at my home boy Rod's house, he was watching Mike Jax singin' "Billie Jean".

Back in the 80's I heard stories of Flash being on MTV demonstrating his "quick mix" skills. At that time, on MTV, if you were Black and weren't Mike Jax or Prince, then you got no love from MTV! So to hear about Flash being on MTV with his turntables was some other shit!

I never got to see it until now...

Makes You Wanna Holla

2010-03-04T20:01:00.001-08:00

This ain't hip-hop related but humor me for a moment here...

When I think about what the forces of evil (the Machine) have done to our culture, I swear it makes me wanna holla, throw up both of my hands and yell from the tallest building.

But I'd get arrested and thrown in the looney house so I won't be doing that anytime soon.

But for real. Look at the values that have corrupted our culture. Materialism is first and foremost, there used to be a time when you would say that a person was so fake that they were plastic, now look, girls wanna look like Barbie, so much so to the point that they literally look plastic.

Let's take inventory here:
Fake lips
Fake hair
Fake nails
Fake tits
Botox in forehead
and last but not least, and probably should be at the top of the list
FAKE ASSES.

What da fuck?

I saw a pic of a video model, who shall go nameless here, and this chick looked like she weighed no more than a 130 pounds...now how can that ditz have a 60inch azz?

Women i know and have seen with 60 inches of azz are clearly over two hunnit. They ain't pushin' two hunnit, they are over two hunnit. Ain't no way some broad 5'3 and 130 lbs can have 60 inches of azz!

Makes me wanna sing that old Teddy Pendergrass song "Be For Real..."

And the homo thugs aren't any better. Recent news about an artist I have always respected has me looking at him sideways now. Didn't see that one coming.

When I think about all of it, I feel like the last man that really cares. That forgotten person stranded on planet in some Twilight Zone episode. Wait, not the Twilight Zone, right about now I feel like Chief Iron Eyes Cody, from the "Keep America Beautiful" commercial. You know, The Indian in the commercial from back in the day.

You know the commercial, right? the Indian cat is rowing his boat in the peace and serenity of the great and beautiful outdoors. Everything is lovely...and then all of a sudden some jackoff in a station wagon drives by and throws some trash out his window. The camera pans to the Indian who has a lone teardrop fall from his eye.

Remember it now?

That's how I feel, when I see what these morons have done to our culture!

Shout to Guru

2010-03-02T12:18:00.000-08:00

So glad to hear Guru, who will always be known for Gang Starr, has pulled through this major crisis in his life. It's a wake up call for all of us, to take better care of ourselves.

In the early 90's hip-hop (da boom bap flava that is) was at its apex, Gang Starr was one of the groups that was taking things to the next level. This wasn't a couple of guys with dope beats and a marketing gimmick, these were two serious brothers who were dedicated to taking the music beyond its boundaries, but still have it grounded in its original form.

Keith, put a lot of thought into his lyrics. He understood how to match themes with the atmosphere of the beats Premiere supplied. They were one of few groups back then who's songs were "in the pocket" so to speak.

Even when he did "love rap" Guru was still hardcore!

My favorite Gang Starr joint is "Check the Technique", this Marlena Shaw based sample is Guru at his best lyrically. Guru and Premo forged the bridge between hip-hop and jazz like no one had ever done before. Jazzy Jeff's "A Touch of Jazz" was the first to cut breaks (Harlem River Drive, Change Makes You Wanna Hustle) but Premo turned the world upside down with his jazz and funk based samples.

Guru this is for you...

The first time I heard the name Gang Starr it was a group called Gang Starr Posse, it was Keithy E and a couple of others, that crew went nowhere, but once Guru and Premo hooked up and rocked the streets with "Words that I Manifest" it was over...

White Lines and The Fever

2010-02-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

"...This is a revolution sureshot!"

If you'll be in Texas for the SXSW film fest March 13th -20th be sure to check out "White Lines and The Fever". This film is based off of my 2005 article "When the Fever was the Mecca."

We filmed this last October at the Salud Club in Yonkers, NY. Club Salud is owned by Sal Abbatiello, the previous owner of the South Bronx club The Fever.

Appearing in this film are Kurtis Blow, DJ Hollywood, Sweet Gee and Disco Bee. It's directed by Travis Senger and produced by Michael Mouncer.

Anyway, The Fever, as Sal likes to say, is the last great story about that bygone era.

Check it out and lemme know what you think.

Think I'd take my chance with the Apache Line

2010-02-22T21:00:00.000-08:00

With all of the talk about gangs and hip-hop I got this little tidbit from my home boy George "Sweet Gee" Godfrey.

George, a Bronx native was being recruited into the Black Spades, which by the way, was the biggest black gang in New York in the 60's and 70's. He told me to be initiated into the Spades you had to ride a bike off of the sixth floor of an apartment building and into a tree!

I don't know about you, but...that doesn't sound very smart to me. Not only doesn't it sound too smart to me, but it doesn't sound very fly either.

George told me that the Spades leader Bam Bam, saved him from having to do that. George and Bam are still tight to this day. I feel for those poor, crazy souls that wanted to be down so bad that they took a page from the Evil Knievel School of Foolishness and jumped off a building on a bike.

"Oooooooooh shit, he missed the fuckin' tree!" I bet they yelled quite a few dozen times from the safety of the ground as some moron on a huffy bike went sailing head first into the concrete.

I don't know about you, but, if i had to join a gang, and be initiated into one, then the apache line here I come.

So what they hit you with bricks, fists, feet, chains and sticks...I like my chances for survival on the Apache line versus jumping off of the sixth floor and into some tree!

Boom Bap Extinction Quotient

2010-02-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

Depending upon where you're from, or where you're at, hip-hop is many things. For me, at it's root and it's core hip-hop is a deejay's art. It comes from deejays. It was given birth to by deejays and was nurtured by deejays.

If you're from the East - northeast that is, and or your taste in music tends to swing to the northeast flavor, than you no doubt love the boom bap. Your head nods when you hear the following drum pattern: da.boom...da.bap...da-boom-bap.

You feel that shit move your head and neck in unison and it's an involuntary movement. You also more than likely love to hear old funk and soul, along with rock and reggae with your uncut funk, am I right?

Me too.

In the last five years, maybe more like seven years, someone somewhere, conspired against da boom bap.

Someone somewhere made it a crime for MC's to sample.
They said it's unoriginal when rap cats sample a beat.
They said rap cats that use samples are lazy.
They said that rap cats that use samples aren't being creative.
And they made it so that beats made using Fruity Loops and Reason are so much more "original" and they the producers were somehow or another much more talented than a guy with a room full of records.

That's what they've done.
That's what they've said.
The critics in A&R rooms and the gatekeepers at magazines said, 'Nah, sampling is wack." Thus, the reason we have the quality of music we have today.

But can someone tell me why R&B people get to sample and no says it lacks creativity or originality? Why, can Destiny's Child sample The Dramatics and Jahiem can sample "Help is on the Way" and use the drums from "Why Can't People Be Colors Too", and no one says 'sampling is wack' in those cases.

Who died and left them in charge? Who do they think they are Ron O'Neil?

Use to be: rap cats jacked R&B cats tracks and the shit was all good.
Then: R&B cats started jacking rap cats tracks. I didn't like it much, but it was still all good.
Now: R&B cats can sample damn near anything they want and make their records sound like they were recorded at Hitsville USA in 1967 and no one says their shit sounds old.
Why is that? Damn asking that question makes me wanna pull out Redd Holt Unlimited's "Do it Baby".

The Next Hustle

2010-02-04T10:56:00.000-08:00

How ex-pimp Robert Beck transformed into writer Iceberg Slim,introducing a new genre for literature, film and music

By Mark Skillz

Robert Beck was forty-seven years old when he started writing a brutal book called Pimp. On one hand, it was an ode to his former profession, but on the other…it was all he had.

In twelve years, Beck wrote seven books, which vividly captured the inner world of the street hustler. His stories made him a star. But then in the eighties, he dropped out of sight, right when his name had taken on mythical proportions in the hood. Pictures of his face and real biographical information were as hard to find as Osama Bin Laden. In his absence, folklore took precedence over fact.

Before the author died in 1992, he had sold more than six million books in four different languages and inspired two generations of rappers, poets, actors and writers. Yet, very few people know the true story behind the making of his classic memoir.

Until now.

For Those That Remember

Robert Beck was enigmatic, hard to figure out; clever, vain, anti-social and elusive. He was a gentleman pimp and con man, who educated himself in four penitentiaries. When he wasn’t incarcerated, he was holed up in hotel rooms hiding from the law. But don’t get it twisted, he wrote about what he knew about – and a lot of it was first hand.

According to Betty Beck (his common law wife of the 60’s and 70’s) and Misty (their youngest daughter) he was a man who had clearly “saw and experienced a lot” in his life. Betty, the mother of his three stunningly beautiful daughters: Camille, Melody and Misty (who has been featured three times in Jet Magazine as the Beauty of the Week) assisted Bob with his Holloway House titles: Pimp, Trick Baby, Mama Black Widow, Naked Soul, Long White Con, Airtight Willie and Me and Death Wish. Though Betty and Bob were never legally married, to this day, she still uses the last name Beck. To her dying day, her fondest memory will be the day she met a striking looking man with a mysterious past.

The Dapper Predator
This story starts in 1961 when a then twenty-six year old Betty Shue moved to Los Angeles, California from Austin, Texas. Though raised by redneck parents in a time of strict segregation, Betty dug soul food and Jimmy Witherspoon records.

It was at a hamburger stand in Lemert Park, where she soon caught the eye of an enigmatic stranger. The man – tall, slim and charming, was impeccably dressed, Betty recalled how “uncomfortable” he made her feel, “he was just sitting there looking at me”, she said between coughs. “But there was one thing that I knew for sure,” she states “and that was that he sure in the hell wasn’t from around there.”

That’s because according to Betty’s recollection the man was “elegant and refined” and looked like he could’ve been the president of a bank or a doctor. After a couple of weeks the mysterious man simply introduced himself to her as “Bob” and asked if he could take her someplace where they could eat something “other than hamburgers.”

“Are you gonna take me someplace where I can eat soul food and listen to some gut bucket blues?” she asked him, to which he answered, “Sure, my dear.”

When he picked her up that night he handed her an expensive black and gold dress to wear for the evening. Betty was instantly swept off of her feet by this mysterious man who not only correctly guessed her dress size, but also drove an impeccably clean old Chrysler with a record player in the back seat of the car.

At the time, Bob was sharing an apartment with his sick mother Mary Brown Beck and her caretaker Cookie. Mary was dying of heart disease. Deeply religious and proud she had serious concerns about her only son Bob. Day and night out loud, she prayed for his salvation. Betty remembers Mary constantly chastising him: “Bobby, you need to repent! Repent for all that you’ve done.”

“Mama, I will mama, I promise mama, I’ve changed you’ll see!” he swore and swore, but Mary didn’t believe him. One night from behind a closed door Betty overheard Mary warn him, “Bobby, don’t you take this pretty girl and put her on the street!”

At the time naïve country girl, Betty had no idea what Mary was talking about.

At the height of their courtship, Bob and Betty had been virtually inseparable for weeks. And then one night while Bob was away Mary and Cookie cornered Betty. “If you know what’s good for you, you better get away from him”, they warned her. Dumbfounded Betty asked why. “What has he told you about himself?” they pressed her, for which she had no answer. The two women looked at each other with knowing looks and said, “Girl, you better get a hint.”

Before she died, Mary gave Betty a final warning: “Don’t you trust him.”

Later that night when Bob returned Betty couldn’t contain herself. “You know Bob, we’ve talked a lot about me and nothing about you,” she said as she confronted him, “I’ve known you all this time and I don’t know a single thing about you. Tell me about yourself.”

“Where would you like for me to start at?” he responded.
“I dunno start from the beginning.”
“Tell you what; I’ll start at the end.”
Pausing Bob then took a seat and started his confession. “I was just released from prison over a year ago where I did ten months in solitary confinement at the Cook County House of Corrections.”

Betty says at that moment that her jaw hit the floor.

“I was captured on an old fugitive warrant because I escaped from prison thirteen years before.”

In a state of shock Betty’s head was spinning, because she believed her boyfriend – this “refined and elegant gentleman,” to have been a professional of some sort. Speechless she somehow managed to ask him, “What did you do to get locked up?”

“The original charge was robbery”, he said. “But I’m no thief. Stick ups, muggings and things like that weren’t really what I did.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I was a pimp.”

The Big Windy

Robert Lee Maupin, Jr. was born on August 4th 1918 in Chicago, Ill. From his own accounts and based on prison records he grew up in Rockford, IL and Milwaukee WI. where he would first be enraptured by street life. But it is the city of Chicago that he would be closely associated with for much of his criminal life.

Upon being released from prison in 1960 Maupin changed his last name to Beck, in honor of his stepfather William Beck. Like many American cities, Chicago is undergoing a transformation. The run-down tenement buildings and rat-infested sky-high projects are being replaced with townhouses, condominiums and stores with names like Bed, Bath and Beyond.

The streets of Chi-Town that Beck – calling himself Cavanaugh Slim, stalked some fifty and sixty years ago are long gone. But make no mistake; many of the landmarks are still there: 63rd and Cottage Grove, State Street and many other places are still physically there. But the street players, the hustlers, the gamblers, the crooked cops, the bars, the after hours spots, the Policy Kings, the whore houses, the drug dealers, the dope addicts, the neighborhood heroes and zeroes of that time are all gone. Many of the physical buildings are still standing, but, in many cases, they have been abandoned for so long that barely anyone remembers who owned them or what businesses were there. The nightspots and the people that bought life, laughter and sorrow to them are nothing more now than faded pictures in cracked frames stored in attics and basements.

But back in the good old days when Chicago was called “The Big Windy” if you were Black and drove a brand new Cadillac it meant one of four things: either you were a gangster, a numbers operator, a drug dealer or a notorious trafficker of flesh, translation: a pimp. In the ghettoes back then, nobody outshined a pimp.

Processed hair, pencil-thin moustaches, diamond rings, zoot suits, Stacy Adams shoes and flashy clothes told the story of how sharp a hustler’s game was. But what spoke just as loud as a player’s threads (that’s what clothes were called back then) and his hog (as Cadillac’s were called back then too) was his name, your name had to say something about you. If a hustler’s game was especially slick he might have a moniker like “Charlie Golden” or “Cadillac Sonny.”

On the cold and treacherous streets of “The Big Windy” in June of 1942 is where Bobby Maupin, sometimes using the alias Bobby Lancaster, would learn his craft. For twenty-three years, Slim hustled on the streets of Milwaukee, Indiana, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. These cities would later provide the backdrop for his books. Wherever there was a ho stroll or a whorehouse was where he sent his stable of girls to work.

In the minds of most people, the name Iceberg Slim is associated with images of the 1970’s Blaxploitation flick Super Fly or the Huggy Bear character from the TV show Starsky and Hutch. What they fail to realize is that Slim is from another era. His was the generation of “jive”, be-bop, “boogie woogie” music and a dance called the “Lindy hop”. Their icons were Billy Eckstine, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Billie Holiday and Louis Jordan. Their culture thrived in spite of racial segregation and some of the worse racism in American history.

Urban Soliloquies

That night back in the apartment Betty’s head spun like a top. Part of her didn’t want to believe what Bob told her. But she knew it was true.

Every night Bob would tell her the most fascinating stories about crooked cops and pimps, Murphy men and hookers, stick up men and drug addicts, con men and queers, cum freaks and tricks, Italian gangsters and pickpockets. She couldn’t wait for him to get home so that she could hear more. It wasn’t just the subjects that held her captivated it was also the language he used while narrating events. “Bob was the smartest man I have ever met in my life,” she says, “he had the widest vocabulary of anyone I have ever known.”

One of the first people Bob told Betty about was his mentor a notorious pimp – and killer, named “Baby” Bell. Born Albert Bell in Omaha, Nebraska in 1899, Bell – a gambler at the time, migrated to the Windy City sometime in 1930 from Minnesota. It is then that he caught the attention of the infamous Jones Brothers, an organization which ran vice in Black Chicago.

In the book, Pimp the character of Sweet Jones is based on Bell. Although Bob exaggerated Bell’s features – making him a huge black skinned giant, when he was really short, fat and light-skinned, Beck made no exaggerations at all about Bell’s infamy.

According to newspaper clippings from the Chicago Defender, Baby Bell was a psychopath who had a penchant for murder. On June 4th 1943 Bell shot and killed a good friend in cold blood. The Black press and the Black community were enraged as popular attorney Euclid L Taylor (the Johnnie Cochrane of his time) got him acquitted.

“How could it be”, wrote one incensed Defender reader, “that a man commits a crime and goes free without justice being served upon him.” That was because according to the Defender, approximately “thirty to forty people” witnessed Bell leave the balcony of his apartment on 124 East Garfield Blvd. and shoot Preston Ray five times – the last shot going through his throat.

Popular Chicago Defender columnist Henry Brown described Bell as “a blustering, swaggering braggart”, who ruled the underworld. Others described him as “despicable” and “savage.”

For whatever reason, Bob revered Bell so much that he even named his children after him: Robin Bell and Bellissa Beck.

According to Beck’s friend Lamar Hoke, Jr., Baby Bell was a “boss player” (as those in the life would say). “Here was a black man in the 1930’s mind you,” Hoke told me on the phone, “that had a stable of Oriental hoe’s that used to chauffer him around in his Duesenberg. He had a white ocelot that wore a diamond on its collar and had a long gold chain for a leash. He lived in an exclusively white area at a time when Black people didn’t do that kind of thing. He was politically connected downtown. He was virtually untouchable.”

Indeed Bell was invulnerable back then, according to the book Kings: The True Story of Chicago’s Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers by Nathan Thompson, along with being a pimp, Bell was an enforcer for the Jones Brothers.

One night Betty approached Bob with a thought: “You know, if you put all of these stories in a book…people would buy it.” But Bob dismissed the idea.

To Betty’s way of thinking, she says that she doubted if any white people had ever heard stories about the world that Bob was from and that a great many of them would find it interesting.

And she was right.

Black literature at the time was the domain of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes, their books appealed to liberal Whites and intellectuals Blacks. At that time there hadn’t been any books that truly captured the inner struggles of the Black underworld. But Bob neither believed in himself or in the strength of his story.

The Pimp the Professor and the Start of a Classic

In 1967, Robert Beck was a forty-nine year old ex-offender with a rap sheet dating back to 1932. He had a growing family to feed but had no marketable skills or education. This presented a major problem.

In his 1944 Leavenworth prison record, he told the review board that the only legitimate work he had ever done was as an entertainer as well as a “tap dancer and a magician.”

Beck, who was sentenced there for violating the Mann Act, denied any involvement in or knowledge of pimping – his real occupation. When asked about other types of work he had done, Beck comically told the staff that he had been a door-to-door salesman. “And what product did you sell, sir?” they asked him. “Ladies hosieries", he responded – more than likely with a slight smile on his face.

But Bob didn’t fool them one bit. The prison psychiatrist notated on his record: “Inmate will more than likely offend again. He is a menace to society and a confirmed pimp.”

Years later out in the real world – and his former profession behind him, the only work that Bob could find was, ironically, as a door-to-door salesman. “He used to con people into thinking that they had roaches and that they needed to buy his bug spray, to get rid of them”, laughs Betty.

One day while out working he met a man whom Bob would later only refer to as “the Professor.” The Professor – who Betty confirms for me was a white man, was a writer who was interested in authoring a book about Bob’s life. Bob and Betty had been infrequently working on chapters for their own book, but because of Bob’s lack of confidence, they didn’t seriously pursue it. Betty’s fear was that the Professor was going to steal their idea and they wouldn’t ever see a dime for it.

After weeks of the Professors double talk Bob ditched him. At the time, the couple was struggling to make ends meet. Bob was at a crossroads. He didn’t want to return to his old life, which – he made plenty of money at, but he also described as being “miserable” and “lonely.”

But he also couldn’t see how writing a book could solve his problems. Throwing caution to the wind he scraped together seventy-five bucks and bought Betty a typewriter, with the understanding that: He’d write his stories if she’d type and organize them. Together they delicately balanced their growing family with writing his memoirs.

The Pimp Chronicles

In the history of African American, literature there had never been anything like Pimp. It was decades before the 1999 documentaries Pimp’s Up Hoes Down and American Pimp. And it definitely preceded the blockbuster films The Mack and Willie Dynamite by at least six years. It could be successfully argued that the blaxploitation genre itself was in part inspired by the runaway success of the book Pimp.

From the opening sequence to the very end, Beck narrated his life story in graphic visuals depicting a world where hustlers snort and bang (inject) cocaine, smoke gangster (weed) and ride the white horse of heroin to the zenith of ecstasy – and good doses of wild sex and violence are thrown in, too.

In detail Beck – holding nothing back, discussed his mastery of burying his foot in a bitches ass, while maintaining what he called an “icy front.”

The story starts with a three year-old Beck being sexually molested by his babysitter Maude and ends with his release forty years later from the Cook County House of Corrections after wasting his life as a pimp and a con man. In between, he discusses a life that is devoid of love and warmth and full of regret. Chapter after chapter, Beck – with the brutal cruelty of Sadaam Hussein, beats his prostitutes as they plead for mercy through teary eyes. But to him their screams are seen as nothing more than mere bullshit.

Ironically, many of the people who knew Beck later in life would describe him as a “total loner” and a man who “vigilantly protected his emotions.”

Nowhere in the book does he talk about where or when he first started writing. Although, he discussed attending Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute for a short period of time (where he studied agriculture), he gave no hint as to his first efforts at writing.

According to Betty, “The first thing he ever wrote was Pimp.” This is strange, because Bob’s prose was a little more polished than your average off-the-corner-wanna-be-writer. “As the sun butchered nights head with a golden axe.” Is one of many examples of his uncanny mastery of metaphors.

But it’s something Betty told me about Bob’s writing habits that strikes me as peculiar. For instance: Bob liked to write on the edge of newspapers, napkins, toilet tissue, a tissue box and once to Betty’s dismay, “that mother fucker wrote in circles on a paper plate.”

It’s even odder when you consider that Betty always made sure that Bob had plenty of notepads and pens in his immediate surroundings. Dr. Peter Muckley, whose book The Life As An Art, which is the first book to discuss Beck’s work at length, had been told that, “Bob used to stare at the ceiling for hours at a time sketching out story scenes in his head. A technique he called “writing on the ceiling.”

This isn’t exactly unusual for a writer. But note, they didn’t say that he stared at the wall or the floor, but the ceiling. According to Bob’s memoirs, he was a voracious reader who spent a lot of time in solitary confinement. Stands a chance he first started writing in prison. After all, where else would one get a habit like staring at the ceiling for hours at a time and then writing down notes and stories on anything they could say like: toilet tissue, napkins and paper plates?

Before he started his book, he made two promises to himself: no glamorizing his former life and no snitching. According to friend and former Yo! MTV Raps host Fab 5 Freddy, “Many of Bob’s friends were still alive when he wrote that book.” So he changed all of their names and descriptions. “Baby” Bell became “Sweet” Jones, his best friend “Satin” became “Glass Top” and he created composite characters of some of his former err um “employees”: Mary, Eloise, Liz, Mattie and Maybelle became Phyllis ‘the runt’, Stacy, Kim, Joann, Chris, “No Thumbs” Helen and Rachel.

But then he went a step further and gave himself a nom de plumme.
“This character has to be cold,” he told Betty.
“Cold from top to bottom.”
“Like an iceberg?” she asked him.
“Yeah, that’s it, like an iceberg…cold from top to bottom.”
Thus, the hustler who was once called Cavanaugh Slim was re-born: Iceberg Slim.

Adult Themed Titles and the Black Experience

“Black writers needed! Publisher will pay you for your stories.” Read the ad in the Sentinel Newspaper. Betty was floored. This was the break they were looking for.

According to Betty’s recollection, Bob doubted that anything would come of it.

The company Holloway House Publishing is located at 8060 Melrose Avenue. This small publisher in a non descript building would eventually become home to some of the greatest black fiction writers ever. Today, when calling the offices of Holloway House one is immediately thrown off guard, the phone is answered very simply and professionally with a pleasant, “8060”. If you’re not sure where your calling you might hang up fearing that you dialed the wrong number.

Holloway House CEO Bentley Morris sounds like a man who could’ve replaced Bob Barker on the Price is Right. However, on second thought with his big booming bass voice, perfect elocution and salesman persona, he would’ve been a perfect candidate for Monty Hall’s Let’s Make A Deal.

According to the ad in the paper, the company was looking for manuscripts by African American writers. They were looking for books that really captured “the Black experience.” As far as Black authors went at the time Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Claude McKay were the toast of the literary scene. However, this publishing house was looking for something different.

“We were looking for writers who were talking about their own experiences. We didn’t want to get anything about their trips abroad or anything like that; we wanted the Black experience as only a member of the black community could deliver it.” Bentley Morris said.

While dropping the manuscript off Bob accidentally left his sunglasses behind. Editor Milton Van Sickle was immediately struck by the title: “Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim.” Van Sickle read the first few pages and was instantly hooked. He urged his bosses Ralph Weinstock and Bentley Morris to buy it. They approved. But they had no way to contact the writer as he left no info.

“We were knocked out by what we read,” recalls Morris, “[The editor] was very impressed he liked his style, he liked the intensity, the legitimacy of what the author was writing about. He came to us and got the ok to continue negotiating with him.” The editor, Milton Van Sickle, was excited about the prospect of publishing such a provocative piece of work. The company had been no stranger to controversy; they had previously published “adult themed” titles and an explosive work called The Trial of Adolph Eichmann.

The next day Bob returned for his sunglasses. They have them, they said. Van Sickle came into the waiting area and introduced himself …Bob’s life was about to change in ways his deepest insecurities wouldn’t allow him to imagine.

Bentley Morris will never forget the day he met Bob Beck.

“He was charming and meticulous about his dress.” Morris remembered. “From the crease in his trousers to the scarf around his neck, there wasn’t a hair out of place – he was a charming guy, he was a man you’d like to sit and talk with for hours.”

What no one in the small publishing house knew was how this well-mannered, articulate and charismatic gentleman would change the course of their company.

The Cultural Impact of Pimp

According to Morris, the book Pimp wasn’t exactly a bestseller out of the gate. The New York Times and every other literary critic refused to write a review “rave or otherwise.” Critics reportedly disliked the title but mostly – and probably more importantly, were totally turned off by the language.

Pages and pages of the book Pimp contained slang words that the average White American (and a whole lot of Black folks as well) had never heard before.

Some smart person at Holloway House had the insight to insert a short dictionary in the back of the book. For the longest time in Black literature, Bob’s book of slang was a constant reference source – not today though, because phrases like “hog” (car), “wire” (info), “short” (car) and “boot” (a Black person, a phrase I definitely wouldn’t recommend using while referring to or in conversation with an African American, or you yourself might get pimp slapped) are terms from four generations ago. However certain terms are still in use: busted (arrested), cat (female sex organ), cut loose (to refuse to help) and roller (cops).

Undeterred by that pack of snobby New York critics Beck did what any hustler worth his Stacy Adams would do: promote the book himself. Turns out Bob loved self-promotion. Word spread to local talk show host Joe Piney about a new book taking LA by storm. Piney contacted Holloway House to set up an interview with the author.

According to Betty, initially, Bob was ashamed of his previous life, because he went on the Joe Piney Show wearing a “brown paper bag over his head, with holes cut out in the front of it for his mouth and eyes.”

Nevertheless, it was at this point that Pimp found its audience. Bob was delighted but scared. People in the ghettoes of Los Angeles were fascinated with his work. No one had ever read anything like it before. There was a growing audience that couldn’t relate to books about the civil rights movement or slavery; they wanted to read stories about life in the ghetto as only one of their own could tell.

To young readers in the hood, “Pimp had that raw, street feel to it, it was real gritty”, says Dr. Todd Boyd, an accomplished author and USC professor of cinema, who has in his book collection an autographed copy of Pimp, which he calls “cherished property.” Dr. Boyd remembers how the book Pimp, “was able to bring attention to a lifestyle that a lot of people weren’t aware of back then. Pretty much any house in the hood had a copy of Pimp lying around.”

Between 1967 and 1979, Beck wrote seven books that captured the brutally hard world of the ghetto. Moreover, he did it in a way like no writer of his time had done. He told stories of pimps, hookers, drug dealers, con men and gamblers in frightening detail. It was the first time that anyone had accurately captured the inner struggles of ghetto dwellers in the language of the street.

However, in his time and to this very day his work is dismissed as “trash” in both Black and White literary circles. There were three major forces at play impeding Beck’s acceptance into mainstream America: “The Black Power Movement” the “Women’s Liberation Movement” and those snobby New York literary critics. Thanks to them it was a done deal: the book Pimp got no love.

Of the women’s lib movement, he would later tell a reporter from the Los Angeles Free Press that it was a “minimal irritant.” With titles like Pimp, Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow, Slim wouldn’t have had a hooker’s chance in a monastery to have made it into Oprah’s Book of the Month Club. Slim was a hustler who exploited women – helping them to raise their self-esteem and empower them was not part of the pimp doctrine.

However, his rejection by the Black Power Movement was painful. In the late 60’s and early 70’s black militants didn’t take kindly to interracial relationships. Due to his former profession and white common law wife, the Black Panthers wanted nothing to do with Beck. But it was because of the huge popularity of books like Pimp, Manchild in the Promised Land, Soul On Ice and the Autobiography of Malcolm X that readers, according to Dr. Boyd “started to gravitate toward stories of downtrodden people in the inner city.”

Pimp made its impact at the same that the Black Power Movement was starting.

The Legacy and the Disciples

In the back streets of Black America, Beck’s books were selling faster than a twenty-dollar hookers’ car date. It was then that you started to see more writers of the Iceberg Slim mode. One of them was a young man who also hailed from the Midwest, and like Beck, he too, had been a hustler. His name was Donald Goines.

“Let me tell you something”, Morris, says to me excitedly, “Donald Goines loved Bob Beck. They were from the same streets. He came in my office and many times, he’d tell me how much he loved Bob Beck’s work. He looked at Beck as his own personal God.”

Betty recalls Bob respecting Goines’ work on one hand, but also eyeing him with some suspicion as many of their books told the same stories. According to Dr. Boyd, “Clearly, Donald Goines was popular in the hood. People in the hood know Goines’ body of work, but Donald Goines never transcended the hood like Iceberg did.”

It was the collective efforts of Goines, Slim, Odie Hawkins and Joe Nazel that gave rise to a genre called the “Black experience novel”. The authors told riveting tales of life in the hood in the aftermath of the 60’s riots, Vietnam and the introduction of heroin in the Black community. Due to the success of their novels, a new generation would later find their voices.

In 1970, incarcerated Bay Area pimp, Robert Poole was so riveted by Beck’s work that he too was inspired to write. On toilet paper, Poole wrote a screen treatment about his life entitled ‘The Mack and his Pack.” The film would later become a major Hollywood blockbuster The Mack starring Max Julien and Richard Pryor.

“I was first inspired to write after reading Goines’ Dopefiend while in federal prison.” Author Vickie Stringer told me via email. “It was such an authentic read, that it made me feel unashamed of my own path to prison.” Today, Stringer is not only a best selling author but is also CEO of her own imprint Triple Crown Publications.

Stringer along with Sista Souljah, Darren Coleman, Terry Woods and many others are front-runners in a new genre called “gangsta lit”. This genre’s stories are set on the streets of twenty-first century America and tells tales of drug infested streets in the ‘keeping it real’ age of hip-hop’s gangsta influenced, materialistic culture. And like a lot of today’s gangsta inspired music even Stringer admits that, “Gangsta lit is like rap music, whereas, you have some people rapping about what they've experienced and what they’ve heard second hand. Goines and Slim were very authentic and they bore their soul to us.”

Of the two writers, Goines was far more prolific than Beck. Goines wrote sixteen books, in six years, four of which were under the pseudonym Al C Clark. Because of Goines’ subject matter and output, it was soon rumored that Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines were the same person. Things got even more confusing when Goines died in 1974 and Beck stopped writing a few years later. Rumors soon spread that Beck had died sometime in the early seventies as well.

“How did Bob handle being a successful writer?” I asked Betty. “I know what you’re asking me”, she said in a solemn tone. “Sometimes he would lay in his bed all day looking up at the ceiling and he would ask me, ‘Do you really think we can do it again?” Sometimes he would be quite proud of himself and other times…it mystified him. He never imagined his life going in that direction.”

Bob’s last years on Earth weren’t happy. He had diabetes, a failing liver and was blind in one eye. Due to his many ailments, Bob became a recluse. In 2005, the Beck family (Melody, Misty, Camille and widow Dianne Millman Beck) filed suit against Holloway House for back royalties. In their suit, they state that Robert Beck died penniless.

Upon hearing that the man who has been called ‘one of the best selling African American writers ever’ died broke, I asked Bentley Morris: “So, how did this man who sold some six million books die broke in a one room apartment in South Central?”
“I don’t know”, Morris, said to me.
“By your own account you’ve said that he sold six million books, they say when he died he had nothing, how did that happen?”

Rather matter of factly Morris responded: “I don’t know what he had in his bank account. When Bob came around here, he never gave any indication of living in poverty or anything like that. He drove a Lincoln he was always well dressed. We paid him his royalties. When Bob would come to the office in the later years – no, we weren’t as close as we had been, but he was always professional, we were cordial with Bob. We treated him very genteelly. Sir, you’re talking about someone I really liked and had an enormous amount of respect for.”

According to the lawsuit: “Beck and Holloway signed an agreement for Holloway to publish Beck’s first novel with the first right of refusal for his second work along with perpetual worldwide copyrights.”

Basically, Holloway House used the same agreement for each of Beck’s books. As smart as he was, Bob was never represented by an attorney or a literary agent because according to the suit, “Beck didn’t understand the legal terms of the initial agreement and relied on Holloway’s expertise, and agreed to whatever royalties Holloway offered to pay him.”

According to his youngest daughter Misty, herself a talented writer who’s published two books of poetry ‘Waves of My Emotions and Pimp Poetry (Iceberg Slim’s life told in rhyme) “My father’s last royalty check was for $638.” Which barely covered Bob’s $500 a month rent and dialysis treatments, for which Misty says her father “would beg Bentley to pay for.”

“My father died not knowing how popular he still was”, Misty told me. “Bentley had him thinking that no one was buying his books anymore. My dad died a pauper. You should’ve seen how he lived. He lived in the heart of gang territory in a one-room apartment with barely running water and leaky pipes. It was horrible.”

On April 30th 1992 Robert Lee Maupin Beck died from liver failure.

Sadly, due to the Rodney King riots that engulfed Los Angeles that week, the world wouldn’t know about the passing of Iceberg Slim until many weeks later. Even sadder was the fact that the man who inspired a movement died virtually uncelebrated.

According to his daughter Misty, “there were maybe thirteen people” at his funeral, actors Jim Brown and Leon Isaac Kennedy were among the few who came out to pay their last respects. The man who wrote so poignantly about the lonely misery of “the life” died a lonely death.

For more information check out the upcoming Ice T and Jorge Hinojosa produced documentary: “Iceberg Slim: Portrait of A Pimp”

Special thanks to Betty and Misty Beck for sharing their memories with me. And also Bentley Morris, Fab 5 Freddy, Dr. Peter Muckley, Dr. Todd Boyd, Lamar Hoke, Nathan Thompson, Faisal Ahmed, Vickie Stringer, attorney Brian Corber and the staff at Waupun State Prison and Leavenworth.

This article is dedicated to the memories of Betty Mae and Camille Mary Beck.

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2009. No part of this article may be reproduced anywhere in any form without the express permission of the author.

Article first published in Wax Poetics issue 38 December 2009

Copyright Criminals

2010-01-21T09:53:00.001-08:00

Copyright Criminals is a new documentary from Independent Lens. Like a charging rhino they attack the issue of sampling head on. They cover the history of sampling as well as the legalities involved in the art form.

The first sampler I remember was a huge machine called the Fairlight, this thing was as big as a stove. You would select a sound you want and it would play it back, I think the bit rate was 44.1. It was awesome. In 1985 that is.

Akai attacked the art of sampling a couple of years later with the Akai S -900 I think it was called. Also on the market was the sp-12 and then the sp-1200, this is when hip-hop production of the 90's and late 80's began to take form.

The master of the sp-1200 was WBLS deejay and producer Marley Marl. Hands down, everyone that came after Marley learned their craft from him. His shit was incredible. The first production he did utilising a sample was MC Shan's "Marley's Scratch". Marley used the kick and snare from RUN-DMC's 'Sucker MC's". Every production Marley did thereafter was off the wall. Marley would take a 3.5 second sample or a 5.5 second sample from something like "Hard to Handle" or "You Lost That Lovin' Feelin' and kill it. He added 808 kicks and snares and reprogrammed the drums, he was like God to us back then.

If Marley was God to us, then the production team of Hank Shocklee, Eric Sadler, Keith Shocklee and Chuck D were as awesome as a Black Hole to us. What they did, to this day, is the most incredible shit. The way they layered sounds on top of sounds was ....invincible.

Their use of James Brown's band the JB's in particular the funk drumming of Clyde Stubblefield was not of this world. I'll never forget the very first time I heard "Rebel Without a Pause", I fell off of my bed with my mouth wide open and in stone cold silence.

Chuck sounded like a prophet broadcasting from some underground bomb shelter somewhere. "Yes, the rhythm the rebel..."

Maybe the best opening for a rap record.

The only thing Copyright Criminals lacks is coverage of Ultimate Breaks and Super Disco Brakes, the records that were the foundation for late 80's and early 90's hip-hop recordings.

Just Can't Get Enough

2010-01-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

He was the perfect blend of machismo, urban cool and a sex symbol all wrapped in one package - no homo. He was black and proud, yet sophisticated enough to be listened to over a glass of wine and danced to at your favorite neighborhood club.

Teddy Pendergrass was all that and then some.

I make no secret about it I'm from Queens not the Bronx. When I hear Bronx cats talk about how they were rebelling against disco, I think to myself, "Damn, these niggas didn't like Teddy Pendergrass?"

Getdafuckouttahere...

How can you be over 40 and not like Teddy P?

"Wake Up Everybody", "The Whole Town's Laughing at Me", "Close the Door", "Turn off the Lights", "Love TKO", "Bad Luck", "The Love I Lost", "Be For Real"...come on man, who can front on all them records?

It seemed like Gamble and Huff could do no wrong with Teddy's voice. Whether he was talking about bad times, lost love or heartbreak, there was something about the tonal quality of his voice, the sincerity, the gruffness, the gentleness backed by the smooth funk and rich orchestration of MFSB that reached deep down inside of you and made you want to dance or cry.

The summer of 1978 it seemed like my whole building was listening to WBLS. "Turn Off the Lights" was the hottest thing on the radio. All day long the sounds of Donna Summer and GQ blasted through the summer heat. But everyone was really waiting for something else. And then as the sun was being overtaken by the looming hood of nightfall, the smooth velvet voice of Frankie Crocker introduced the next song, "this is Teddy Pendergrass "Turn off the lights" on WBLS the total. Experience. In sound..."

'Turn off the lights...and light a candle..."

I swear to God, it looked like every apartment in the building - at least on the side I was on, turned off the lights and lit a candle at the same time.

Now that's magic.

That was Teddy P.

Rush Limbo is a Big Fat Idiot...

2010-01-16T11:05:00.001-08:00

The island nation of Haiti is crumbling before our eyes. This isn't like Hurricane Katrina where emergency services are gonna whisk people away to diverse points of the country in hopes that at some point, some day, the city will be rebuilt.

No. We're talking about a country that hasn't known stability in hundreds of years. We're talking about a country, where just recently, the kids were so starving that parents were feeding them mud cookies. Let's be clear: they were feeding the kids fried dirt!

Never mind Preacher Pat and his nonsense, Rush Limbo's comments were much more dangerous than anything Preacher Pat could dream up out of his sermons.

Rush seems to believe that this country has done all it can or could for Haiti. According to him we've already given all we could to them in the form of "income tax." I thought this was supposed to be a "christian nation", with good Christian examples like Rush and Preacher Pat it's no wonder so many are converting to Islam and other religions. If those guys are Christians... boy I'd hate to meet Jesus.

He'd probably say something like, "tough dookie on those countries, they need to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and rebuild that place - on their own. With no help for anyone. Besides, it'll be good for em..."

That's how Rush and Preacher Pat's Gawd thinks and acts.

Rush reminds me of the big fat bully in the schoolyard who stole everyone's cookies. That was until a small, wiry kid with nothing to lose and no fear in his heart, walked up to him and stomped him out. That's what needs to happen to his fat ass.

Since this is an old school hip hop site I leave you with the immortal words of Public Enemy

Super Fly

2009-12-12T10:22:00.000-08:00

My man Mike Gonzales put his goon hand down fo sho in this months Wax Poetics. His article about Curtis Mayfield and the the making of the Super Fly soundtrack bought back alot of memories for me.

First, my moms is in theatre so she kinda turned her nose up at flicks like Super Fly, The Mack, Trick Baby - you know all of the movies I would later love.

It was at the Jamaica Alden where I first saw Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier's "A Piece of the Action". Out of all of the blaxploitation flicks, the pairing of Cosby and Poitier were the funniest.

I didn't get to see Super Fly until I was in the 9th grade. My home boy John's dad had all of them joints on Betamax. "Super Fly" was the ultimate shit. I loved the ending:

Priest raises his cross containing his secret sniff stash and inhales a lil somethin...(sniff, sniff)
"Yeah, you see that envelope, in that envelope I got names, baby!
Places. Your daughter. Your faggot son.
Yeah, if you touch one hair on my pretty head that envelope goes everywhere..."

I don't know what they had in those envelopes in all of those films, they used the envelope trick in "A Piece of the Action" and a bunch of other films as well. Had to be some powerful shit in them envelopes I can only imagine what they had in there that was so incriminating (pics of the boss blowin' a dude, pics of pay offs, pics of the boss gettin' raped by a horse - and lovin it) that these big powerful "Outfit hitters" would back the fuck up...

Anyway, my two favorite tracks from the "Super Fly" soundtrack are "Little Child Runnin Wild" and 'Freddie's Dead".

"Little Child Runnin' Wild" was used some years back in an episode of "New York Undercover" where a young girl who was raped by a gang member and HIV positive was on the run. Nothing captures the desperation of the moment like those violins at the end of the song. The sadness, the despair are all encapsulated in that recording.

Oh yeah, big shout out to Patrick Sisson, his story "Night Life" is bonkers too! Love the pics can't wait to pick up the album "Pepper's Jukebox". Cop the issue and you'll see what I mean.

Iceberg Slim in Wax Poetics

2009-12-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

Ahhhhhhh...at last Mark Skillz is back in the place. Okay true believers, haters, students, teachers and bored web surfers, here it is: BAM! And ya say 'Gotdamn"

After three years it's finally here. And I ain't mad. They say God sends you your blessings when you need it, not when you want it. Well, I'm not God, but I'm blessing ya'll with my long awaited, hard fought, tenaciously researched feature article about the life of Robert "Iceberg Slim" Beck.

Just so ya know, I originally entitled the article "The Pimp Chronicles", my editor Brian DiGenti came up with a new title, one that I ain't mad at, it's called "The Next Hustle". I'm feeling that.

My man Michael A Gonzales put his mutha funkin goon hand down on the Curtis Mayfield cover story. And Ronnie Reese is no joke either!

Beck to me is like Louis Jordan to James Brown, or Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis, he's my favorite favorite writer in the world - and I have alot of favorite writers, its just that Beck stands head, shoulders, knees and toes above everyone else for me. This article is the beginning of my monument to the man. He hasn't been given his just due props on any kind of major level. No one - Dr. Pete Muckley excluded, has given him the respect of say Baldwin, Hughes, Steinbeck, Wright and Claude McKay. He deserves it.

There are all kinds of biographies about Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin but nothing about Bob Beck. And its ashamed. Hell, even Donald Goines has had two books written about him.

Anyway, you can get Wax Poetics at Barnes and Noble, Border Books or any used record store, if you can't find the issue order it here: http://www.waxpoetics.com/2009/11/wax-poetics-issue-38/

I'll be posting it up in a few months, but please go and buy a copy so that you can see the pics and the great layout we did.

Aiiiight then two fingers...
Mark

Summary of what's on the site

2009-08-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

At the height of the “Roxanne, Roxanne” era in early 80’s rap Doreen Broadnax was a much feared battle rapper named Sparky D – and then she discovered crack cocaine…

In the 70’s and 80’s when Harlem’s smooth style of R&B dominated the New York hip-hop scene DJ Reggie Wells was the master of the mix.

In 1977 two titans of the New York party scene met for a sound clash at the Executive Playhouse. One of them would fall into obscurity, the other would become a legend and a kid named Grandmaster Flash emerged as a rising star…

One day in 1982 five guys from the Bronx River projects recorded a song that would forever change the direction of modern music. The record: “Planet Rock.”

A generation ago at hot nightclubbing spots like Captain Nemos and the Hotel Diplomat a man would chant into the mic: “Who makes it sweeter?” And a crowd of thousands would shout back in response: “Cheba! Cheba! Cheba!” His name was Eddie Cheba…

Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim wrote novel after novel detailing the pain and suffering of lost and lonely souls in the ghetto. Spoonie Gee’s urban sermon “Street Girl” was the first rap record to capture that spirit…

In the beginning hip-hop clubs had no style, but that all changed when Sal Abbatiello bought the glitz and glamour of midtown clubs to the South Bronx…

Before Queen Latifah, MC Lyte and Salt and Pepa; three girls from the Dirty South rocked mics alongside hip-hop heavyweights of the first era…

Before they were Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Bronx group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had a long climb to the top. And then a song that none of them liked made them stars…

In 1975 there was only one King of Rap: DJ Hollywood was the royalty of rhyme and a star before there was any such thing as a rap record.

Why Grandmaster Mele Mel is a Genius

2009-06-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

Recently there was a small ruckus in the world of rap when mixtape soldier Joe Budden stuck his foot in his mouth, or should I say some other unmentionable orifice. Budden, upset with his ranking in VIBE magazines list of greatest rappers of all time, took exception to being ranked lower than old school great Mele Mel.

“Mele Mel?” The rapper asked, “what has he done recently?”

Mel’s response caught many off guard. It was to the point and funny. Mel ran off a short list of his accomplishments. He has so many “firsts” that it is literally impossible to leave him off of anyone’s greatest of all time list.

The first rapper to have his song added to the Library of Congress.

The first rapper (his group included) inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The first rapper to use the title MC.

The first rapper to make a real video.

The first rapper to win an Emmy.

And there are other firsts that I just can’t name off right now. Let’s just put it this way: This dude has so many “firsts” that if you erased his name from the history of the rap game…there would be no rap game!

With his usual hubris Mel created his own chart of great rappers using a body chart. As to be expected he ranked himself number five (in the throat area), he then ranked Joe at around number thirty-two – which so happened to fall around the ass crack or ball sack area of the body.

Everybody knows the words to “The Message” so I’m not about to take up any space here reciting those words. Now if your looking for a hidden gem in the rap game, might I suggest you check out one of Mel’s least celebrated recordings: “World War III”.

Let me give you a little background about this song and its impact before I go into it.

In 1984 the world was on edge. This was before the threat of Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda friends. At that time, believe it or not, Bin Laden and his friends (the mujahdeen) were on our side.

For forty years two great nuclear powers had been on the verge of literally blowing up the world. There was fear on both sides. The fear of a nuclear war and the spread of communism gave fuel to the rise of the right wing of the Republican Party.

But Republicans be damned. The possibility of nuclear war was damn frightening to everybody. After we dropped bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima we had a deep seated fear of the karma awaiting us.

In 1984 anti-war forces were out in mass protesting anything and everyone connected to the manufacturing of nuclear weapons.

There have been many movies that have dealt with the fallout from nuclear war. First among them: “The Planet of the Apes”. The premise of the story was that after mankind had literally blown itself back into the Stone Age, a weird kind of reverse evolution took place, the planet became the dominion of the gorillas! To hell with the “missing link” we were at the bottom of the food chain ya’ll!

Another movie that comes to mind is the “Terminator”. No, it had nothing to do with nuclear war, but it depicted a world run by machines. Mankind living in fear of machines.

Science fiction has always told stories of the planet self-destructing due to man’s greed and propensity for violence. Our worlds future is depicted as cold, dangerous, sterile, bleak and we’re either at the mercy of machines or other evil forces, who have no choice but to dominate us due to our violent nature.

So with all of that as a backdrop enter: the message raps of the eighties. Before so-called “conscious rappers” there was Kurtis Blow, Mele Mel, Divine Sounds, CD III, Twilight 22, RUN-DMC, Fearless Four and dozens of other groups back then that all kicked rhymes about hard times, unemployment, drugs and how scary the city was becoming.

Maybe this is a good time to have this conversation. I don’t know how many rap songs get released every year in this country, but with myspace music, mixtapes, and so many other avenues to release music, fuggeaboutit , it’s too goddamn many to mention. But lets just say that a large portion of it – lyrically, is irrelevant.

Why do I say that?

Ok, maybe songs about dudes flossin’ and girls strippin’ and endless nights in clubs sippin’ Henny and poppin’ E pills is relevant to how some people are livin’. I ain’t about to sit here and argue that. Uh uh. But what does all that have to do with the current state of our country?

Let’s be clear we are in the midst of the worse recession since 1929. We are fighting two wars and are on the verge of maybe fighting a third and a fourth (Iraq, Pakistan, Korea you pick one). More people have lost homes and jobs in the past year than at anytime ever.

So let’s get back to being relevant.

What does being relevant mean? According to the dictionary: “pertaining to or connected with the matter at hand or under discussion”

So like I say, songs about sippin’ this and that; and trippin’ off of this and that; may in fact be relevant to some. I know, I know no one wants to hear about the problems of the world, they listen to music because they want to escape all of that. And that’s why they pop this and that and sip this and that. But understand, you can’t run from your problems forever. You can’t drink your life away (at least you shouldn’t), you can’t fuck your life away (you can – but you shouldn’t) because your problems aren’t going anywhere.

With that said, the 60’s and ‘70’s were the era of some of the great songwriters ever. Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, Gamble and Huff, Joni Mitchell, Curtis Mayfield and dozens and dozens of others, all of whom could write songs that not only talked about good times, love and drugs, but and this is important, they talked about what was going on in the world around them.

During the 60’s John Lennon said that American music was irrelevant because none of the songs were talking about Vietnam. He said that the only song that was in anyway relevant was Martha and the Vandella’s “Dancing in the Street” which was a metaphor for the riots taking place at the time.

So here we are in the 21^st century in the midst of a depression, two wars and an uncertain future and what are popular artists today singing about? Well, let’s see…ego driven nights in clubs, sexual fantasy’s and other mindless dribble.

Let’s get back to 1984 the year that a lot of these artists claim they were born.

Four or five hundred years ago, if someone would’ve read Mele Mel’s lyrics to ‘World War III’ he would’ve been called a prophet, a mystic, a poet, messianic preacher, a visionary and a genius. There are moments in the song when, I swear, Mel could’ve been Confucius or I dare say a messenger like Jesus or Moses. With lines like…

“Man is in conflict with nature,

And that is why there is so much sin.

But mother natures delicate balance

Will fix it so nobody wins in World War III.”

Now let’s examine that. At the time Mel was twenty two years old. He was a young father with children trying to feed his family in hip-hop’s infancy. Hip-hop in the 80’s was the “champagne and cocaine era.” When you mix that in with the fact that Mel was in the hottest group of that time, well, let’s just say its difficult to believe that he would be able to write something as profound as the following lyrics.

There’s been a talk of a fiery tomb,

Prophesized since the dawn of time.

In a world of bloodshed

Mass confusion

Killer diseases

Pollution and crime.

Man is conflict with nature

And that is why there is so much sin.

But mother natures delicate balance

Will fix it so nobody wins

In World War III

And then he got poetic…

Between the boundaries of time and space,

Was the planet Earth and the human race.

A world alive,

And centuries old,

With veins of diamonds, silver and gold.

Snow capped mountains overlooked the land

And the deep blue sea made love with the sand.

Full grown strands of evergreen hair

Kissed the sky with the breath of air.

Where exotic fish once swam in the sea,

And the eagles soared in the sky so free

But the foolish clan that walked the land

Was the creature that they called man.

They’re cannibalistic paranoid fools

Tricking each other with games and rules.

Training their men to kill and fight

Movin’ and steering with mechanized might.

The only thought that man had in mind,

Was to conquer the world and the rest of mankind…

This was before songwriters and producers established the tired, trite and overly formulaic song structure of the sixteen bar verse and the eight bar chorus that is now mandatory on every record.

A thousand miles away from home

A mortally wounded soldier dies.

And on the blood stained battlefield

His life flashes before his eyes.

Before he died the man saw Jesus

And Jesus Christ took his hand

And on the soldiers dying breath

The Good Lord took him to the Promised Land.

But there’s no more pain,

Everybody disappears after World War III

The silver moon the midnight stars

Jupiter collides with Mars

And out of the darkness spirits roar,

To cast revenge on the Earth once more

The leaders of the world are hypnotized,

By wizards dark and in disguise

Bought to Earth by an evil hand

To devour souls in the brand new land.

They make the leaders think that war brings peace

And out comes the one with the Mark of the Beast.

There’s evil behind closed doors in the year of 1984.

The first time I interviewed Mel I asked him about the origin of the lyrics, my assumption was that Sylvia Robinson had probably introduced him to the songs of Lennon and McCartney or Bob Dylan, or maybe he had a nightmare about the end of the world. His response: “I was just trying to beat other MC’s.”

Go figure that: deeply profound lyrics with searing insight and poetic prophesy; at the heart, were written out of the fear of competition!

Conscious Rappers vs Message Rappers

2009-06-01T06:33:00.000-07:00

On the surface it sounds like there should be no difference, right? Let's look at the artists and compare some notes.

In 1982 Sugar Hill Records released the ground breaking classic "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. This was a song written by an obscure session musician named Ed Fletcher. At first Sugar Hill boss Sylvia Robinson wanted the song to be recorded by the Sugar Hill Gang. Thank God for Sylvia's ears cause that wouldn't have sounded right.

In fact, none of the Sugar Hill artists wanted to record it. Neither the Crash Crew or the Treacherous Three wanted to do it. I seriously doubt that she offered it to Sequence. I've been told by both Rahiem and Mele Mel that Sylvia Robinson insisted that the band record that song or else.

After much hemming and hawing and leg and teeth pulling, the Furious Five as a unit recorded "The Message". But Sylvia didn't like it. She insisted that Mel and Ed Fletcher record the song together. The song became a classic. It is the first rap recording to be added tothe Library of Congress.

It was the impact of the record that I'm talking about right here though.

After "The Message" came out group after group made "message" type records that talked about unemployment, drugs, the insanity of ghetto life etc. It can be argued that the ripple effects of "The Message" were felt all the way up until 1989 when NWA released "Fuck tha Police".

However, there is a difference between "Message" rap and "gangsta rap".

Who are some of the artists that recorded "Message raps?"

Twilight 22
Divine Sounds
RUN-DMC
Kurtis Blow
Fearless Four
Lovebug Starsky
Jeckyll and Hyde

There were others I just don't feel like writing out all of them. This ain't a library ya know.

Okay, 1987 the conscious era begins. For me it starts with Public Enemy. BDP didn't get "conscious" until the release of their second album "By Any Means Necessary". After that came X Clan, Paris, Def Jeff and so many other groups if they weren't wearing red, black and green then they were singing about red, black and green.

But they were doing "Message Rap". Somewhere, somehow, someone came along and made a difference between the two. When there wasn't. The only difference between the two was the use of Black Nationalist imagery.

All those groups did "The Message" over harder beats.

Why today aren't Kurtis Blow and Mele Mel called "conscious rappers?"

Toasts, Boasts and Street Stories

2009-02-15T13:40:00.000-08:00

Back…caught you lookin’ for the same thing!

Okay true believers, history buffs, hip-hop aficionados and people who are just bored out of their skulls, Hip-Hop 101A is back. Dig it, before I go any further special shout to my man Mike G for supplying me with the information for this piece and o-dub over at soul-sides for the inspiring sounds.

Let us move on…

In the years immediately following the release of ‘Rappers Delight’ and ‘The Message’, newspaper reports and magazine features briefly mentioned raps origins being connected with toasts.

For the record: I didn’t know what in the hell they were talking about.

The first toast I ever heard was Hustlers Convention by Lightning Rod (aka Jalal of the Last Poets). At one time the toast “Sport” on the Hustlers Convention album was a staple on the b-boy scene because it opened with a bass and drum break that flowed into some horns. The opening lines went something like this…

“It was a full moon in the middle of June,

In the summer of ‘59

I was young and cool and shot a bad game of pool,

And hustled all the chumps I could find.

Now they call me Sport,

Cause I push the ball short,

And loved all the women to death.

I partied hard and packed a mean rod,

That could knock you out from the right or the left.”

Hustlers Convention contained a full album with tracks by Kool and the Gang along with Eric Gale and Buddy Miles. It was a gangsta ass album when Ice Cube and Dr. Dre were still potty training. Jalal as Lightning Rod, ran down the adventures of he and his ace boon coon Spoon, as they prepared to take on all winners at the ultimate street extravaganza, a one night winner-takes-all in craps, pool and cards at a place called Ham hocks Hall. The event is so high powered that hustlers from every part of the country attend: Finger Poppin Teddy and his call girl Betty, Grit, Big Bill Wheeler (international drug dealer), Stingy Brim Slim and many others.

Lightning Rod must’ve had an eye for cinematography, listening to him will make you think of Madame Zenobia’s in the Bill Cosby/Sidney Poitier flick “Uptown Saturday Night.”

Hustlers Convention ends with Sport sentenced to the chair and then shipped to Sing Sing from there, where he kept on coppin’ a plea. The best line of the whole album is where the Black Nationalist Jalal steps in and unveils the stupidity of thug life with the lines

‘The real hustlers steal billions,

From the unsuspecting millions,

Who are programmed to think they can win…

In my solitude I found out what’s really goin’ down you see…

I learned the whole truth when I was there.”

In all honesty the first place I heard Hustlers Convention was on the album “Grandmaster Mele Mel and the Furious Five”. Mele Mel did a remake of the toast “Sport” and totally reworked the scene at Hamhocks Hall. At the time, I thought Mel was a genius because I had never heard anyone rap like that before.

Little did I know back then, that that was the original style street hustlers rapped in back in the 50’s and 60’s. There are hundreds of toasts – why they are called toasts is beyond me, but, they deal with street life. They apparently originated on street corners and penitentiaries all over the country. The poems a lot of them sad, tragic, some funny, some remorseful talk about the blows a pimp takes in the game, the lost love of a pimp (Doriella DuFontaine) and the penalty one must take for participating in the game.

Iceberg Slim (a/k/a Robert Beck) a man who was no stranger to jail cells or street corners, recorded his own collections of toasts for an album called Reflections, Slim wrote his own toast to his deceased mother Mary Brown Beck, it’s title? Momma Debt.

One of the most popular toasts is attributed to the late comedian Rudy Ray Moore b/k/a Dolemite, Moore popularized the toast the “Signifying Monkey”, to this day, at 40 years of age, I still don’t know what signifyin’ is, but the monkey, a bad mother fuckin monkey at that, talked shit to any and every one in the jungle.

“Way down in the jungle deep,

The signifyin’ monkey stepped on the lions feet…”

Listening to the toasts I can see where someone could get the inspiration perhaps to say them to the beat, especially when you consider that it was the funk and soul era, it would only be natural to marry street poetry with funky beats.

When It Was All About A Party

2008-12-21T21:23:00.000-08:00

Man, I've been sick with bronchitis as well as pneumonia, so I haven't been able to post, but I figure that now that I'm a little stronger I'd hit you with this...

This group right here rocked the mf'n house! They were called the Disco Four. Should've been the Disco Four Plus One More. The crew consisted of Greg G, Country, Mr. Troy, Ronnie D and Cool T. This was an Uptown group that had the hip-hop flavor, but you could really feel the R&B vibe as well.

Their best cuts were "Do, it, Do it", "Throwdown", "Here Comes that Beat" and this one right here "We're At the Party".

This may have been the best cut of that year. I think it was 1983 when this dropped. The harmonies - back in the day, four or five guys would sound like one, well, these guys would harmonize and sound like the 5 Stairsteps or something like that.

None of them, were stand out lyricists. But they all came together well and did the damn thing. My man Troy L Smith from the Foundation has interviewed Greg G (Greg Marius) and is in the process of interviewing Ronnie D (Ronnie Robinson) whose father is Bobby Robinson that owned Enjoy Records. Ronnie is also first cousin to Spoonie Gee.

The production on this cut is great it sounds like the producer - I believe Eric Matthews, replayed or should I say, made a version of Isaac Hayes "You've Lost that Lovin' feelin' if you lsiten to the piano and the bass line, tell me what you think, it sounds like that break to me. But somewhere between "Here Comes that Beat" and "We're At the Party" is the very essence of the Disco 4.

Respect,
Mark Skillz

Founding Fathers Part Two: My Disco Brother...

2008-12-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

Because I want to be able to walk the streets of the Bronx in peace I better clarify my position on the last post.

Eh-hem.

Ok...the hip-hop of the Bronx was pioneered by Kool DJ Herc in 1973. Hands down no questions or arguments from me. What Kool Herc did back then inspired Afrika Bam, Flash, Theodore, AJ, Charlie Chase, Breakout and hundreds and hundreds of others.

However, in the other boroughs a similiar thing was going on. The differences weren't major. Whereas, Kool Herc called his set the 'merry go round' (when he played break after break after break after break) cats in Brooklyn and Queens ie; Master D, the Smith Brothers, Grandmaster Flowers, King Charles, Disco Twins, Infinity Machine and many others were playing rhythm and blues and funk and soul records. They didn't specialize in rare and obscure records with five second breaks like the Bronx cats did, but they did spin records like "Phenomenon Theme" and "Ashley's Roachclip" and when the break came on they kept it going. Not by scratching or cuttin, but they extended the break.

At that time damn near everything in Black music was called disco as the producer (Ron Lawrence) of the documentary below asked me recently.

"Yo, what was Grandmaster Flash's right hand mans name?" Disco Bee. He has a point there.

Lil Rodney Cee of the Funky Four used this line in one of his rhymes: "to be a dis-co sensation a rock rock yall."

Or how bout this: (can't remember the groups name but as the MC handed the mic off to the next MC he said) "My disco brother, get on the mic you undercover lover!"

There was an uptown group called the Disco Enforcers. There was another group (actually one of my favorite groups ) called the Disco Four.

All this to say, cats front on disco big time. But everything back then was called disco and there was no such thing or concept as hip-hop. Especially if we're talking about 1975.

King Charles, Grandmaster Flowers and Pete DJ Jones had been doing their thing since the late 60's! These guys mixed the hell out of records. What they did inspired cats in Brooklyn and Queens. At some point (don't ask me when or where) the two different styles (the Bronx style and the BK/Queens style) started converging.

Founding Fathers

2008-11-26T09:22:00.000-08:00

This is a documentary coming out sometime next year, I don't know who the producers of this film are, but they are on point in this joint. Some of the people I recognize off the bat are: DJ Divine of Infinity Machine, Sweety Gee and Pete DJ Jones.

One of the premises of this film is that hip-hop didn't just start in the Bronx. One of the first people I remember is a guy who played all over Queens named King Charles. This was 1977 maybe early 1978, that I started seeing flyers all over the place featuring his jams, along with the Disco Twins and Cipher Sounds. At the top of the flyer it would say: Tiny Promotions, or something like that.

I hope Pete Jones says live on camera that he is NOT from Brooklyn! For years it has been reported that Pete DJ Jones was from Brooklyn - he isn't, he lives in the Bronx and is originally from Durham, North Carolina.

I remember a couple of years back my home boy Davey D was on a panel somewhere in New York, when a brother in the audience got real heated up, when a Bronx cat, possibly Grandmaster Caz, said something to the effect of hip-hop starting in the Bronx with Kool Herc.

This brother, who was the maintenance man or something like that in the venue where the panel was being held took real exception to the whole "hip-hop started in the Bronx" thing. He said, hip-hop started in Brooklyn with guys like Grandmaster Flowers and the Smith Brothers and he named off all kinds of streets and projects where the different deejays did their thing at. To top it off, he said the Bronx cats never came around there, so how would they know what they were doing?

To be sure, there were all kinds of mobile jocks in New York in the early 70's. Hands down, no questions. I've always asked the Bronx cats that I've interviewed this one important question, "Yo, what impact did the Jamaican sound systems have on ya'll?"

Everybody from Toney Tone to Kool Herc to Bambaataa said: "None, none at all. They weren't a part of our thing. They did their own thing."

Which is more than likely true, with one exception Grandmaster Flash's sound system the Gladiator was built by some Jamaican brothers on Freeman Street. And in Brooklyn, there is no way in the world those dudes in Brooklyn could not have heard the different sound systems. Deejay culture in Jamaica goes back to the 50's!

The one time I interviewed Kool Herc I asked him about the Jamaican sound systems in the Bronx and he acknowledged knowing a few of them, but said that they had no influence or impact whatsoever.

What pisses alot of dudes from Queens and Brooklyn off is when the Bronx cats dismiss them (the early dudes that is) as being "disco". That's a diss, in the literal sense. It's their way of dismissing those brothers as being something inauthentic. To be sure, yes, the brothers did play what was popular on the radio, but they also played breaks too! The real division between the Bronx and I'm gonna say the other four boroughs, is the fact that there was a heavier emphasis on breaks - rare breaks and scratching. Also the MC'ing was a little rawer too. But it was basically the same thing: Talking over funky ass beats on a sureshot sound system.

See the pic above for my personal opinion as to where hip-hop really comes from.

A Tribute to a Real Rapper...

2008-11-09T15:08:00.000-08:00
















This guy was sayin' some deep stuff
when Tupac was an itch in his daddy's
pants.

He was a poet, preacher and a communicator
in the soulful age of Rhythm and Blues when
singers not only sang, but rapped as well. And
they said some really deep, soul stirring stuff too.
They talked about life, love, heartbreak,
pain and hard times.

In other words, real life ish.

By no stretch of the imagination was Bobby
Womack a hip-hopper. But we can learn
a lot from he and his music.

"Across 110th Street", "If You Think You're
Lonely Now", "A Woman's Gotta Have It",
"I'm Lookin' For A Love", "Where Do We Go
From Here", "Harry Hippie" and "I Can Understand It";
Womack had a way of getting straight to the heart of
the matter.

"When the skeletons come out of the closet,
And chase you all around the room,
And the memories sail around like a ghost,
And mess you around with a sad long tune. 
If you think you're lonely now - wait until tonight."

And this...

"I was the third brother of five, 
Doin' whatever I had to do to survive.
I'm not saying what I did was all right. 
Tryin' to make it out of the ghetto was a day to day fight."

I met him backstage at the Oakland Paramount Theatre in 1996.
I didn't know how old he was. But the brother seemed "old"
to me. I now know that he was about fifty-two - but
from being around him and listening to him he seemed like he
was seventy-two.

My best friend Mark was working with the promoter somehow
or another, so I tagged along and got to hang out with "The Poet."
He was impressed by my knowledge of music.
Only a crate digger knows that it was Bobby and Gabor Sazbo
(I probably spelled it wrong) that originally did "Breezin"
a song that George Benson would later popularize.
Bobby's eyes glistened behind his glasses and a warm smile
enveloped his face with every song of his I mentioned.
After all it isn't everyday that a legendary soul man comes
face to face with a twenty-six year old that knows his
music like it came out yesterday.

At the time I was shopping demos and having no luck.
I had heard all of the music business horror stories: Broke artists.
Ripped off artists. Broken groups. Fat cat record men with huge
pockets made off of near destitute artists. I had to ask someone who
would really know...

"Mr. Womack, how do you make a living in the music business?"

Mr. Womack took a long draw on his cigarette while interrupting
himself from the small space of solitude that he reserved for
himself for quiet private thoughts and said to me: "Son, you gotta
love what you do."

Ain't Someone Ever Gonna Give Me A Break

2008-11-02T10:09:00.001-08:00

Kurt Walker probably never had the kind of job where he had to punch a clock or take his lunch to work in a brown paper bag everyday. And he more than likely never stood on line at the unemployment office either. Yet, his music – at least in the first part of his career, was firmly grounded in the blue collar work world of fifteen minute lunch breaks, irate supervisors, low pay and lay offs.

Of all the “firsts” that Kurtis Blow can truly lay claim to(first rapper signed to a major record company, first rapper with a RIAA certified gold record, first rapper turned producer, first rapper on Soul Train and first rapper to make a million bucks) he bears the distinction of being the first and at this point, probably the only, rapper to make songs that paid tribute to that long forgotten shadow of the American silhouette: the hard-working everyday man.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, politicians used to care about the guy who punched in at 7:30 everyday and punched out at 5:00. He got by on little and managed to eke out an existence on even less. But he’s been tossed to the side like that old worn out sofa that’s been in the living room for far longer than anyone can remember. Discarded. Dismembered. No longer useful. No one targets him as a demographic anymore. He’s been replaced by soccer moms and hockey moms.

There once was a time – when the genre was called Rhythm and Blues, that the music was directly aimed at the blue collar workforce. Men like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, Sam Cooke and ZZ Hill come to mind. They talked about “the boss” and real life every day situations. Nowadays every nigga’s a player or a hustler. And everybody knows that players and hustlers don’t work.

For whatever reason Country music never lost this connection with the everyday man.

The last Rhythm and Blues record that truly captured the sentiment of and related to the ‘hard-hat wearing, cigarette-in-one-hand and gin and tonic in the other’ everyday man was an instrumental by John Handy aptly titled “Hard Work.”

In a culture that celebrates out of control narcissism and unchecked hedonism; songs like “Hard Times”, “Tough”, “The Breaks”, “If I Ruled The World” and “Party Time” would probably not make a dent in corporate controlled radio play lists and would definitely never see the light of day on BET.

But if you listen to those songs closely you’ll hear outlooks that only a man who’s been on the wrong side of words like “opportunity” and “profit sharing” can relate to. This is real adult content.

“You work all year to buy a brand new car,

A CoupDe Ville or a Jaguar,

But you didn’t make enough for a good cigar

Cause it’s tough!”

TOUGH: It’s a way of life, lost your job,

Your money but not your wife.

ROUGH: Getting in the black

Uncle Sam’s in your pocket,

And your woman’s on your back.

HARD: That’s the deal,

Had to get a loan

Just to buy a meal

TOUGH: That’s how it goes when it’s getting better nobody knows!

TOUGH: That’s the word,

Unemployment is all I heard.

ROUGH: When you start your day,

Watching the finance man tow your car away.

HARD: To hold a job,

When your being replaced by a little blue knob.

TOUGH: Like a dollar steak

Ain’t someone ever gonna give me a break!

http://www.zshare.net/audio/50805284f7591e7e/

Street Girl: Spoonie Gee's Tale of a Doom Fox

2008-07-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

It was an overlooked song by one of the more underrated rappers of his generation and it was a masterpiece.

It was the first time on wax that a rapper weaved together a narrative as vivid as a Donald Goines novel. It was a tale of heartbreak, deceit and revenge. In fact the main character could’ve been a vixen straight out of a Goines book. At the height of the message rap era one guy decided to do it his way.

Before Scarface, Biggie, Tupac, Kool G Rap and Slick Rick took us on cinematic lyrical journeys…there was Spoonie Gee. Before LL Cool J, Snoop, Too Short, Big Daddy Kane or anyone else who would make a claim to being a mack, player or a pimp on a rap record - there was the ‘cold crushing lover’, who composed slick narratives about cruising down the street in a new Mercedes SL, meeting fly girls and doin’ the “wild thing.”

In a conversational tone – which was unheard of at that time, Spoonie told stories that would make Jody, the mythical bad man of blues legends smile. He was cool before Rakim even touched a microphone and had mastered the art of lyrical seduction before a teenaged Todd Smith rapped “I Need Love.”

In a career that spanned from 1979 to 1987 he authored the classic recordings “Spoonin’ Rap”, “Love Rap”, “The Big Beat”, “Take it Off”, “Spoonie’s Back”, “Monster Jam”, “Survival”, “That’s My Style”, “Mighty Mike Tyson”, “You Ain’t Just A Fool” and “The Godfather.” And it all started on an obscure label called Sound Of New York with an intro that will forever be a part of hip hop history: “You say one for the trouble two for the time come on y’all let’s rock the…”

Small Talk With A Poet From 123rd St
Gabriel Jackson is not the kind of guy who opens up to strangers – especially on a three-way phone call with office noise in the background. It wasn’t gonna happen. Like Tony Soprano would say, “fuggetaboutit.”

Of all the legends of his era Spoonie Gee is something of a mystery. His best recordings were made before the advent of music videos and corporate interest in the hip-hop genre. His laid back demeanor, on one hand, probably helped him – but on the other, it more than likely hindered him in some way. If you close your eyes and listen to his music, aesthetically, he was very similar in style – and sound to another Harlem legend: the Dom P drinkin’, fur coat lovin’, shark skin suit wearing, gold-chain sportin’, diamond ring lovin’, ex-jewel thief, turned soul singer Oran ‘Juice’ Jones.

But that wasn’t quite Spoonie’s style.

Plain and simple, quiet and humble are how many have described the man named Gabriel Jackson. Whereas Oran ‘Juice’ Jones personified a smoothed out, cold-blooded mack version of Curtis Mayfield with a penchant for suits and jewelry, Spoonie was the total antithesis who opted to wear simple sweaters and shirts in publicity pictures.

Spoonie’s charisma can be found in his records. Now, somewhere in his early to mid-forties, Spoonie is a streetwise veteran, who has no doubt seen and been through a lot. Because of his quiet nature and some say shy persona, Spoonie hovered above rap fans as sort of a puzzle. But that wasn’t his aim. He’s done very few interviews and with the exception of the Sugar Hill tours in the early 80’s was never a part of any major concert tour. Chuck D of Public Enemy once said that “Spoonin’ Rap’ was the start of the underground.”

The Harlem that Gabriel Jackson was born into is different now. “Harlem was Harlem back then,” he told me on the phone. Indeed. ‘Regentrification’ has drastically changed the face of the place that poets and writers like Langston Hughes and James Baldwin once wrote about so vividly. But when Spoonie was growing up there he says, “It was the hustling times, when the real gangsters were out, the real hustlers.”

“Man, he was a real Harlem dude,” writer Barry Michael Cooper told me about Spoonie in a phone interview from his home in Baltimore, Maryland. Cooper, also a Harlem native wrote the movies New Jack City, Above the Rim and Sugar Hill and is no stranger to the streets that drug lords with names like Bumpy Johnson, Frank Lucas, Goldfinger, Freddy Myers and Nicky Barnes haunted almost a lifetime ago. “He walked the streets without fear.” Cooper told me certifying Spoonie’s street cred.

In the early eighties Cooper was a reporter and music critic for the Village Voice who covered everything from the infamous Larry Davis case to the latest twelve inch record release by up and coming rap acts. In the middle of covering all of these new and exciting singles the music bug bit him really hard and inspired him to buy equipment and write and record his own songs. A long the way he ran into and befriended one of the hottest MC’s of the time: Spoonie Gee.

“We used to eat at a joint called M&G’s.” Remembered Cooper. “M&G’s is still on 125th St. but the weird thing about it is that it used to be on the other side of the block. Spoonie used to eat there everyday. And he would flirt with this Jamaican woman; she had the biggest breasts I’ve ever seen in my life. He would always order grits, fried salami and wheat toast or something like that – and scrambled eggs. And we would sit in there and talk – and he’s not a big talker, even back then he didn’t talk a lot. All I knew about him and all he would volunteer in terms of action over words was that: Whatever he did in Harlem, whoever he ran with he was respected, man. Nobody ever came at that kid crazy. No one said a word out of place to him. He had mad respect on the street.”

Respect and honoring the hustlers code were common themes in Cooper’s movies be it Nino Brown in New Jack City or Romello in Sugar Hill Cooper bought the cold hard streets to life in his stories. “ I knew about this – the respect issue because growing up in Harlem in my little time getting’ high, I had one foot in the Schomburg Library and the other on 123rd St in building 136 buying me a bag of ‘Black’ or some ‘Improved’ or some ‘Red Devil Dust’ or some ‘Busy Bee Dust’ or whatever. If there was a drought there I’d go down to ‘dust city’ on 112th Ave. My main thing back in them days, Mark was being an observer. Unbeknownst to me at the time I was making mental notes for New Jack City and all this other stuff I would go on to write, cause I was out there. To speak on someone getting street respect I’m not saying that out of a vacuum.”

“The way Spoonie carried himself the way he dressed he was the embodiment of Harlem. I remember this guy used to wear the trench coats and mock necks and the jeans with the slants and some Italian shoes. He wasn’t wearin’ British Walkers he was goin’ downtown to get his shoes, man. He was real Harlem in the way he carried himself.”

“I grew up on 123rd between 7th and 8th [Avenue],” Spoonie told me, “if you went to 7th ave and looked around you’d see nothing but pimps and big time drug dealers and stuff like that, so I seen a lot of that as I was growing up. As far as gangs and all of that there wasn’t none of that. You had the Black Panthers when I was growing up. When you had a beef back then it was a one on one thing. If you won you won if you lost you lost. There wasn’t no going home to get a gun or a knife or none of that, it was straight up, you know?”

“I used to see the hustlers,” Spoonie continued “and look at them and see the cars they drove…you know, [I was] a kid, you know, I admired some of the things that they had, but I never looked up to them or nothing like that and said ‘I wanna be like that’. I just used to admire their cars and they had a lot of women, you know, I like women. I love them as a matter of fact.”

It was his love of women – fly girls as they were called back then, that was his main – and some could argue, only subject. He called himself the ‘cold crushing lover’, a title that he said he just “made up one day.” As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until the subject of women came up in our conversation that he truly came to life: “Yo, I used to have a phonebook that I had all the broads’ numbers in,” he said to me. “I was knockin’ them off left and right – for real. I was knockin’ them off one by one.” And then he paused and said in almost a mumble of a voice, “I was very sexually active back then.”

“I used to call one she’d come over; when that one left I got the next one. That’s how it was, I had more energy back then I was younger. I was pullin’ girls everywhere I went, it didn’t make a difference it could be the store, the laundry mat – I pulled a broad at the laundry mat while I was washing my clothes, for real…it didn’t matter.” He said to me with a slight laugh.

Spoonie came up in Harlem in what could be called a special time. Right on 125th St is the Apollo Theatre, when Spoonie was coming up R&B legends like Jackie Wilson and James Brown used to play there on a regular basis. His uncle Bobby Robinson, who owned one of the first black owned businesses on 125th St., Bobby’s Happy House – a record store that recently closed, raised him. But Robinson is better known worldwide as the guy behind Enjoy Records. Before recording Spoonie, The Furious Five, The Funky Four and his son Ronnie’s group the Disco Four; Robinson recorded the late King Curtis, Elmore James, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Lee Dorsey and the Shirelles.

As much as Spoonie loved Rhythm and Blues he was not a singer. He found his calling when he heard the godfather of rap DJ Hollywood. He doesn’t remember where or when he first heard Hollywood, but he remembers that it was on a tape. It made a big enough impression on him that he started writing rhymes soon after. One of the first rhymes he wrote was on his record “Spoonin’ Rap”: “I was driving down the street on a stormy night, I said up ahead was a terrible fright. There was a big fine lady she was crossing the street, she had a box with the disco beat…” he laughed a little while rapping it to me over the phone.

But aside from his rhymes about being a ‘smooth-talker and a midnight stalker’ Spoonie had depth. On the record “Spoonie’s Back” over Wood, Steel and Brass’s funky remake of James Brown’s “Funky President”, he showed a quality never before heard on a rap record: a sensitive side.

“She was a lady who lived in the past,
Whose life I thought would always last.
She’d wipe my tears when I used to cry,
Made me feel better when I thought I would die.
Helped pick me up,
When I felt so down,
Put a smile on my face,
In the place of a frown.
She took care of me from date of birth
And if it wasn’t for her
I wouldn’t be on Earth.”

The verse was dedicated to his deceased mother Frances Jackson, who passed away when Spoonie was a kid. “He often spoke about his mother,” Cooper told me, and ‘he spoke very highly and lovingly about her.”

The Era of the Big Beat Sound
R&B and funk records in the early 80’s were about having fun and dancing, the only exception to the rule was “Ghetto Life” by Rick James. That all changed in 1982 when Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s groundbreaking hit “The Message” was released. This is the song that forever changed the direction of rap lyrics. It can be argued that the ripple effects from “The Message” were felt all the way into the late 80’s with NWA’s “F—k tha Police.”

The dominant sound of hip-hop in 1984 was Run-DMC’s in your face big beat drum style. Reverb effects made the kicks and snares of the Oberheim DMX and Roger Linn’s ‘Linn Drum’ sound like a busy construction site. The kick drum would literally pound with the force of a wrecking ball. BOOM. The snare drum cut through all other instrumentation like a jackhammer. CACK.

The undisputed master of the Oberheim DMX was a deejay/producer/musician from Queens named David Reeves; starting out in the mid 70’s Reeves spun break beats at parks and block parties as DJ Davy D. After mastering the Oberheim drum machine he added the name DMX.

Davy’s hit “One for the Treble” is a prerequisite for any soundtrack of early 80’s hip-hop. Reeves may have been one of the first ‘one man band’ type hip- hop producers. As brilliant as he was on the turntables he was equally adept at playing guitar and bass. On “One for the Treble” Reeves plays a funky Catfish Collins style lead guitar as well as a rolling bass line that cements all the other instrumentation. The track is firmly grounded in the b-boy ethos by Davy’s funkdafied rhythmic cutting of the Bob James classic break “Take Me to the Mardi Gras.” The drums and the rhythmic electronic hand claps sounds inspired by the early 70’s break-beat “The Hand Clapping Song”; the only rapping on the whole record is by Queens emcee Sweet Tee who repeats the songs hook every sixteen bars to the sound of a motorcycle engine revving up: “One for the treble, two for the bass, come on Davy D let’s rock this place.” After which the motorcycle’s tires screeched into the next verse.

A Tale of A Doom Fox
The last novel published by author Robert ‘Iceberg Slim’ Beck was entitled The Game for Squares; his publisher later changed the book’s title to Doom Fox. For two decades Beck stalked the streets of the Midwest as a pimp and sometimes a con man, his books about his exploits on the cold and brutal streets of Chicago were at one point required reading at Harvard University. I asked Spoonie if he had ever read Beck before to which he responded, “Yeah, I read the one [called] Pimp”.

At the height of the message era Kurtis Blow was back on the scene with “8 Million Stories”, Divine Sounds had “What People Do For Money” and Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde rocked the house with “Fast Life.” Everyone was making message raps about unemployment, lack of money, ghetto life and nuclear war, but Spoonie did it his way, he added something else for people to watch out for: treacherous, conniving, materialistic women. It wasn’t a message rap in the classic sense as much as it was a ghetto tale.

To drive his point home he told the story in a cinematic style.

A dejected lover plots revenge against the girlfriend who was only after his money. The girl: manipulative, cold-hearted and calculating views men as mere pawns in a game of chess. Love holds no desire for her. Money is her motivation. She’s a doom fox. But even the most cunning of manipulators can’t outmaneuver the ultimate judge: Karma. Unable to cope with being betrayed he lures her to his house under false pretenses. When she arrives she meets her fate at the end of two shots from a .38 caliber gun. CACK. CACK. This is the essence of an obscure recording Spoonie made in 1984 called “Street Girl.”

Spoonie’s story was eerily similar in tone to Iceberg Slim’s short stories Satin and The Goddess from the books Airtight Willie and Me and The Naked Soul. Satin double crossed a pair of drug lords and caught the wrath of their retribution in the end. The Goddess broke a young Bobby Beck’s heart. Later in life drugs, alcohol and the brutality of the ghetto would leave The Goddess a broken woman.

“Street Girl” is a rarity for a mid 80’s rap record in that never before had anyone told a story so vivid on wax. There are also obvious echoes of Jimi Hendrix’s classic recording “Hey Joe” and “Olivia” by the Whispers.

Hendrix seeing his friend Joe brandishing a gun warns him to not shoot his woman down, but Joe, heart broken from seeing his girl with another man, kills her in anger.

In the song “Olivia” the children’s bedtime story of little red riding hood gets a ghetto makeover: “A wolf in lamb’s clothing came blew her mind and changed her ways, and now she’s turned out. She’s lost and turned out.”

In Spoonie’s narrative the bad girl is a manipulative inner city temptress. Over Davy D’s pounding DMX drum programming accompanied by a simple keyboard melody and a guitar Spoonie sets the story up.

“Street girl one of the many: short, tall, medium, fat, bald, skinny.
They’re all the same just different names,
Consider most men everyday ass lames.
They want to meet you then mistreat you.
You got money they’ll plan to beat you.
For every dime and every cent leaving you all alone wondering where it went.
She’ll do anything for a diamond ring,
Turn cutthroat for a nice fur coat.
The cutest little thing you ever had,
You better watch out cause she’s bad…”

“What was the inspiration behind the song “Street Girl”? I asked.

“I used to see girls like that,” Spoonie responded, “I used to just see things and I would write about them. It was easy for me to do. I’d see the lifestyle.”

Barry Michael Cooper remembers Spoonie as being an observer who “knew Harlem and the streets intimately.”

“When this guy spoke you knew he was speaking from experience and when he related these things that happened, you could tell, if he didn’t experience it personally then he was an observer, he may have even been a participant observer you would never know, because back in that day you had discretion you didn’t speak on that like that. You didn’t glorify it like that.”

Spoonie tells me that the song “wasn’t about one person, there were a lot of different things that inspired it.”

“But was it based on a true story?” I asked.
He raps the hook to himself real quick in an effort to remember the song, “Street Girl” he says to himself as the memory of the melody comes back to him. “Somewhat,” he replied.

“I know of one somebody’s son,
Who’s on the run,
Because of what she done.
She met this man,
At a birthday party,
Nice kind hearted never hurt nobody.
They became friends and later on lovers,
Met each other’s mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers.
Became very close only on his part.
Not knowing that soon she would break his heart.
A very nice guy
But she thought he was weak,
Well, she planned his pockets
Seven days a week.
Until she got it all every dime he had,
And then she got in the windand went left the man sad.
It was plain to see
But hard to believe
That the woman he loved had tricks up his sleeve
He’d think to himself
Ooh what a mistake
What he thought was real turned out to be fake.
It wasn’t the way that the girl had him grieving’
But deep down inside he just wanted to get even.”

“Tell me what or who inspired this story.” I implored him over the phone.

“Lemme tell ya somethin’,” Spoonie said to me with the cool demeanor of a street hardened veteran. “Ok, you got girls that date drug dealers, right? Like say a dude he got a package or something right, and the girl will get close to him and one day she’ll rock him to sleep and take his money – and the package, and he’s gotta be accountable for that. That was the type of thing that used to happen. Now he gotta account for that. He can’t account for it so he gotta go on the run. Or girls that mess with two dudes, you know he’d get mad because she’d mess with another guy and he’d go and do something to that other guy, now he gotta be accountable for that. It just so happens that the dude that he did was a guy that was down with a crew or whatever have you, you know? So now he gotta get on the run. So there’s a lot of different things I was talking about.”

“He called her up,
By disguising the fact,
Cause if she knew he was mad,
She would never come back.
She answered the phone
Sweet words came out his mouth,
Somehow he convinced her to come to his house.
He hung up the phone
And laid down on the bed
And then crazy thoughts started running through his head.
The doorbell rang
And he answered the door
She said what did you wanna see me for?
He said, ‘Come in baby’
And gave her kiss
And then he got real close
And took the girl like this
And after that you didn’t hear one word
Two shots from a gun is all you heard.”

The last verse of the song has not been equaled by any rapper of any generation. It’s at once insightful, sad, poetic and cinematic. Barry Michael Cooper summed it up the best by asking: “If it wasn’t for “Street Girl’ would Tupac have recorded ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby”?

“With the rose in my hand I went to the grave,
Hoping to God that the girl had been saved.
Though my eyes was wet
And my heart was lead
I fell on my knees and this is what I said:
Some win at life and some get defeated
Still ya gotta treat others like you wanna be treated,
Short, tall, medium, fat, bald, skinny,
She planned the game on one too many.”

“I used to go to church, man,” Spoonie said to me in a serious tone. “If you ain’t saved when you die you going to hell. That’s where I was coming from. “With a rose in my hand I went to the grave hoping to God that the girl had been saved.” If she ain’t saved she’s going to hell.” Spoonie said carefully emphasizing his point.

It’s no secret that Spoonie has lead a hard life. But what I never understood as a fan was how a man who recorded so many great records didn’t have as prolific a career as his peers Kool Moe Dee, Mele Mel and Kurtis Blow, all of whom he equaled in talent. Taking a pause to reflect on his life Spoonie says to me in parting, “I dunno man, I had a good career and all, but I think it just wasn’t meant to be, ya know?”

Special thanks to Sammy Bee, Barry Michael Cooper, and Michael Gonzalez.

This article originally appeared in Wax Poetics Issue 29

Once Upon A Time In The Bronx: The Rise of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

2008-06-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

By Mark Skillz
MarkSkillz@aol.com

It was a extraordinary night for music history. For hip-hop it was the last barrier of mainstream acceptability. The creators of rap music were going to be recognized by the same institution that honored rock icons Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones and Ray Charles.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony takes place every year at the posh Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City; for music history buffs as well as old rock fans with salt and pepper hair this is the night. Music critics and record industry heavyweights turn out in droves to celebrate the careers of the legends of rock that inspired the music we all know and love.

But the 2007 award ceremony was different. This was the first year that a rap group would be inducted into the hall of fame. Rock fans and music critics were livid. Twenty-seven years after ‘Rapper’s Delight’ shook the world, the genre still wasn’t respected as a legitimate form of music. “I’ve heard of Grandmaster Flash”, scoffed one irate fan online, ‘but who in the hell are the Furious Five? And why on Earth are they being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ahead of INXS?”

This year the group that practically invented rap as we now know it, has been formally inducted into the 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside rock greats R.E.M., Patti Smith, Van Halen and The Ronnettes. This is a large step for a crew that many have called “the greatest rap group to ever grace stage and wax.” Their story starts in 1976 when it really was just about the music.

THE GENETIC CODE
Back in 2005 on a warm day in Oakland, CA I had the opportunity to sit and interview the man that wrote the genetic code for what we call hip- hop today: Kool DJ Herc. But back in Herc’s day, it didn’t have a name it was what it was: just a neighborhood thing.

After listening to the founding fathers reminisces on his times as the first break-beat deejay progenitor, I realized something: Kool Herc is to hip-hop what Alexander Graham Bell is to the telephone, yes, he is the creator, but what hip-hop was then and what it is now are two different things.

One hundred years ago you couldn’t have paid Bell or an Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi to have predicted the wireless phone, the cell phone, the blackberry, or any other modern device. Kool Herc himself will tell you in a heartbeat “I had no idea that this would become a billion dollar a year industry.”

With that in mind I wondered something: If Coke La Rock (Kool Herc’s MC) was just spittin’ little phrases on the mike, not full all out rhymes as we know it today, then who was the first real MC spittin’ lyric for lyric on beat with a continuous flow?

“Mr. Herc,” I asked him as I scratched my head and searched for the right words. “I’m curious about something.” I said, “Who was the first person that you saw rap as we know it today?”

Just then at that moment a warm smile enveloped Kool Herc’s street hardened face. He looked out the window across the street at Lake Merritt, almost as if he was looking back at that day, in a quiet voice he said, “It was Mele Mel… Mele Mel and Kid Creole. They were at a boxing gym on 169th St, in the Fort Apache area, as a matter of fact, it was the last place that I seen Big Pun alive at.”

In a quiet and almost somber voice he recalled the events while sometimes taking a pause to look down at his battle scarred hands. “They was in the middle of a boxing ring with these big Afro’s… Kid Creole, as little as he is, had one too. Flash was behind them cuttin’. When I saw them I just smiled cause I knew where they got it from…they got it from me. And they knew that they got it from me. I wasn’t mad. Mele Mel saw me in the crowd and just nodded at me. I laughed to myself.”

It must’ve been one helluva moment.

Hanging above the dimly lit gym was a thick cloud of smoke; it was a pungent mixture of cigarettes and reefer laced with angel dust. Stoned out dust heads tripped out as the dazzling display of flashing lights played psychedelic tricks on their minds. In the red light haze surrounded by stick up kids, gangsters and hyperactive b-boys Kool Herc got to see the first steps of his creation taking on a new dimension, as brothers Mele Mel and Creole were laying down the foundation for rap, as we know it today.

According to Kool Herc’s suddenly upbeat mocking recollection “They were saying ‘Yes yes y’all, to the beat y’all, a keep on y’all and ya don’t stop…”

Melvin and Danny Glover are from the South Bronx an area that was once described as a war zone. It was there where they were born and raised, them and six other gentlemen that would fill out the group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The group’s rise from hip-hop pioneers to 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees was long and hard. Their story starts in the grimy streets of the South Bronx where they were all fans of an amazingly innovative local deejay.

GRANDMASTER CRUSHES THE COMPETITION
“This group has never been just about five people”, Arthur ‘Disco Bee’ Hayward said to me while looking out his window smoking a cigarette. What he is referring to is the fact that apart from the five MC’s (Mele Mel, Scorpio, Rahiem, Creole and the late Keith ‘Cowboy’ Wiggins) and the deejay Grandmaster Flash there were actually two other guys who were apart of the crew, Flash’s assistants: Disco Bee and EZ Mike.

“I go back with him to the beginning.” Bee says. “You ask around, anyone that knows the truth will tell you that originally it was Grandmaster Flash, Disco Bee and the Three MC’s.”

On this day Bee was a bit frustrated. The impact of the bands induction into the Rock Hall of Fame could finally turn the page for a group that many mainstream media outlets have ignored over the last twenty years. Thus, generating some serious cash for a generation of aging hip-hoppers that never got the chance to see any real revenue for the music they’ve given most of their lives to.

Further adding to the situation is the fact that the contributions of Disco Bee and EZ Mike have practically gone unacknowledged. “Flash didn’t invent any of this by himself!” Bee says to me. “That shit [a three man turntable routine] that he did onstage at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors with Jazzy Jeff and Kid Capri is the same thing that me, him and Mike did back in the day.”

Disco Bee goes back to Flash’s initial stages at a schoolyard called 63 Park. Bee – as friends like to call him, would be there with another young man named Cordee-O, whose older brother was Flash’s partner ‘Mean Gene’ Livingston. Disco Bee, along with Flash’s best friend EZ Mike, helped Flash innovate the turntable tricks that would elevate him from the status of a local deejay to a turntable god.

Today Disco Bee is a middle-aged man living in North Carolina with his family. With his Bronx accent, glasses and trademark baseball cap; Bee still retains much of the flavor of his Boogie Down Bronx upbringing. He was rather subdued while talking about his beginnings as a teenaged deejay more than thirty years back, but immediately snapped to life when the subject switched to his favorite sound system.

“The Gladiator”, he exclaimed with an exaggerated raspy voice while proudly wrinkling his face into an intimidating sneer while stretching out his arms and bringing them together as if he was wielding a mighty sword.

This was the system that enabled the group to compete with some of the most ground shaking sound systems in the Tri State area.

“So the Gladiator was all that?” I asked EZ Mike.
“What?” He said as his deep, death-like, gravely voice hit a high pitch, “What? No one could touch that system. It was untouchable.”

“When we started playing The Dixie, this guy on Freeman St., this Jamaican guy built this thing for us.” Disco Bee recalled while beaming with pride. “The speakers were as big as refrigerators and we had four of them. It took two people to carry the amp, this thing was so fuckin’ heavy. We used to put a towel over it, so while we were carrying it into the club people would be pointing at us wondering what we were carrying. And then… we’d uncover it. They would be blown away by… the Gladiator!” Bee exclaims again with the same exaggerated raspy voice.

They went all around the city destroying other crews in sound clashes. That was until one night in Jamaica, Queens…

“We were at this club on Hillside Avenue, what was it called?” Asked EZ Mike, “Oh yeah, the Fantasia that was it. Anyway there we were with the Gladiator, Flash was killing them people. He was cuttin’ that record ‘Catch the Groove’ to pieces: ‘Dunna dunna dun.” Mike said imitating the sound the sax squeal makes as it’s sliced and diced to pieces. “Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dunna dunna dun. Dunna dunna dun.” He was killin’ it. He was spinnin’ around and shit like that cuttin’ the record…and then all of a sudden we heard this huge monstrous sound go: “DUNNA DUNNA DUN”.

“Flash snatched the headphones off and looked around at us and said, “What the fuck was that?”

“We had no idea what it was, but it was so loud and clear that he could hear it even through the headphones!”

“So he went back to spinnin’ again. I happened to look across the room when I saw Goode, in a wheelchair push a button on his mixer and then we heard it again: “DUNNA DUNNA DUN.”

“We were all like “Oh shit, that’s their fuckin’ system making all of that noise. They fuckin’ drowned us out – even with the Gladiator they fuckin’ drowned us.” That was the night they met DJ Divine and Michael Goode and the awesome power of their set called The Infinity Machine.

But still Flash and his gravity- defying, lightning- quick, turntable techniques made him a very difficult deejay to defeat back then.

“One day after Flash had beaten Herc and all of them, there was a jam at a park.” EZ Mike tells me as his gravely voice becomes louder and louder as he gets more and more excited. “Herc was playing there. From the moment we got there people were like “Yo there goes Flash.” This nigga did one of the most awesome things I had ever seen in my life. He got on the turntables and started cuttin’ ‘Good Times”. He was killin’ that shit. “Good…Good …Good…Good Times…Good Times…Good Times. Good Times. Good Times.” And he kept doin’ it faster and faster…”Good Times. Good Times. Good Times”. Motherfuckers were watching this shit and were buggin’ the fuck out. And then all of a sudden he stopped and walked away from the set. He just kept on walking passed the ropes – we thought he was done. And then all of a sudden he went running back toward the turntables at top speed and flipped the cross fader just in time for the record to go “Good Times”. I swear everybody in the fuckin’ park lost their minds.”

The rep was growing Flash was the deejay equivalent of a mighty god like Zeus or Apollo. But he couldn’t conquer the city alone.

THE KING OF THE STREET
Before he was a self-professed former crack addict, now, turned muscle bound tough- talkin’, protein-shake drinking, rumored to be a sometime male stripper and also – nowadays, an aspiring wrestler called ‘Muscle Simmons’; Melvin Glover was known as one of the greatest rappers to ever touch a mic: Grandmaster Mele Mel.

To hear that the first real ‘King of Rap’ sometimes moonlights as a male exotic dancer is heartbreaking to hear. You see, for many rappers of a previous generation Mele Mel was the equivalent of the mystic Bob Marley and the hard partying funk god Rick James. For many Mele Mel was like a prophet.

Just like no one would’ve wanted to see or hear about Bob Marley or Martin Luther King shaking their stuff onstage wearing nothing but thongs. No old school hip-hopper wants to hear about – or more importantly, wants to see, the great Mele Mel dancing somewhere in a thong as part of the ‘Gun Show’.

I have my doubts as to whether Mel is really an exotic dancer or not. So I asked him point blank: “Mel, I hear this whole “Gun Show” thing and you being a stripper is just an extension of a joke that you and Scorp’ started some years back.” To which he responded: “I do my thing. I’m not gonna comment on that, I got my hustle.”

Just like I thought.

Today at 45 years of age Mele Mel is not ready to hang his mic up or coast his way into oblivion. In fact, he’s probably more over the top today, than when he was in his prime. He’s probably one of the few rappers alive these days that actually walks it like he talks it. He’s a man’s man in a culture that doesn’t value maturity. Anyone lacking in self-confidence could borrow a cup or two from him or at the very least could take notes. Even when he’s at his most boastful he’s being sincere.

“I made a way for me to do what I do and for them [other rappers] to do what they do. When you see Mele Mel I want people to know that you’re seeing a true to life living black legend.” He said to me with the raging confidence of a wrestling legend like Rick Flair.

When he’s not in the gym or onstage dancing in some club somewhere, he’s touring the country promoting his first solo album titled ‘M3’.

In the late ‘70’s Mel was known on the streets as “Flash’s MC”. He was the central voice for the baddest deejay the world had ever known at that time. In many ways they complimented each other: Mel was at the very pinnacle at what he did and Flash was unstoppable.

It hadn’t always been the case that Mel was the best MC though – no, many people who remember them from their days as the Three MC’s, recall when Mel’s older brother Danny (Creole) was the better of the trio. In typical fashion Mel told me quite confidently, “That’s subjective, who was better than who. Creole was good, but he wasn’t better than me.”

In the Morrisonia section of the Bronx where they grew up at there were many fledgling MC’s that got on the mic for Flash in 1976. In fact according to Mel ‘anyone could get on the mic for Flash back then’. Lovebug Starsky has made claims of being the first person to talk on the mic while Flash was cutting. But it is the late Keith Cowboy that many remember as being Flash’s first real MC. While Cowboy, Lovebug Starsky and others were doing their thing with Flash in the park, the Glover brothers were hard at work preparing to take their neighborhood by storm.

“Me and Creole were in the house everyday practicing and polishing our routines. From the very beginning – we did everything together. We used to listen to Kool Herc and them. They used to say things like, ‘and yes y’all, the sound that you hear…” They were always saying ‘and yes y’all’ we really liked that so we used it. So we would take that and lengthen it and say it to the beat. So it would be “A yes yes y’all, to the beat y’all, freak-freak y’all.”

“We went to all of Herc’s parties and studied their shit”, he continued, “We studied their format just like people would later study us – that’s how we studied Herc. There are a bunch of stories out there that say that Creole got on first and I got on a month or something like that later, no, we got on the mic for Flash at the same time.”

From the very first time that Mel saw Coke La Rock and Timmy Tim on the mic, he says that rhyming became an all-consuming obsession for him. “I knew from that very first time I held the mic that this is what I should be doing.” He told me. In fact he said as much on his very first record “Superrappin’…

“Ever since I talked at my very first party, I felt I could make my self somebody. It was somethin’ in my heart from the very start, I could see myself at the top of the charts, rappin’ on the mic, making cold cold cash, with a jock spinnin’ for me called DJ Flash. Signing autographs, for the young and old, wearing big time silver and solid gold. My name on the radio and in the magazine’s my picture on a TV screen…”

No one would’ve guessed back then that all of that would come to pass. It can be argued that Mel’s competitiveness, ego and raw determination were key ingredients to putting the band at the top of the heap. Everyone interviewed for this article agreed that Mel was far more competitive than the rest of the group. To this day, he believes that not only can he body slam any opponent in a wrestling ring but can still defeat any MC out there as well.

Many rappers over the age of 35 consistently cite Mele Mel as a prime influence. Rappers as diverse as Kid and Play, Big Daddy Kane, Hammer, Busta Rhymes, Too Short, Rakim and Kool G Rap have all praised his name over the passed two and a half decades. His lyrical prowess is unmatched with songs like “World War III”, “Step Off”, “Beat Street Breakdown”, “King of the Street”, “New York, New York”, “The Truth” and “Survival”. He stood out in an exceptionally talented group.

Nowadays it’s a hard task to get the band that changed rap music to reunite. So much has happened over the years: drug abuse, break ups, fights over money, lawsuits, envy, bitter feelings for not being properly credited and death.

But before the group was full of animosity, before the records and movies, Grammy awards, world tours, long nights with strings of groupies and critical acclaim, in his heart Mele Mel was Flash’s biggest fan.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the sound that you hear is a def to your ear. Ya have no fear cause Flash is here. The disco dream of the mean machine the Darth Vader of the slide fader, no man in the world cuts straighter or greater than New York’s number one cut creator…” That’s how Mele Mel would open many a show with Flash back in the day.

“He’s the one that made me wanna get in the game”, Busy Bee told me. Busy is one of the group’s biggest fans and himself a hip-hop pioneer who is best known for his appearance in the movie ‘Wild Style’ and his record ‘Suicide’. He remembered how the guy that he was so much a fan of, was equally, if not more so an even bigger fan of Grandmaster Flash.

“I used to see him walk around in a sky blue t-shirt that said Pro Keds. Now on the bottom of the logo that said ‘Pro Keds’ he wrote ‘Flash fan’. He was a Flash fan. And he wore the shirt so much, that that’s the way I knew who he was. It was sky blue with white letters I’ll never forget it. I still have snapshots to this day of Mel in that shirt. He was like with me what Monique [the comedian] said to the Bishop Don Magic Juan, “If you wear that green suit again motherfucker!’ You know what I’m sayin?’ He was like that back then with me, “If you wear that T-shirt one more time motherfucker, I’ll buy you a joint my motherfuckin’ self.”

When I related the story to Mel from Busy Bee he laughed hysterically and said, “ Yeah, I remember that shirt.”

EZ Mike remembers when Mel first came around their crew to get on the mic, “Mel wanted to get on the mic with Flash because [Flash] was the best. It was Flash that put him on. Mel and all of them followed Flash everywhere. I remember… they were fans of the man just like everyone else.”

Whether it was on tape or on record Mel was usually the lead voice, with an almost brimstone and fire-like delivery he’d convey lines about Flash so convincingly that people thought that it was Flash on the mic. “Grandmaster Flash is willing and able, he’s the king of the cuts on two turntables, he’s the grand grand the master man. He’s so nice on the slice he don’t need no band. He rocks 45’s and 33’s, he rocks boys, men, women and young ladies!”

THE SVENGALI
Not many people today remember Sylvia Robinson as a singer. She is probably one of the first black females to find success as a songwriter and producer. But without a doubt the biggest feather in her cap is the fact that she is without question the first black female recording artist to own her own independent record company. Many people call her a genius. There isn’t a thing about record production that Sylvia Robinson doesn’t know.

On a recent rerun of the syndicated show ‘Soul Train’ a flashback segment highlighted old footage of Sylvia from 1973. “And now from the Soul Train history book this is Sylvia…” Don Cornelius said as he introduced her with his trademark smooth as velvet bass voice. The camera cut to a scene from the distant past where a dance floor full of teenagers with Afro’s and bell-bottoms swayed to the sultry sounds of an erotic disco beat. On stage wearing an oversized jazzy yellow Apple hat and big hoop earrings, Sylvia Robinson moaned and whispered between sensually charged verses “What your friends all say is fine, but it can’t compete with this pillow talk of mine…”

And to think she almost sold the song to Al Green. In 1973 the song ‘Pillow Talk’ was not only a top ten smash hit on the radio but also it was a hit in disco’s, bedrooms and in the back seats of cars parked in dark places all over America. The song ‘Pillow Talk’ resurrected a career that dated back to the 1950’s when Sylvia, as part of the R&B duo Mickey and Sylvia, busted on to the charts with the smash song ‘Love Is Strange’.

Along the way she wrote and produced for Bo Diddley, Ike and Tina Turner, The Moments, Shirley and Company, The Whatnots, Brother to Brother and many others. Sylvia knew a hit when she heard one. Whether it was The Moments singing the R&B classic ‘Love on a Two Way Street’ or Brother to Brother covering Gil Scott Heron’s ‘The Bottle’ – the lady knew her stuff.

To top things off she and her husband Joe Robinson, a tough, no nonsense, gruff kind of guy, made the ultimate coupe de tat in the record biz in1975 by buying the Chess/Checker catalogue.

Or so they thought.

By purchasing the Chess/Checker publishing catalogue – a collection of some of the most treasured songs in early Rhythm and Blues and Rock and Roll history, the Robinson’s invited the jealous wrath of white record men. “Niggas weren’t thinking’ about buying publishing catalogues back then” a defiant Joey Robinson Jr, told me on the phone. They gave Joe and Sylvia pure hell from the moment they bought that catalogue.

In 1979 their record company All Platinum Records was struggling financially. That was until Sylvia saw Lovebug Starsky performing at the club Harlem World, that’s when a light went off: What if I could take what he’s doing and put it on wax? After thirty years in the music business Sylvia knew to trust her instincts. It would be those instincts that helped her to navigate the treacherous waters of the music industry for three decades that wouldn’t allow her to let the idea go.

First she approached Lovebug Starsky who turned her down. According to DJ Hollywood, the man that many credit as being the ‘godfather of rap’, she approached him as well and he too turned her down. “I was making so much money at the time playing at the Apollo and Club 371 and other spots around the city, that making a record didn’t make sense to me at the time.”

That’s when she got the three guys from New Jersey and christened them the Sugar Hill Gang and released the first commercially successful rap record ‘Rapper’s Delight’. The Robinson’s were the first independent record company in the world to rake in serious cash from a brand new style of music, which, much like rock n roll, would later have a profound impact on popular culture.

LEGENDS IN LEATHER
By 1981 Sylvia Robinson’s chokehold on the rap industry was complete. She signed all of the top groups in the city to contracts – iron clad contracts at that, so that no one could compete with her stable of acts. The best crew on her roster was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. They were the real kings of rap back then.

And they were an arrogant bunch too.

Cold Crush Brothers deejay Toney Tone remembered a night at the early hip-hop hot spot the Disco Fever, when Scorpio “spent all night looking at himself in the mirror.” Many groups from that time remember the Furious Five as being the types of guys who were a little too full of themselves. “They didn’t really associate with MC’s outside of their group” many have said. Kool Herc remembered Mele Mel as being one of the only ones who would occasionally come out and play with him and his crew.

As brilliant as they were though their competition at that time would’ve been shocked to have learned that the band only practiced “maybe once a week” said Rahiem. “We didn’t really practice that much because Mel and Creole didn’t get along. Every time we would get together, it never failed, they’d get into it, and one of them – usually Creole, would wind up walking out. We may have practiced one day a week – but it was intense, we practiced from three or four o’clock in the afternoon to ten or eleven at night.”

Today at 43 years old Rahiem is the youngest member of the crew and arguably the most talented. His smooth tenor voice and wicked flow made him the lyrical co-anchor of the band. Whereas Mel is boastful and arrogant, in contrast Ra is quiet and introspective. “People see me on the street and say “Hey aren’t you…somebody I should know? They don’t know if I’m from the Cold Crush or the Treacherous Three or what”, Rahiem told me. “I’m not as easily recognizable as everyone else – and I kind of like it that way.” It was Rahiem that co-wrote many of the groups songs along with Mele Mel.

Scorpio a/k/a Mr. Ness was the ladies man; with his braided hair and sharp features it was his charismatic persona that helped to give the quintet its swagger. To this day Kid Creole has long flowing straight hair as well as non-stop rhymes and a voice like a traveling salesman.

But it is the late bow-legged, deep voiced Keith Cowboy that many revere. He had one of the best voices ever heard on a mic. The most superb example of Cowboy at his best is at the end of the record ‘Freedom’. As the tape was fading out there were more rhymes to go, so the founding member of the Furious Five ended the song in a classic street corner style with finger snaps and all. He wasn’t the best lyricist in the group, but it was his voice and flow that forever sealed the ending of the song as a classic.

Once they got on Sugar Hill and their records started selling they went way over the top as far as egos went. And why not? They toured the country with some of the biggest acts of the 80’s: Evelyn Champagne King, The Gap Band, Joan Jett, The Clash, The SOS Band and many others, the band was royalty on the street; in Hollywood they hung out and partied with Eddie Murphy. Their stage show was in demand.

Night after night they toured the world like proselytizers of a new faith. They were spreading the word of the gospel that Kool Herc had crafted ten years before and were taking it to places as far as Aruba. People in Middle America had never seen or dreamed that eight guys with two turntables and a set of microphones could do so much with so little. They were warmly received in most places, but in others they were met with stone silence and indifference. What they were doing was so much different from anything anyone had ever witnessed.

“We were playing at Bond’s International one night. I’ll never forget this”, Rahiem said as he recalled the show. “When we first started touring with Sugar Hill, Sylvia used to dress us. She picked out these velvet suits with rhinestones – we hated those suits. Anyway, here we are at Bond’s International, opening for the punk rock group The Clash.”

“Now here we are – we’re rappers, those white boys that came out you know, they wanted to slam dance and shit like that. So Flash is out there first doing his thing, and I guess he went ‘zigga zigga’ one too many times and the crowd started getting restless.”

“Well, we get out there and start doing our thing and after a while I dunno… it seemed like everybody went to take a break and head for the concession stand – at the same time. The next thing we knew we were getting hit with all kinds of shit. I remember somebody threw an orange at Scorpio and it hit him dead in the balls. It was that bad. And we had to go through it twice because we played two shows that night. But we got over it because we were being paid $18, 500 that night. When we got off that stage every white boy in that place looked like someone who threw something at us.”

But bad shows aside what making records afforded the group was the chance to tour the world. Some of them had never been outside of New York before; they were in awe of the sights and sounds of different places and having fans in neighborhoods that were similar to their own.

“I’ll never forget this time on tour in St. Thomas”, said Disco Bee. “Me and Cowboy were the only ones who woke up early, it was eight o’clock in the morning and everyone else was asleep. Cowboy said, ‘Yo Bee, let’s go out.” We were like two little kids with a new invention. I mean we were that happy. We were walking around when all of a sudden we turned a corner and were like, “Oh snap, you see that?” It was a bunch of brothers playing ball in a park with no shoes on. We joined in with them. After a while Cowboy looked at me and said, “Yo Bee, you gonna take your shoes off?” I said, ‘Hell no’. He said ‘me either’. The ground was too fuckin’ hot for that shit.”

“We really liked touring the country”, Rahiem said. “One of the things that separated us from a lot of these cats today, is we didn’t just know our hood, we were in every hood”, Mele Mel said adamantly. “A lot of these dudes today are block niggas because all they know is their block, but when we came to town, we went into every hood and hung out and got to know the people.”

Rahiem agrees, “As soon as we’d get off the plane we’d be like alright, take us to get some food, and we went straight to the hood. In every country and every city we didn’t care where – we went to the hood. We loved going to Florida, Atlanta was a good city for us, and we loved hanging out there. All over Louisiana – New Orleans, Lake Charles, Shreveport we got plenty of love there.”

“What did you love about Louisiana?” I asked.

“The food, the women, once you’ve had a Creole woman, I dunno man that shit was like crack, that shit was addictive.”

THE FURIOUS FIVE MEET THE KING OF PUNK FUNK
In 1982 Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five sat on top of the rap music industry like a big 800-ton elephant. But the world of funk was the dominion of a shit talkin’, weed-smokin’, cocaine-sniffin’, sex crazed, multi-talented singer, songwriter and producer named Rick James.

Decked out in leather and high heel boots his only real friends were a spliff and a guitar. With recordings like “Mary Jane”, “Bustin’ Out”, “Standing on the Top”, “Cold Blooded” and “Give it to Me Baby” Rick James was the king of funk. His songs weren’t just about sex and drugs – though they were a common theme, he also liked to write tunes that reflected his ghetto upbringing: “Pimp Simp” was a song he recorded with the Furious Five for the album ‘Cold Blooded’. His albums went platinum and he played to sold out stadiums all over the world. People that knew him have said that he was one of the hardest working musicians they ever met. For as hard as he worked though– he partied even harder.

“People need to go back in their memory banks and remember, in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, before Prince and Michael Jackson, Rick James was hot.” Mele Mel wants to reminds us. “He was the first modern day black rock star. When he walked out onstage and said “Fire It up” everybody in the place was firing their weed up. He was a talented dude.”

Mel cites the song “Déjà vu’ which James wrote and produced for Teena Marie as being his favorite Rick James record.

“Slick Rick [as James was sometimes called] was basically like our father when we were out on the road”, Mel told me. “Slick Rick did for Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five what Frank Sinatra did for Sammy Davis, Jr, he made everyone respect us.”

“When we first went out on tour with him”, Mel continued, “We’d be outside our tour bus lifting our little weights that were filled with sand and doing push ups. Outside the coliseum or wherever we were doing a show at, we would get this little deli tray that would have meats and cheese and shit like that on it that looked like niggas probably could’ve wiped their balls with it or some shit like that. Rick would come around and check up on us and make sure we were all right and he saw how we were being treated. He went to Al Hayman, who at one time was the biggest promoter in the country, and put him and the union people, on notice: ‘Yo, treat them right, Flash and them are my boys.’ And they did it. So as a result of that we got better food, better places to stay, more space on stage and more time on stage.”

“We immediately clicked with Rick”, Rahiem told me, “Although he’s from Buffalo he’s still from New York, his drummer Lino, from the Stone City Band is from the Bronx – we all immediately hit it off. We got high together and everything.”

“Did you ever hear Rick James say ‘I’m Rick James, bitch!” I asked.
“Absolutely!” Rahiem responded, ‘that was his slogan, that’s really not a joke. That’s how he really carried himself.”
“I seen him straight up kick a chick in the ass with a pair of thigh high suede boots on, he was wearing some black leather pants, he straight up kicked a chick straight up her ass. He said, “You must have the game fucked up, I’m Rick James, bitch! Get out of my dressing room.”

Upon hearing Rahiem’s story Mele Mel laughed and remembered another event. “The first time I saw Rick, I hadn’t even met him yet. I seen him smack the shit out of a bitch, and this was a good-looking broad too, I mean he wasn’t no punk about his. He smacked her and said ‘Now get the fuck out of my dressing room! I was like ‘Oh shit’ this nigga is for real.”

Rick’s charismatic personality and talent made a serious impression on the Furious Five.

But there was another memory of Rick that really stands out for Mel, “When we would be onstage Rick would be on the side of the stage wearing a hood over his head, watching us silently taking mental notes. He really wanted to help us to be better performers.”

Rahiem recalls a night after the tour was over when “Rick called me when he knew he was going to be in New York, and told me to meet him at NBC studios on the set of Saturday Night Live, because he wanted to surprise Eddie. It was Smokey Robinson’s birthday; it was me, Rick, Smokey Robinson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Eddie Murphy and a lot of others who all went out to Studio 54.”

“What was Studio 54 like?” I asked.
“The only way I know how to describe Studio 54 to you would be to say…it was like Disco Fever to the 10th power. There were celebrities walking in and out of that place, it was something else.”

A MESSAGE IN THE MUSIC
While the group was out on tour having the time of their lives, Sylvia Robinson was excited about a demo she got from percussionist and songwriter Ed Fletcher. According to a 2004 article in Blender Magazine, Fletcher had two songs on the demo, one was called ‘Dumb Love’ and the other was ‘The Message’. In the article Mele Mel said, “No one wanted to do ‘The Message’ even Ed Fletcher didn’t think much of it”.

At the time the band was coming off of a string of records that blasted out of boom boxes and rocked block parties, skating rinks, cook outs and school dances – but they weren’t hits. Sales wise they were nothing in comparison with what was to come. “Freedom”, “The Birthday Party”, “It’s Nasty”, ‘Flash to the Beat”, “Superrappin’ and “The Adventures of Flash on the Wheels of Steel” were top notch rap records – but they didn’t make it to the top of the charts.

The first commercial rap artist to release a record with any kind of social awareness was a guy who at one time had been a part of Flash’s crew. According to Disco Bee, “At one point the group got really large. I mean there were a whole lot of people in the group, man.” So they ended up having two groups: the A group – which was the Furious Five, and the B group, which consisted of Kool Kyle, Lovebug Starsky, a guy named Georgie George and another guy who called himself Kurtis Blow. .

According to the band, at first no one in the group wanted anything to do with “The Message”. It was a complete departure from everything that they had done. For a year the band ducked and dodged Sylvia at every turn. But the more they resisted the more pressure she applied.

Finally she put her foot down: Either record this song or that’s it. “She’d do things like withhold advances from us as a form of punishment”, Rahiem recalls.

According to Joey Robinson, Jr., the reason Mele Mel is the only one from the group featured on the song, is because he said, ‘Mrs. Robinson if you believe in the song – then I believe in you.” No one else in the band believed in the record.

Grandmaster Flash has on gone on record as saying he was against the idea of only one person from the group being featured on the song.

However it was Rahiem’s voice that was originally on the track as well. “Mel and I co-wrote the verse ‘a child is born’ together, it was used on ‘Superrappin’. We decided while recording “The Message” that that part would fit into the new song. I was in the studio I laid down the part that Duke Bootee would later do. But Mrs. Rob had a problem with my mother and I. She called us trouble makers.”

Every group has its stand out member, whether it’s The Leaders of the New School, The Wailers or The Spinners, there is that one member that has a little bit more of that special something that makes them stand out from everyone else. From the very start of their careers at Sugar Hill, Sylvia noticed that special something in Mele Mel. ‘It was Mrs. Robinson that singled him out and made it look like he was the leader – but he wasn’t.” Rahiem told me. “Because his lyrics were more universal we let him take the lead on stuff that he wrote.”

In the song ‘The Message’ Duke Bootee and Mele Mel painted raw lyrical pictures of the suffering of ghetto dwellers huddled together in the ruins of the neglected promise of America. For the first time on wax since the days of the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron, there was a record on the radio that truly captured the claustrophobic desperation and despair of the inner city at the dawn of Reaganomics.

“Broken glass everywhere,
People pissin’ on the stairs,
You know they just don’t care.
I can’t take the smell,
Can’t take the noise,
I got no money to move out,
I guess I got no choice.
Rats in the front room,
Roaches in the back,
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat.
I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far,
Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car.”

And then the songs refrain:

“Don’t push me cause I’m close to the edge,
I’m tryin’ not to lose my head.”
When the song finally dropped it was one of the most awesome things ever heard in rap up to that point. In fact, lyrically it forever changed the game, the days of party rhymes and fun were over the seeds for a more serious art form were finally taking root.

Funk For the Folks: The Story of Sequence

2007-12-03T09:41:00.000-08:00

By Mark Skillz

In the dawn of recorded rap music three chicks from the Dirty South mixed gospel flavored R&B harmonies with rap and rocked stadiums full of fans when SWV and Xcape were toddlers and they did their thing long before Lil’ Kim, Shaunna, Eve, Foxy Brown and Trina ever dreamed of spitting erotic verses.

And barely anyone remembers them.

For all of those that think that the South just got into the game yesterday: Surprise, one of the first rap records was made by a group of girls from Columbia, South Carolina. From time to time their music (‘Funk You Up’, ‘Tear the Roof Off the Sucker’, ‘Monster Jam’ and ‘Let’s Dance’) pops up as samples in hits by En Vogue, Dr. Dre, Coolio, Erykah Badu, Tupac and many others.

They called themselves Blondy, Cheryl ‘The Pearl’ and Angie B (now Angie Stone), however collectively – they were known as Sequence. In the early 80’s they held their own and shared stages with the most prominent groups of the time: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Funky Four Plus One More, Spoonie Gee, Treacherous Three and the Sugar Hill Gang.

In 1979 King Tim III’s ‘Personality Jock’ and the Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ were released to an unsuspecting world. They literally took the country by surprise. They were gobbled up and digested very quickly. The world wanted more. And they got it from the Funky Four Plus One, Spoonie Gee and Lady B from Philly. But there was something else on the horizon.

One Night At the Township Auditorium
From the outside the big red building with huge white pillars on the corner of Taylor St. looks like it could’ve been used as a courthouse at one time or another. But it wasn’t, it’s the cornerstone of entertainment in the capital city of one of the oldest towns in South Carolina. It’s called the Township Auditorium.

In the weeks following the release of ‘Rapper’s Delight’ the Sugar Hill Gang did one of their first concerts in Columbia, SC. History was made at the Township Auditorium one October night when three CA Johnson High School students got invited backstage on a humbug.

There are a lot of things that Gwendolyn ‘Blondy’ Callis (formerly Chisholm) can’t remember, a lot of it is due to the passage of time, but then again there are certain things that she just chooses to remain mum about. She has a down to Earth, easy-going personality with a husky kuntree accent – in normal conversation she sounds like the chick on the records. But what she will never forget is the night that she and her friends were discovered.

“I said I gotta get to that concert,” remembers Blondy, who, earned her nickname as a teenager because she dyed (and still does) her hair blond, “They were coming on October 20th – which is my birthday. I went through a lot that day.”

Determined to break the grip of an overly bearing mother Blondy devised a scheme to go to the show. The plan was simple: stay at her best friend and neighbors house Cheryl ‘The Pearl’ Cook. Cheryl’s mother was far more permissive than Blondy’s mother was. Despite being twenty years old at the time, Blondy’s mother would not allow her to go anywhere.

“My mother was very strict”, Blondy said to me while recalling her stern upbringing. “I wasn’t allowed to go outside when she wasn’t home. I wasn’t allowed to have friends over when she wasn’t home. She was always like that. Cheryl and I lived in the Saxon Homes. I was the only girl in the projects that had to talk to her friends through the window. That’s how strict my mother was. I don’t know why she was like that but she was.”

On the night of the Sugar Hill Gang concert Blondy had had enough. “I knew my mother wouldn’t allow me to go the concert, so I figured if I said I was spending the night at Cheryl’s house, it would be all right. But she said no. I said that I was going anyway. It wasn’t right. I was twenty years old. She said if you walk out that door – don’t come back. And I didn’t, not to this day.”

With nowhere to go Cheryl’s mother offered to take her in.

The night of the Sugar Hill concert Blondy’s employer – who used to also get them booked at local shows performing at roller-skating rinks and talent shows, promised the girls tickets to the Sugar Hill gig. But there were none waiting for them. And then fate intervened.

It just so happened that the Sugar Hill Gang’s road manager was outside the venue, “Harold [a much older man] was trying to talk to Angie. He had a thing for dark-skinned girls.” Blondy remembers. “He said he could get us backstage. But Angie said we all had to go. So he took all three of us back there. Once we got back there we started talking our shit. We said we can sing and rap better than the Sugar Hill Gang. He said, ‘you can?” We said, “Yeah”.

“So we get back there and he says [to an older woman sitting backstage], “Hey, I’ve got some girls here who say that they can sing and rap better than the Sugar Hill Gang.”

Neither Cheryl, Blondy nor Angie knew anything about the record business. And they knew absolutely nothing about the origins of either Sugar Hill Records or the group of rappers called the Sugar Hill Gang. So they definitely had no idea who the nice older lady was sitting backstage.

“Ok, let’s hear what you got”, the lady said to them. And then an impromptu audition took place.

The girls had been working on routines for weeks – singing routines that is. Every song they performed that night the lady would smile and say ‘That’s nice, that’s nice.” Blondy recalls.

And then just as they were about to leave Cheryl ‘The Pearl’ remembered something…

“Hey, we forgot to do ‘Funk You Up’. That’s when then the trio launched into the only rap routine they had the one that would change the course of their lives forever. Luckily the lady allowed them to continue.

“We’re gonna funk you right on up. We’re gonna funk you right on up. I said get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, getup, get up, get up, get up – sit back down.”

“That’s when she said ‘Stop’, both Cheryl and Blondy recalled.

“She then said, “Doug [Wimbish] go get your bass and play along with them.” She started directing us right there on the spot. She told us when to come in and had Skip [McDonald Sugar Hill session guitarist] come backstage. Doug made up that bass line right there on the spot. She delayed the concert for an hour and a half so that she could direct everything. Once we were done she asked us if we wanted to make a record. We were so excited. She said, “Ok, I’m going to call you and send for you guys. We said, “Yeah sure.”

That night the girls impressed their friends by appearing onstage with the Sugar Hill Gang. After the show was over they all had doubts as to whether they would cut a record or not.

What they didn’t know was that the nice lady backstage was Sugar Hill Records boss Sylvia Robinson. They had no idea that night that Mrs. Robinson’s career went all the way back to the fifties as a member of the duo Mickey and Sylvia, and that their hit ‘Love is Strange’ is an American classic. Without a doubt they had heard the song ‘Pillow Talk’ before – but they had no idea that the lady backstage was the one who sang it.

“About a week after the concert I got a call at work, “Blondy, this Sylvia Robinson, are you girls ready to record yet?”
“I said, “Yes”.
She said, “Do you want me to call the other girls and tell them?”
I said, “No, that’s all right, I’ll call them.”
“How do you want to get here?” She asked.
By the end of the week there were airline tickets waiting for them and with that their journey began

Funk You Up
When they arrived in Englewood, New Jersey they were in awe of the sights and sounds. After all they were just girls from the south who had never been anywhere before. “When we saw the house [the Robinson’s mansion] we were like ‘Damn’ Blondy remembered, “we had never seen a house that big before. They had maids and a chef and a big ass German Shepard that patrolled the grounds. That dog used to scare the shit out of us.”

They were naïve country girls in a world they had never dreamed of before. “Everybody in New York was walking fast and whatnot, we were like: ‘What in the hell are ya’ll walking so fast for?” Blondy joked.

In the record industry in the 70’s and 80’s Joe Robinson, Sr. was a man to be feared. He was said to be of medium height with a stocky build and a gruff, rough and tough disposition to go along with it. However, neither Cheryl nor Blondy remember Joe Sr. that way, “He was a nice man that liked to laugh and tell jokes.” They told me. I told them about his reputation for being a Suge Knight/Big Red (from the movie The Five Heartbeats) type character to which Blondy suddenly got quiet and said, “He could be no nonsense now”, in her husky down home voice, ‘but he wasn’t that way with us.”

From the very beginning the Robinson’s were endeared to the girls, they took them into their home and looked out for them like surrogate parents. Blondy remembers “When we got there Joe and Sylvia talked to us about the city and what to look out for. They told us how people were going to offer us things and that we should avoid it. They said people are gonna offer you stuff to put up your nose… and alcohol – and watch out for guys don’t trust them. They told us that we had to be really careful.”

Unlike any other Sugar Hill act the girls lived in the mansion for a while. They were like three fish out of water “Our first night there we heard some strange sounds. They had these things in every room –what are they called? Oh yeah intercoms, we got on that and told Sylvia that there was something down here. And then we heard the sound again, Cheryl grabbed a straightening comb – and threw it at the door just as it was opening – and almost hit Sylvia!”

When they recorded the song ‘Funk You Up’ they knew it was a classic. Cheryl ‘the Pearl’ recalls that it was a member of the Whatnots who engineered the session, but it was Sylvia that did everything else. “Sylvia always said that you know that a song is a hit within the first eight seconds of the record.”

All three of the girls wrote the song together, however, it was Cheryl ‘The Pearl’ who came up with most of the hook. “I was a cheerleader who was heavily into the funk back then.” Cheryl tells me over the phone, ‘everything was all about the funk for me, so that’s why you hear all of the Parliament-Funkadelic influences, I loved the hell out of P-Funk.” Cheryl’s writing skills would later be finely honed under Sylvia’s tutelage.

The song ‘Funk You Up’ was an instant hit securing airplay on both of the top Black radio stations in New York at the time WBLS and WKTU. In their hometown of Columbia, SC Cheryl and Blondy recall Big DM radio jock Vanessa Pendergrass as being the first to spin their record at home.

When they were introduced to the New York audience they were called the ‘Sugar Hill Gang Girls’. Over the powerfully funky Positive Force track Cheryl ‘The Pearl’s light as a feather stroke of a voice intimated that “the only difference between you and me and that is that I’m sexy…” Blondy was big, bad, bold and aggressive on her parts: “Don’t ring my bell saying please if you cannot fulfill my needs.”

“I need to set the record straight about something”, Blondy says to me in a serious tone, ‘Blondy was just a character I made up for records. I was nothing like what I said on records. That wasn’t me at all. At that point in my life I had never done anything whatsoever, so all that stuff I used to talk on records, was just that stuff.”

The first time the girls met the Sugar Hill Gang they didn’t like each other. The Gang (Master Gee, Wonder Mike and Big Bank Hank) according to Cheryl and Blondy came off as arrogant. “They used to say things to us like ‘Damn, not only do ya’ll talk slow but ya’ll walk slow too!” And for good measure according to Blondy they would provoke the fellas by “walking even slower just to piss them off.”

With the success of both ‘Rapper’s Delight’ and ‘Funk You Up’ Sylvia rushed both groups into the studio for a collaboration entitled ‘Rapper’s Reprise’. Once again it was Cheryl Cook that came up with the songs hook: “Jam-jam-da-jibbit-da-jam-da-jibby-jam-jam-come on.”

Gradually a friendship was struck up between the two groups; with Blondy dating Master Gee.

One Night At the Fever
In the middle of the South Bronx damn near smack dab in the heart of it there once stood a club on 167th and Jerome Ave. The name of the establishment was called Disco Fever, but to the eager attendees who regularly worshipped at the Shrine of hip-hop it was simply called ‘The Fever’.

“I’ll never forget going to the Fever”, remembers Blondy “that’s when we got to see all of the big New York groups upfront and personal for the first time. I had never been anywhere like the Fever before the things that they were doing in there!”

“I take it you got to see the ‘get high rooms’ up front and personal, huh”? I ask her.

“Child,” Blondy says to me in her down home accent, “When I saw all that was going on back there, I made so much noise that they couldn’t wait to get me outta there! Lemme tell you something: If you ain’t no big girl you ain’t have no business being back there.”

Fever owner Sal Abbatiello set the get high rooms up as a discrete place where hustlers and celebs could snort coke and drink champagne in private but mostly out of view of the police.

The naïve country girl says she “had no business being back there.”

So out of place was she that she fell down the full flight of steps of the club to where the club’s main bouncer, an awesome force of nature, an ex-con and hardened street vet named Mandingo stood. Dingo, as those that knew him called him was 6’8 and three hundred pounds of muscle.

“Dingo must’ve looked down at me ‘like are you okay? While everyone else was laughing at me. I was so embarrassed.”

Both Cheryl and Blondy have fond memories of their nights in the Fever when the Sugar Hill acts would practically take over the place. “We used to all get on the mic and rap while Junebug or Flash or whoever was mixing. You’d find everybody in there; all of the groups would be there from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Cold Crush all of them. Sal, used to really look out for us too.”

The Sugar Hill Tours
Like the old Motown Revue Sylvia and Joe Robinson would pack their groups up in buses and criss-cross the country to sold out venues. The Sugar Hill tours were the first all rap concert tours that people from outside of New York got to see.

"We toured with some of the best like the O'Jay's, the Gap Band, the Jones Girls, Kool and the Gang, Con Funk Shun, Ohio Players, Cameo and Ray, Goodman and Brown to name a few

“All of the groups were cool, we were cool with everybody”, Blondy tells me, “We all got along. My favorite group of all though was the Funky Four Plus One, they could rap real good and they put on one helluva show.”

But it was the backstage behavior of some of her fellow acts that makes Blondy laugh the loudest. “Wonder Mike and Master Gee were gentleman, but Hank was rowdy – he was from the Bronx, so he carried himself differently from them. Rahiem was a gentleman as well, but trust me there was a nasty one in every group.”

“A nasty one? How so?” I ask.

“There were certain people that were really wild about what they were doing”, Blondy remembers, “they used to have sex with the girls on the bus – the girls couldn’t wait to have sex with a rapper and they would do it anywhere. Some of them dudes were real nasty. Like I said now, a lot of them were gentleman: like Wonder Mike and Master Gee. I’m not saying they were saints; they probably were just as wild as some others were but they were quiet about it. You wouldn’t know what they were up to. Rahiem was the same way."

"But some of the other guys were really wild. I never knew any group of guys as wild as them. You have to understand: girls used to see Cowboy on stage in that white leather and with them bowlegs and go crazy!"

"They used to bring girls on to the bus and be having sex with them on our beds. We used to get pissed off and be like ‘hell naw, ya’ll ain’t bringing them broads on here and having sex on our beds, ya’ll need to take that shit somewhere else! The sheets would be messed up and funky and shit like that. People would rather sleep on the floor them sleep on them nasty ass beds after those guys had sex with them girls in ‘em.”

The Sequence Meets the Cold Crushing Lover
Of all of the Sugar Hill acts the collaboration they most remember is when Sylvia paired them up with Spoonie Gee for a cut called ‘Monster Jam’. Named after the location of Sugar Hill’s studio on 96 West St in Englewood, NJ the group was called the West Street Mob.

‘We weren’t a group called the West Street Mob that was something that Sylvia and Joey came up with.” Cheryl recalls. “Really the West Street Mob was Joey and his friend Warren, but they didn’t really do anything on those records. On some of them it’s me and Angie singing not them.”

“Joey had no talent.” Cheryl stated flatly.

One of the cuts that Cheryl is referring to is the smash hit ‘Let’s Dance’ which was a cover of a break-beat classic by jazz-funk fusion group Pleasure. “That’s us, yep uh huh, sure iiiis”, Cheryl says confidently

“Sylvia came up with this track that was based on the bass line to ‘Good Times’ by Chic and thought that it would be a good idea to get Spoonie involved in it.” Blondy recalls.

The girls really looked up to Spoonie Gee, ‘He was master rapper’, both Cheryl and Blondy recall. Cheryl remembers him as being a really nice easygoing guy whose records she really enjoyed, “But he was so shy. He used to be so scared to perform back then. He used to keep his eyes closed when he was on stage.” Blondy agrees adding, “I don’t know where he performed at around New York. Maybe he was more comfortable being in smaller clubs. But when he got into big concert venues, poor Spoonie would come off the stage practically shaking to death!”

But he showed no signs of fear on record. “Monster Jam” was a departure for all of them. They all sound relaxed, confident and mature over Wood, Steel and Brass’s hard-hitting funk track.

Over Doug Wimbish’s thumping funk-style of plucking Spoonie and the Sequence flirted with each other in a smooth rap style.

“Well I’m a cherry piece on top caramel plum,
Sweet as sugar baby come on get some
Of what you’ve been waiting for my dear
That month by month year-by-year,
And that day by day
And week by week
Now you got the chance girl I’m at my peak.

“Gotta a special rap to do it all ring a ding ding a telephone call,
Spoonie you can call me anytime of the day,
Cause I always have something to say,
Like Spoonie what’s happenin’?
You Angie baby I gave you the ring…”
You see I got you in my arms and I’m squeezin’ you tight,
You melt from my might like dynamite.”

“When the time comes around and ya say you’re not ready,
Well all you gotta do is close your eyes and rock steady.
Time for love no time for hip-hoppin’
Cause once I’m gone girl it ain’t no stoppin’
So think it over Cheryl tell me what you’re gonna do,
Cause I got lovin’ just for you.”

The end of the song is like a scene out of the 1973 classic ‘The Mack’, with Spoonie giving Don Magic Juan like instructions to the girls making them respond to each and every word as if it was a verbal pimp contract.

“Say I will not stop
Say I must keep on rockin’
Say I will not stop…
I must keep on rappin’
Say he’s a cold crushing lover,
And you know there is no other.
He’s MC Spoonie Gee
Ain’t no man quite like he…

Pure pimp shit.

The Eighth Wonder
By now everyone has heard the tale of how Big Bank Hank borrowed a book of rhymes from Cold Crush Brothers frontman Grandmaster Caz. But what few are aware of is the fact that it was Cheryl ‘The Pearl’ that wrote much of the Sugar Hill Gang’s hits ‘Apache’ and ‘Eighth Wonder’.

“They were having trouble writing to the track”, Cheryl remembers, “Sylvia called me in and I helped them out.”

“They had a lot of it written out but they just needed some help

“Which parts did you write?” I ask.
“I wrote Master Gee’s part. It originally went: “You see I met this boy and I said to him honey, if you wanna be my baby, you got to give me money.” That was a rhyme I wrote for myself but we changed it around for him so that it would say ‘I met this girl’. Wonder Mike had written some parts and I came along with more stuff.”

The song ‘Eighth Wonder’ was the Gang’s last big hit it climbed the charts and got them booked on ‘American Bandstand’, ‘Solid Gold’ and ‘Soul Train’.

Early on in their careers at Sugar Hill Sylvia noticed that Cheryl the Pearl had a unique knack for songwriting. “I sat in a lot of sessions,” Cheryl told me. “I sang background and wrote on a lot of songs too.

Friends
“ I swear sometimes we were the dumbest three women on the face of the Earth.” Blondy laughs.

Their friendship stretched back to church with Blondy being the oldest and Angie the youngest. They were inseparable as kids and it was a bond that carried over to their careers.

“There was this one time when Angie put a perm in my hair”, Blondy remembers, ‘now you’re not supposed to perm your hair when it’s dyed, because all of the pigmentation is gone. Well, I really wanted my hair done bad so I decided not to wait. So Angie puts the perm in and I’m sitting there and all of a sudden…my hair starts coming out. I mean I was bald. Cheryl’s sister was there and was laying on the floor laughing her ass off at me. I was so upset about my hair that I went and got a wig. I can’t remember what record we had to make the next day, but I damn near didn’t go. There I was in the studio trying to lay my vocal down when I had to run out of the room crying. Sylvia Robinson followed me into the bathroom and asked me in this sweet concerned voice, “Oh Blondy, what’s wrong?”

“So I told her in between trying to stop myself from crying: Angie put a perm in my hair… and now all of my hair is gone.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.” She said.

“And then she said: Blondy…can I see?”

“So I took my wig off and the next thing I know Sylvia is laughing her ass off at me. She said I looked just like a boy with my hair looking like that .”

All Funked Out
Like any group – even groups consisting of lifelong friends, nothing lasts forever. Distrust soon set in.

“We stopped recording because Sylvia and them were not paying us.” Blondy says.

When the subject of the Robinson’s and money is broached Cheryl ‘the Pearl’ loses her cool. “They are lowdown, rotten no good thieves”, Cheryl says on the phone as her blood pressure starts to skyrocket out of control. “Those mother fuckers owe us money and they know it.”

“Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl babe…calm down.” Blondy implores her life long friend.

“Ooooh, those mother fuckers pull so much shit to not pay you…”

“So I take it you haven’t seen a royalty statement in sometime?” I ask.

“No”, Blondy says quietly, ‘they haven’t paid us.”

Blondy says that they get statements from BMI [for radio play] but that they have never received any of their mechanical royalties. “Hell, I didn’t know what mechanical royalties were until I was working for Angie a few years ago.”

The group has a class action lawsuit against the Robinson’s for failure to pay royalties.

In the Robinson’s defense they have always maintained that they have paid all of their former artists.

“But why did you all stop recording together though?”

“People started whispering in our ears saying this and that; we saw that Cheryl and Sylvia were close and we were thinking that Cheryl was getting paid and we weren’t. It was a divide and conquer thing. You know when you can’t pay your rent and bills and your calling them begging for your money and by the time the money arrives you owe even more money for rent – that shit gets old quick.” Blondy tells me.

“There started to be a lot of mistrust between us. Angie went on and did the group Vertical Hold. Cheryl went her separate way. And I stayed at Sugar Hill Records and became the office manager.”

A few years back Blondy was Angie Stone’s personal assistant, office manager and road manager – today the two aren’t speaking. Cheryl ‘the Pearl’ is still writing and producing songs. Cheryl and Blondy got together in 2007 and recorded a Sequence track called ‘Going to the Movies’ which samples the Staples Singers ‘Let's Do it Again.’ Even though the two women are twenty years removed from their Sugar Hill heyday they still have the magic.

“We want people to know that we were before Salt and Pepa, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Roxanne Shante and all of them.” Blondy informs me, ‘Please be sure to mention that – we were before all of them, we are the original Queens of Rap!”

To contact Blondy email her: Allgirlsentertainmentinc@yahoo.com

Cheeba, Cheeba Y'all!

2007-09-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

“Let’s take a trip,
Back into the past,
When the rappers had no records
And the deejays were fast.
When the great Kool Herc lead the Hevalo pack,
And Hollywood and Cheba rocked the Diplomat…”

‘AJ Is Cool’ by Kurtis Blow

Cheeba, Cheeba Y'all: Original House Rocker Eddie Cheba
By Mark Skillz
MarkSkillz@aol.com

The Fishtail Bar in the Bay Watch Resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is right out back over looking the beach. Dozens of families are crowded in several swimming pools trying to beat the heat. Overhead the sound system is playing the dancehall reggae classic ‘Level the Vibes’ by Half Pint. On the surface it appears to be the most unlikely place to meet a former ghetto celeb and rap innovator. But then again it is.

Decked out in a white and green short set with matching jersey, is a middle-aged man that many would find likable. His easy-going personality mixed with his affable charm makes him the kind of guy you’d want to share a drink and swap stories with. But it’s the stories that this man with droopy eyes and a raspy voice would tell that could make you look at him cross-eyed while sipping your Long Island Iced Tea. That is unless you’re up on your hip-hop history.

Way before the bling era and rappers rubbing shoulders with the likes of Donald Trump and Paris Hilton in the Hamptons, and definitely before multi-million dollar deals, ring tones, clothing lines and sneaker endorsements, rap was the music of ghetto Black New York. That means you didn’t hear it too far beyond the infamous five boroughs.

Almost jumping out of his seat he says to me, “Most guys back then, only got $175 or $150 with a sound system to play a gig. You know what I’m sayin’? We got $500 for an hour – without a sound system.” All the while he’s tapping me on the shoulder in between sips of a Heineken. “And you’d be happy that you got that hour!” He says to me with the cockiness of a used car salesman. “We’d do one hour over here, jump in our cars and head out to Queens or Hempstead, Long Island and do an hour out there.”

That was in 1977 when the cost of living was different and so was the cost of the best deejay in New York.

Ladies and Gentlemen: meet, Eddie Cheba, who along with Mele Mel, Cowboy, Creole, Coke La Rock, Timmy Tim and DJ Hollywood is one of the founding fathers of rap.

In his day Cheba was a legend. At hot night clubbing spots like Small’s Paradise, Charles Gallery, Hotel Diplomat and Club 371, Cheba would shout into the mic: “Who makes it sweeter?” And the crowd of hundreds would shout back “Cheba, Cheba, Cheba!”

He is credited with creating the old school rhyme: “It’s on and on and on on and on like the hot butter on the what?” And if you were in the club and ‘in the know’, you knew to holler back: “Popcorn!” “We had a book of ‘em”, he told me in reference to the call and response tactics that he and his friend, partner and sometime rival, DJ Hollywood came up with.

The call and response style (back then called ‘house rockin’) that MC’s/DJ’s like Busy Bee, Kid Capri, Doug E Fresh, Kurtis Blow and Biz Markie are notorious for can be traced back to the smooth style of guys like Lovebug Starski, DJ Hollywood and Eddie Cheba.

On this day Eddie is in an upbeat mood because Tuff City Records is re-releasing the only recording Eddie ever did, a disco rap work out called ‘Looking Good (Shake Your Body)’. A song which was originally recorded for Tree Line Records in 1980, and was backed by the owners of Club 371, it will be a part of an old school rap compilation.

Cheba’s raspy- voiced, call and response style made a special impact out in Long Island, with some college kids that called themselves ‘Spectrum Sound’, the group would later be known as Public Enemy.

“Eddie Cheba was as important to hip-hop/rap as Ike Turner was to rock n roll”, Chuck D front man for Public Enemy informed me, “nowhere does he get his due credit for spreading it from the BX to [make it more] accessible [to] heads [outside of Harlem and the Bronx]. Cheba and Hollywood simply infiltrated the over 18 college adult bracket that simply hated on the art form. They put a bowtie on hip-hop at that time to get it through. Cheba commanded the audience with voice and a great sense of timing. These cats used rap to set up records like no other. His synergy with Easy G his deejay was simply… telepathic.”

“Now mind you”, says an emphatic Kurtis Blow, a rap pioneer in his own right, ‘let’s not get it twisted okay: Cheba was before DJ Hollywood. On that side of the family tree we have Pete DJ Jones who was the first real disco street deejay with emcee’s JJ Disco the King, KC the Prince of Soul and JT Hollywood – these guys were just announcers…the next level was the crowd response which was Eddie Cheba’s thing, he was the master of the crowd response. He had routines, he had girls – the Cheba Girls, he had little routines and he did it with a little rhythm ya know: ‘Throw your hands in the air, everybody now, we don’t need no music, come on y’all say it, so just clap your hands everybody and everybody body clap your hands! If you’re not too skinny or not too fat everybody say and ya know that!” Eddie was mad sick with the crowd response he was a master!”

As I think back on other names that rung out loud on the streets back then I ask Eddie about:

Ron Plummer: “Awww man, Plummer gave Pete Jones hell with those refrigerator sized speakers.”

Maboya: “He used to play reggae. He was one of the first ones out there to play reggae. At that time rap and reggae were not accepted – you’d play that stuff and people would turn around and look at you.”

The Smith Brothers: “They were older than us, they had an older clientele, but their sound system was good.”

But it’s the name DJ Hollywood that Cheba’s name is almost synonymous with. For many their names are almost linked together like Salt and Pepper, Butch and Sundance or Martin and Lewis. Can’t have one without the other. They were Uptown royalty when Cam’ Ron and Jim Jones were in Pampers.

Back Like Cadillac’s and Brim Hats

Edward Sturgis was born and raised in Harlem, New York’s Douglas Projects, home to such alums as Kenny Smith, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and fellow deejay Reggie Wells. Originally a music major Eddie got involved with funk and soul bands, but soon grew tired of the instability that goes with being in a group. He soon found that his love for music could be expressed another way: with turntables and records.

“My sister’s boyfriend Thomas was one of the first people I ever saw really mix music in a smooth way. I mean he knew how to keep the beat going, you know what I mean?” Eddie says to me while taking a drag off of his cigarette. “I said to myself ‘I wanna do that!”

Soon the Brandice High School student was spending hours a day practicing on his turntables. “I was completely locked into it. My girlfriend, who is my wife now, a date for us back then was, her sitting on my bed reading her books while I practiced.”

By 1974 he got so good at spinning records that he was able to quit his job at Bankers Trust and really concentrate on deejaying, “The money was flowing in.” He says to me with a sly smile.

On the way down the path to being a ghetto celeb he played in Uptown’s hottest spots: Charles Gallery, Hotel Diplomat (which on some nights attracted a white audience and was called LeJardin) and Wilt’s Small’s Paradise. “In 1972 when Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali at the Garden, he came to Small’s Paradise after the fight to hang out. I have a picture of me and him at Small’s.”

The Sound Systems in the Park

At the same time that Eddie was perfecting his craft in Harlem there was a whole other scene jumping off in the Bronx. This crowd was younger, rougher and rowdier.

“There were two different crowds”, says Kurtis Blow, who’s classic recording ‘The Breaks’ was the second 12’ inch record to be certified gold. “Grandmaster Flash calls them the shoe people and the sneaker people.”

Blow, a Harlem native, is a student of both the R&B style of guys like Pete Jones and Hollywood and the hardcore b-boy approach of the Kool Herc followers. In fact with his deep, booming bass voice and crisp enunciation Kurtis’ style was the perfect blend between Harlem’s smooth R&B chic and Bronx b-boy cool.

At the parties that guys like Eddie, Grandmaster Flowers, Pete DJ Jones, the Disco Twins and the Smith Brothers would play at, songs like ‘Do it Anyway You Wanna’, “I Got My Mind Made Up’, ‘All Night Thing’, ‘Pipeline’ and ‘Soul Makossa’ would rock crowds of hundreds of the 21 and over crowd. Men came to the party wearing dress shoes, suits and slacks and women wore dresses.

Kool Herc, Flash, Breakout, Kool DJ AJ, Disco King Mario, Bambaataa and others rocked the teenage b-boy crowds. Their crowds would come in packs of 15 to 20 strong, wearing sneakers, jeans, hats and silver chains. They couldn’t wait to hear their favorite deejay play obscurities like ‘Give it to Me’, ‘Champ’, ‘Mardi Gras’, ‘Synthetic Substitution’, ‘Hit or Miss’ and many other unknown records that were worshipped by this cult following.

The slight exception was in Harlem at the Renaissance Ballroom, or the ‘Renny’ as it was called, where a promoter named Willie Gums had a thing called the ‘Rolls Royce Movement’, “That was Lovebug Starski’s thing right there”, says Kurtis Blow. “It was the Sapphire Crew: Donald Dee and B Fats that was their thing. That was hip-hop with class. They were young people but they got dressed up for these parties. I think D.J. Hollywood might’ve played there once.”

“Kool Herc and them played in the park. We were blessed to be able to play in clubs,” Eddie says to me. “If you think about it anybody could play in a park; little kids were in the park. There was no money playing in parks. Either the cops was coming to tell you to turn it down or they were gonna unplug you from the light pole or there was gonna be a shootout or something. I played in clubs where people drank champagne and came to have fun. Besides, the park was dangerous”, Eddie says to me while looking from side to side. “You got five niggas over there drinkin’ talkin’ ‘bout fuckin’ you up. Would you wanna be there?”

The Man With The Golden Voice

Before anyone could claim the title of King of New York, there was the original ‘King of Rap’: DJ Hollywood. On the streets of New York in the 70’s, Wood (as he is sometimes called) was the quintessential man. He was the first deejay to play multiple spots in one night and collect a fee of $500 per appearance. According to Cheba, “Hollywood would call ahead to Club 371 [after playing at other spots around the city] and say, “I’m on my way, have my envelope ready.”

He was a rap star before there were any records. The history of the mixtape game can be traced back to him. He used to sell 8 track tapes of his mixes for ten or fifteen bucks a pop way back in 1972. He sang, he rapped, he did vocal impressions and crowd participation. On the rap tip in the 70’s no one could touch him.

“Hollywood was ‘all city’ he could play anywhere he wanted in the city back then”, says Kurtis Blow. “Hollywood, had a golden voice, he had a round and fat voice, he had tonality, tonality almost like a singer – he had singing routines where he would sing, “Got a word from the wise, just to tranquilize, your mind your body and soul. We got a brand new rhythm now, and we’re gonna let it take control. Come on y’all let’s do it. Let’s do it’… that was Hollywood, he was the master at the crowd response but his voice…” Kurtis pauses excitedly looking for the right words and when he finds them he says, ‘his voice was golden like a God almost – that’s why I wanted to be an MC!”

“If you went out to a club – you had to go to Club 371 to hear this cat. Hollywood was the talk of the town”, an animated Kurtis Blow says to me. “Everybody was losing their minds, he had skits like ‘Throw your hands in the air, and wave ‘em like ya just don’t care. And if you got on clean underwear, somebody say ‘Oh yeah!’ And the crowd would shout back: Oh yeah! Hollywood had the golden voice, the chants the rhythm. The first rhythmic rhymes I ever heard …a cat say during the hip-hop days – we’re talking about the ‘70’s. I’m not talking about the ‘60’s or anything before that because rap has been around for a long time. We’re talking about the first rhymes that I ever heard DJ Hollywood say were:

“I’m bonnified, I’m celitified and I’m qualified to do,
I say anything your heart can stand,
It all depends on you.
I’m listed in the yellow pages,
All around the world,
I got 21 years experience with loving sweet young girls…”

During an early morning phone interview Hollywood related the story of his discovery to me. “One day in 1975, I was at home playing records, and one of the records I pulled out was the "Black Moses" album. It was not popular at the time. So, there I was listening to this album, and I put on a song called "Good Love 69969". Isaac Hayes was singing this part that went "I'm listed in the yellow pages, all around the world; I got 30 years experience in loving sweet young girls." That record stopped me dead in my tracks. You see, before that record I had been doing nursery rhymes. But after that record: I was doing rhymes. And not only was I doing rhymes but I was talking about love. This was another level.”

In a reflective mood the one time King of Rap recalled the next events.”I thought to myself, what if I take what he's doing and put it with this? What would I get? I got fame, that's what I got. I got more famous than I could ever imagine. Everybody bit that rhyme. I would go to jams and people would be saying that rhyme, and none of them, not one of them, knew where it came from. It blew my mind.”

“I knew of Hollywood cause we were both from Harlem.” Eddie remembers. “Back in the day when Hollywood would play at the Apollo Theatre the marquee would say: “The Spinners, Black Ivory, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes and D.J. Hollywood”. He was that large.”

But Eddie wanted the spot light too.

“I was sitting in my room one day when I came up with my rhyme. I wrote it out in a notebook it went.

“About a while ago and I want you to know, just who you been listening to. Just listen to me now, while I tell you how, who I am, and what I do. I’m 5’9 and a half, bow legged as you ever wanna see. Just look up on the stage baby doll, I’m talking about little old me. It’s Cheba girl and I’m so glad that you came around. So we can spend some time together maybe even mess around.”

Very quickly, like Hollywood’s rap, Eddie’s rap was eagerly consumed by other deejays, whom very soon, had no knowledge of the raps origin either. ASCAP and BMI were not looking for rappers back then, and rappers were no more aware of ASCAP and BMI then they were about words like ‘publishing’, ‘writing credit’, ‘points’ and ‘royalties’. This was before records.

“Before Club 371 I was playing at a spot called “A Bunch of Grapes” this was on the East side of 125th St. You see back then, the only people that were hip to my shit were the hustlers that went to the after hours spots. That’s where my rep started at was with the hustlers.” Said DJ Hollywood.

Every other rapper today fantasizes about knowing or being somehow connected with a notorious gangster, back in the day – Nicky Barnes was that gangster. Wood played for some of the most notorious figures of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, chief among them was Guy Fisher. It was Fisher who owned and operated the Apollo Theatre as a legitimate front. It was at the Apollo that Hollywood gained his rep for providing entertainment between acts for some of the biggest stars of the era, and often times he overshadowed them.

Guy Fisher was no stranger to the hip-hop set back then. Many an old timer tell stories of the days when Fisher, Bats Ross and other members of Nicky Barnes’ old crew would frequent hip-hop spots like the Hevalo and check out Kool Herc and Coke La Rock.

At the very mention of Fisher’s name Eddie becomes visibly uncomfortable. “Yes, Wood worked for Guy Fisher and them, those were Nicky Barnes’ people. I didn’t want to have anything to do with those people.” He tells me. “Yeah sure, we did parties for them, but that was it! They were nice guys outside of their business, but I didn’t want to play for them that much.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
“Because see, Hollywood might show up to Club 371 at two, three o’clock in the morning. Sometimes he didn’t show up at all. You couldn’t do that kind of shit with people like that because they would come and get you – and throw you in a bag or something.”

Havin’ Fun at Club 371

Sometime in 1978 a group of gentlemen called the Ten Good Guys wanted to expand their Bronx disco. It was called Club 371. They got DJ Hollywood to play there after seeing the impact of what he was doing in 1975 at the club ‘A Bunch Of Grapes’. Hollywood had been playing at 371 for at least three years before the owners decided to expand the club.

“Hollywood was packing em in, they had lines around the corner. They built a part two, which was called the ‘House of Glass’. They talked to Reggie Wells and we made a deal and they came to get me.”

It was at Club 371 that Eddie Cheba would meet Hollywood.

“It was Hollywood and his deejay Junebug downstairs and me, Reggie Wells and my deejay EZ Gee upstairs. I’m telling you, we had them people running up and down those steps all night long.” Eddie recalls. “My deejay EZ Gee played with me when it was time for me to rap, [that’s when] he’d take over. I used to rent out a loft so that we could practice our routines. God sent EZ Gee to me.”

“371 was one of the greatest clubs of all time in the Bronx, New York, it was the first black owned club in New York to gross over a million dollars in one year and this was back in 1979, when they charged six or seven dollars to get in the door.” Eddie asserts. “They cleared a million dollars at the door – not to say how much they cleared under the table. This was one of the greatest clubs of all time: Eddie Cheba, Reggie Wells, Junebug and DJ Hollywood at Club 371 that’s where all the fame and fortune came from.”

“Everybody came to Club 371”, Hollywood recalls, “If you came in from out of town, people would be like, you gotta go here – it was like no other!”

Any old time Club 371 regular will tell you that the original chant that Big Bank Hank from the Sugar Hill Gang used in ‘Rapper’s Delight’ went: “Hotel/Motel/Holiday Inn, if you don’t tell then I won’t tell, but I know where you been!” 98.7 KISS-FM mix master Reggie Wells told me the origin of the chant had something to do with the Courtesy in New Jersey and people sneaking around after the club let out.

The club did so well that the owners went to great lengths to take care of their deejays. Reggie Wells remembers the money being so good at 371 that “all of the deejays had caddy’s back then.”

“Hollywood needed a car and didn’t have a license, so they bought him a Caddy and got him a license by sliding somebody at the DMV some money.” Eddie laughs while recalling the time. “They really took care of us.”

Reflecting on his heyday Eddie told me, “I had everything I shopped at AJ Lester’s. I was walked into any club in the city – I always got in free. Champagne? I got bottles of it wherever I went. If I walked down 125th St. in Harlem, people would see me and walk up to me and want to shake my hand or ask me for an autograph. If I had someplace to go I called a car service [Godfather’s, Touch of Class and OJ’s] and they would be there to pick me up. I’d say wait here until I’m done and they would. I used to sell my tapes for $20 a pop. People would be reserving tapes weeks in advance. Godfather’s and OJ’s and them used to sell my tapes. They would have a customer in a car and would be playing my stuff, the customer would be like ‘Who’s that?’ They’d say that’s Eddie Cheba. I was one of the top deejays in the city.

Like Butch and Sundance

“Me and Hollywood became really good friends. We worked together as well, but we were also friends. We used to go to after hour’s spots all over the city together and sit, drink and talk into early in the morning. We were close man.” Eddie said to me.

Soon a partnership was born. “At one point they were called DJ-Eddie-Hollywood-Cheba”, laughs Kurtis Blow.

“Let me tell you how large I got.” Eddie says as he leans back in his seat and exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke above his head. “One night we were playing in Queens at the La Chalet on Hillside Ave. Anyway, these brothers were outside shooting at each other. I mean it was a real shootout. Me and my crew, the Cheeba Crew, pulled up when all of this is going on. We were like, ‘Shit, we ain’t getting’ out of the car!’ Somebody went inside and got on the mike and said, ‘Yo y’all stop all that shit. Eddie Cheba is outside right now and he says he ain’t coming in until y’all stop that shit.” Well, the next thing we know, they drop their guns and go inside.” Eddie says to me with an amazed look on his face, “these niggas stopped shooting at each other because they wanted to hear us play.”

The partnership of Hollywood and Cheba made them the two most popular Black deejays in the city. And the best paid. “Hollywood had no problem asking for whatever he wanted.” Eddie remembers. “He could be really arrogant. He had no problem at all blowing people off. I mean Wood was really arrogant. When we first started to play together, I was afraid to ask for more money. Wood would say ‘Say you want $500.” I’d be like, “I don’t know.” Wood would say that he was getting $500, so I’d go in there and say I wanted $500 too.”

As close as the two were they didn’t play everywhere together. Eddie played in midtown clubs such as the Pegasus, Captain Nemo’s, Nell Gwynn’s, Leviticus, the Tunnel, Cork and the Bottle and the Executive Suite. But it was at Charles Gallery that Eddie started to earn his rep.

“Charles Gallery was on some other shit”, Hollywood recalls, “Those guys in there were announcers, they would get on the mike and announce the next record and shit like that. I came in there with my rappin’ – they never heard anything like it before – they threw me out of there!”

Kurtis Blow described the Charles Huggins owned Charles Gallery as a classy spot for the 21 and over crowd. Men and women were dressed to the nines. Kurtis – and his then manager Russell Simmons first saw Eddie doing his thing there on a night called ‘Wild Wild Wednesday’s’.

But Hollywood didn’t like those kinds of clubs. Nor did he like ghetto type clubs such as Disco Fever. “The Fever was a fuckin’ drug store”, Eddie shot back, “you could get anything you wanted at the Fever. Drugs were all over the place. Hollywood did not play the Fever – and he was arrogant about it too.” Eddie says while taking a drag off of his cigarette. “We used to say, ‘Yo Wood, you need to play the Fever.’ He would brush it off and say, ‘them niggas ain’t my kind of crowd.” Hollywood’s crowd were places that catered to an older black clientele such as the many clubs in the Bronx, Harlem and Queens.

“Me on the other hand I liked playing anywhere.” Eddie tells me.

It was while playing in clubs in Queens that Hollywood and Cheba would bump into an eager young promoter that called himself Russell Rush. “Every time we played in Queens in some place like… the Fantasia, Russell would be right outside waiting for us. He was a big fan of ours. He used to beg me, he’d be like “Yo Cheba, I’m throwing a party at so and so place, could you stop by and do a little something?” Hollywood would be very arrogant and would say things like ‘tell that nigga to go away’. I couldn’t do that. I’d say ‘Russell; I’m a little too expensive for what you’re trying to do. I’ll see what I can do.’ I couldn’t blow people off like Wood could.”

Out in Long Island, Hollywood and Cheba were the rap equivalent of the Beatles. According to Chuck D, “In 1979 the whole cowboy look was in [cowboy hats and boots] and Hollywood and Cheba pimped that!”

One night Eddie bought Furious Five lead MC Mele Mel with him to play a gig in Roosevelt. “When he brought Mele Mel with him it was like two voices from heaven,” Chuck D says, “back then, if you didn’t have a good voice you couldn’t 'cut through inferior sound systems. These cats were flawless. Hearing them sold me on hip-hop as being a wonderful thing for my life.”

“The night I took Mele Mel with me, out to Long Island, I dunno, he was more reserved than usual. I had to give the nigga the mike and say, “here do your thing.” I knew the nigga was bad as a motherfucker. This was just before their record ‘Superrappin’ came out.” Said Eddie.

It was also during this time that he was introduced to a young man who was trying to make a name for himself on the rap scene.

“DJ Hollywood had a ‘disco son’ named DJ Smalls, we figured a way for me get my name out there was if I was the disco son of Eddie Cheba.” Said Kurtis Blow. Although Kurtis, who would later be known as the ‘King of Rap’, would see his own career eclipse that of both Hollywood and Eddie Cheba’s, is to this day still clearly a devoted fan.

At it’s root hip-hop is a competitive art form whether its MC’s going head to head on the mike, or deejay’s crossing swords on turntables, “I was the one that did all of the battling.” Cheba tells me, “Hollywood would not battle anybody. I battled everybody. I didn’t give a fuck. Wood was not into battling. The only person he battled was Woody Wood from Queens. And me and Lovebug Starski had to push him to battle that nigga to do it.”

“Why’s that?” I ask.

“Because that nigga was stealing everything that Wood was doing. Not only did he sound like Wood, but also he got his name from him and all of his rhymes too. I told him ‘Fuck that shit, you got to battle that nigga.’ The way Woody Wood was stealing from Hollywood was a damn shame.”

In any other business imitation is considered to be a form of flattery, but in the rap game even as far back as 1976, it was almost the equivalent of stealing a brother’s hubcaps.

“At one time there were about thirty to forty me’s out there”, Hollywood says to me sounding almost as irritated today about it as he was thirty years ago. “Everybody was saying the rhymes and when it would come time to say my name – they would take mine out and put theirs in. Woody Wood was one of them people.”
“So you battled him?” I asked.
“Yeah, I stepped on him too”, Wood said as confidently as Muhammad Ali in 1975, “at that time there wasn’t nobody that could get wit’ me. I was top dog back then. I had control of everything.”

The battle took place at the Hotel Diplomat, “It wasn’t really what you would call a battle”, Wood interjects, “He did his thing first and then I did mine. No one could beat me with the crowd response thing. Woody Wood was an imitator, his voice, his rhymes he did his pronunciations just like me.”

“We were on top.” Eddie says coolly, “I had battled everyone. But as much as Wood didn’t like to battle he’d always tell me: “Eddie, whatever you do: Never battle me.”

“I thought to myself, ‘What kind of shit is that for him to say?’ I had my own ego too you know. Little did I know…”

One night the two friends went head to head in a sound clash.

“I pulled out all stops this night at the Parkside Plaza. It was a battle for the title.” Eddie remembers. “Wood’s title was on the line. Wood did his thing, but even his people weren’t really feeling him on this night. And then I went on. I rocked the hell outta them people. At the end of the battle even Wood’s people were cheering for me, you know like his main man Captain Jack and all of them people. It took 45 minutes for the judges to make a decision. And they came back and gave the trophy to Hollywood. And that’s when it hit me: No wonder he said to never battle him, it was because he had it set up for him to win regardless. Hell, the trophy already had his name inscribed on it!”

“Nah, nah, nah, nah, it didn’t quite go down like that, Mark”, Hollywood tells me in between laughing.
“You see, it’s like this I was the top dog, couldn’t nobody touch me back then. Eddie did all of the battles. One night he kept going on and on saying, ‘I’m the king battler’ and this and that. He must’ve forgot who I was. He made that happen.” Wood said to me.
“Made what happen?” I ask.
“Yo man, he wouldn’t listen. The shit was already done. I didn’t know it was done. I told him, “Ok, but whatever you do never battle me. He wouldn’t listen.”

What Hollywood meant by it being ‘done’ was that at the time he got major love from all of the promoters back then, these were people that for many years had made good money from billing Hollywood all over the city. It was in their interest for Wood to emerge as the winner in any battle. Hollywood remembers the crowd response that night being about even, but to this day swears that he had no knowledge of the fix being in.

One Night at the Jamaica Armory

One day in October 1979 Eddie and his peers heard the sound that would forever alter the course of their lives: ‘Rapper’s Delight.’

“Hollywood and Starski, you would always hear them say ‘hip-hop-da-hippit-da-hibbit-to-da-hip-hip-a-hop ya don’t stop’ and shit like that, they started it. I heard the song on the radio. I was mad when I first heard it. These people came from out of nowhere. We didn’t have the vision to see that records were the next level.” Eddie said as he thinks back to the time. ‘We were making so much money from deejaying that making records just wasn’t our thing. We couldn’t see it.”

What he didn’t know was that the first person that Sylvia Robinson approached to record ‘Rapper’s Delight’ was Lovebug Starski. Then she went to DJ Hollywood to see about he and Eddie making the record.

“One night and this was after ‘Rapper’s Delight’ had long been out and making money, Hollywood and I were at an after hours spot called ‘Poppa Dee’s’ in Harlem. It was on 130th between 7th and Lenox Ave. I mean this was an exclusive spot. Only the hustlers could get in there – people with money. Anyway, so there we are drinking and talking and shit at like 3 o’clock in the morning when Hollywood turns to me and says, “Yeah man, she wanted me and you to do that record, but I turned her down.”

“I must’ve looked at him and said, ‘what record are you talking about?”

He said, “Yeah, Sylvia wanted us to do Rapper’s Delight first.” I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to knock him out of his seat. If I had done that record do you know what my life would be like today?”

‘Rapper’s Delight’ changed the direction of the rap movement forever. The days of guys running sections of the city or dominating the club scene were over. All you needed was a record to make a name.

It isn’t a stretch to believe that the Robinson’s wanted Hollywood and Cheba for their landmark recording, especially when you consider that both of the groundbreaking rap recordings The Fatback Band’s (a group for whom Hollywood used to open for at the Apollo Theatre) ‘King Tim III (Personality Jock)’ and the Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ stylistically bore a serious resemblance to Hollywood and Cheba. Although Big Bank Hank got his rhymes from Grandmaster Caz his delivery was much closer to Hollywood’s than the Cold Crush Brothers lead MC.

One night at the Jamaica, Queens Armory the best deejays and emcees of that time got together for a jam. In some ways it was the end of an era. To this day cassette tapes of that night still circulate the streets. It was a star-studded affair; on the bill were DJ Divine and the Infinity Machine, Grandmaster Flash and his MC’s Mele Mel and Kurtis Blow, Lovebug Starski, DJ Hollywood, DJ Smalls, Eddie Cheba and DJ Easy Gee.

“…Like Earl the Pearl has got the moves, ya see Cheba Cheba has got the groove. Now ya heard the best and you’re ready to go, with the baddest deejay of all disco…”

Easy Gee bought in MFSB’s classic ‘Love is the Message’, cued up from the point where the sax and violins are building up to the point of climax. This was a record that guys like Hollywood, Eddie Cheba, Kool Kyle and many others knew well. It was a staple of their act. In some ways it was the main part. This was the song that showcased their skills the best. They could do their crowd participation thing, free style rhymes and party chants; all of it came together best over that song.

“Get ready now you might’ve heard on WBLS tomorrow night we gonna take the sugar out the hill at Harlem World. Sugar Hill and Eddie Cheba tomorrow night. But first we have some unfinished business to take care of right here in Jamaica…we’re gonna rundown a few of the things that we know we made famous…”

As the sax squealed and the organist rocked Eddie went into one of the many routines that made him a legend at that time.

“Go down go down go down go down, owww, go down... Get up close on the freak and shake like Jones is at its peak. Ya say who makes it sweeter? (Cheba, Cheba, Cheba)…You don’t care if I’m the one – cause all you wanna do is have some fun…”

At least for that one night it didn’t matter if there was a record selling in stores all over the country because it was the guys on the stage that night that were the real stars. It could almost be said that ‘Rapper’s Delight’ was what changed the relationship between deejay and MC. For years it was the deejays that the crowds of thousands came out to see, now because the MC’s rap could be heard on a record, the balance of power was about to change.

One by one each crew went up onstage at the Armory that night and showcased for the crowd in Queens the reasons that they were better than any group of upstarts, especially ones from across the Hudson. These guys were the originators of a new phenomenon; they were kings of a sub-culture in a time of innocence. Every empire has its time in the sun, but the sun sets on every kingdom.

Welcome Home

As we walk outside to the front of the hotel, Eddie tells me some funny stories about the club Disco Fever. If only I could print those stories. We sit on the steps and talk some more while I wait on my ride.

“I rocked the shit out of the Sugar Hill Gang that night at Harlem World”, he told me. “I pulled out all stops, I made it difficult for them to come on after me. All they had was that one record – I had books and books of rhymes – they couldn’t fuck with me.”

In the mid-80’s to everyone’s surprise hip-hop started its ascent to becoming a dominant force in music. But Eddie was nowhere to be found.

“France was some shit”, he tells me “I was the man over there.”

Sometime in the early 80’s while he was the resident deejay at the club Broadway International, Eddie got the call that would change his life. He went over to France to compete in deejay competitions and spin at clubs. Judging by his descriptions of the clubs and the audiences it sounds like he spun for the jet set crowd. “These people drove Ferrari’s and wore tuxedo’s and expensive jewelry”, he said. All together he stayed in France for eight years.

“I was a New York deejay in Paris. I was a rare commodity over there. They were so far behind what we were doing over here - I beat all of them. I did TV commercials, I spun at the biggest clubs in the country.” Eddie says, “I was a celebrity. I lived in a nice house and drove a custom made Mercedes Benz.”
“So why did you leave?” I ask him.
“Because”, he says as he frowns up his face, “I got bored over there. My daughter was growing up not knowing any of my family. I had done everything I could over there. I won the world competition; I spun at some of the chicest clubs. I got tired of it all.”

But coming back home to New York was not easy. Everything had changed. “Hollywood was over”, Eddie said looking out at the clouds, “he was on 8th Avenue messing up. Kurtis was over, he was in L.A.; Club 371 was over. Just about all of the clubs that I had spun at were over. And rap was different. I couldn’t relate to it anymore. I had been in France, I wore French clothes, and I had been living in a nice house. I couldn’t relate anymore.”

As my wife pulls up we say our good byes. I give him CD’s of the Queens Armory Jam in 1979 and mix tapes from the boat rides that he, Hollywood and Lovebug Starski had done together in the late 90’s.

“Eddie”, I ask him, “one more thing, did you know that JB Moore and Rocky Ford wanted you to do the Christmas Rappin’ record?”

“Yeah, I heard about that”, he says to me with a touch of regret. “If I had done that record do you have any idea what my life would be like right now?”

Not that the man is starving: he owns a funeral business as well as a limousine and deejay service. By no means is the man hard up for a dollar. But who among us couldn’t use a nice little royalty check every now and then?

Eddie Cheba wants to send a special shout and a big fat ‘I love you’ to all of the fans that supported him from 1972 until this day. He can be reached at EYMUSIC21@aol.com. Special thanks to Van Silk, Kurtis Blow, Chuck D, Dianne, Reggie Wells and DJ Hollywood.

This feature originally ran in Wax Poetics please contact author for permission to use any part of this story.

Pioneer Buried Alive

2007-06-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

The Fall and Redemption of Doreen Broadnax
b.k.a. Sparky D

By Mark Skillz

MarkSkillz@aol.com

“In all thy ways acknowledge him and He shall direct thy paths.”
Proverbs 3:6

In the Book of Job, while in conversation with Satan, God asked the Devil what had he been up to? Basically, the Devil answered that he had been roaming the Earth looking for someone to corrupt. The Almighty then singled Job out to the devil, knowing how faithful Job was to him. It was then that all matter of catastrophes rained down on his life. But through it all Job never lost faith.

In the mid 80’s a female MC out of the Van Dyke Projects of Brownsville, Brooklyn embarked on a career that would see her life go from the pinnacle of early hip hop stardom to being a victim of domestic abuse, homelessness and drug addiction.

“You gotta go through something in order to grow,” says a proudly re-born Doreen Broadnax better known to hip hop fans as Sparky D.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. to a black father and a white mother, Doreen not only had to endure the prejudice of her black neighbors, but the racism of her mother’s family as well. Recalling those times Sparky says, “Being an inter-racial child in the projects was rough. We had it hard. I was raised on the 14th floor in the Van Dyke Projects. Sometimes I would sit back and ask myself ‘Who am I?’ ‘What am I?’ When I had to be black, I was black, when I had to be white, I was white, when I had to be Puerto Rican, I was Puerto Rican.”

Although she was from one of the toughest projects in Brooklyn, Sparky’s mother worked really hard to send her children to Catholic School. It was because of this that the kids in her neighborhood called her a ‘rich cracker’.

Usually people that have endured this kind of taunting grow up having poor self- esteem, but not Sparky, who adamantly says, “I always believed in myself…I didn’t really have low self-esteem, if anything I had high self-esteem.”

It was that high self-esteem that enabled Sparky to record an answer record called “Sparky’s Turn” on Nia Records in 1985. “Sparky’s Turn” was an in your face, all-out, go-for-broke-take no shorts diss record aimed at Roxanne Shante. It was by far one of the more significant answer records in the “Roxanne, Roxanne” series.

It all started in 1984, when Brooklyn rap trio UTFO recorded “Roxanne, Roxanne” on Select Records. Originally “Roxanne, Roxanne” was released as a b-side to a record entitled “Hanging Out”. It was one of the most significant rap records of that year in that it would take on a legacy of it’s own.

The song featured the three MC’s meeting a fictional girl that although very fly, had no time - or interest in any of them. The MC’s rapped about their hurt feelings over a programmed version of Billy Squire’s break beat classic “The Big Beat”.

The first person to record an answer to “Roxanne, Roxanne” was a 14 year-old MC from the Queensbridge Projects named Lolita Gooden, but known at that time as Fly Shante. With a voice as cracky as project wallpaper, and the attitude of an indignant Millie Jackson, Shante, who re-named herself “Roxanne Shante”, tore into the MC’s like a four year old with a brand new present at Christmas time.

On New Years Eve while listening to Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack on WBLS, Spyder and Sparky both agreed that Shante’s record had to be answered. Taking up the good fight for UTFO and championing her borough of Brooklyn, Sparky recorded a diss that set fire to the rap world.

With a voice that slightly echoed Bronx pioneer Sha Rock of the Funky 4 + 1, and the attitude of a concrete warrior, Sparky, over Spyder D’s minimalist drum programming and sparse keyboard accompaniment lit into Shante like the riots of 1967. The Linn Drum programming would call to mind the distant drumming of ancestors on a battlefield deep in remote antiquity.

By the end of 1985 there would be an estimated 50 answer records made in the “Roxanne, Roxanne” series. Many, if not most of them were laughable at best. “Sparky’s Turn” shined out above the mass of garbage like spinning rims on Pitkin Avenue.

Sparky D was an intimidating MC on the streets of Brooklyn her legendary battles with rival Queens- bred MC Roxanne Shante has become the stuff of urban folklore.
The two MC’s had one epic battle in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina in 1984.

“I’ll never forget that battle,” says Sparky 20 years later “It was like Ali-Frazier…It was real, there was so much energy in the air. I mean, things were really heated, Red Alert and Marley Marl didn’t speak, my people and her people were staring at each other…It was crazy.”

“The anticipation for that battle was unbelievable, there was long lines of people waiting to enter the venue. I mean you name it, they were there; old people, young people, white people, black people, it was crazy” said Spyder D, Sparky’s former boyfriend and manager.

Eventually, the two would become friends and would take their rivalry to the studio to record the EP entitled “Round One: Roxanne Shante vs. Sparky D”.

On the road according to Sparky, “Every night was like a battle.” Each MC’s respective crew was involved in the tension as well, with one notable exception: Roxanne Shante’s then human beat box, Biz Markie.

According to Sparky, in 1994 when she was down and out in Virginia, and wrestling with a raging crack addiction, she bumped into old friend Biz Mark outside of a venue he was performing at. “He saw me and gave me the biggest hug, and I guess he could tell I wasn’t doing so well, because he stuck $500 in my hand…just like that” recalls Sparky.

Now why would the “Clown Prince of Hip Hop” do such a thing? It’s because when she and Shante went out on the road, Biz was treated like a “wet food stamp.” According to Sparky, “I used to let him stay in my room with me, and would buy him steaks and things because Shante would tease him unmercifully, she talked about how his feet stank and how ugly he was…she used to kick him out of her room all the time, and he would stay with me and my crew.”

During her career Sparky – who was often perceived as an intimidating force on the rap scene, was also the type to offer encouragement and support to upstart rappers like Salt and Pepa and LL Cool J.

“When Salt and Pepa first went out and started performing, they were scared…they used to watch me [perform] and wonder how come I wasn’t scared. I used to tell them, you can’t be scared of these people,” says Sparky.

Of a young LL Cool J she says, “I remember him before he was LL, I used to take him shopping with me and everything. As a matter of fact, the first time I performed at Disco Fever I took him shopping with me when I bought my outfit for that night, I bought him a chain and used to advise him all the time, now look at him,” says a proud Sparky.

Although she wasn’t the type to be easily intimidated by any audience there was one crowd that had her shook – and that was the notorious Disco Fever crowd. “The first time I performed at the Fever, I ain’t gonna lie, I was scared,” says Sparky adding “the crowd at the Fever, were no joke, they would let you know right then if you was wack. If you could rock the Fever – you could rock anywhere on the planet,” said Sparky.

It was at one of these notorious New York City “hot spots” that Sparky was first introduced to cocaine. “The Funhouse is where I first snorted cocaine, someone had it in a dollar bill and was like, here, try this,” said Sparky. This was the beginning of a long decline for her.

When crack invaded the urban landscape like wildfire in late 1984, it held Black and Latino youth hostage for well over a decade. The first generation of hip hoppers were the earliest captives. Cocaine and PCP were staples on the early hip hop scene; at many parties the drug was readily available for partygoers and hip hop artists alike. According to Sparky, “ People used to sprinkle cocaine into their cigarettes and smoke it like that.”

It was later, after a show at the Encore in Queens, that Sparky was first introduced to crack. Though she wasn’t quickly addicted to it, she, like every other drug abuser found it difficult to repeat the ecstasy of her first hit. Most drug abusers chase highs for a lifetime. Sparky chased the white powdered ghost for two decades.

According to Sparky, “I was always able to handle business, I never got high in the day time, only at night. A person could come over to my house with two kilos in the middle of the day and I wasn’t gonna touch ‘em. But at night, it was on.”

Sparky got involved on both sides of the drug trade as both user and seller. But the life she was leading was slowly affecting other areas of her life. At first when she would get high, she would rhyme for her friends, “I would always tell them, watch I’m coming back out, just wait…and I said that shit for years and years,” says a remorseful Sparky. The more she stopped recording and performing, the faster she saw her dream slip from in between her fingers like sand on the beach.

Of all the people in the business that turned their back on Sparky during this time, there was one person who was always in her corner that was her deejay Kool DJ Red Alert, of whom she hid her addiction from for years.

Even though her life was slowly spinning out of control she says she always had it in her to encourage herself and others to do better spiritually. “I was always a spiritual person, but I wasn’t in touch with that higher spirit at that time,” says Sparky.

To complicate matters after moving to Los Angeles in 1989, her relationship with Spyder D came to an end. It was there at that time, that she met another man and had a son. That relationship soon ended due to domestic violence.

In 1994 she returned to New York with nowhere to go and no one to really stay with, she says of this period in her life, “My relationship with Spyder was over, so I couldn’t stay with him. Even my own sister wouldn’t take me in.” With nowhere to go Sparky, now a former rap star had no choice but to check into a shelter.

For many, the rapid changes in the world of hip hop are hard to take; for rap stars of a bygone era it’s even harder. One day you’re an 18 year old aspiring MC with the world ahead of you; and then slowly, at first, like the motion of the tide leaving the shore, you’re a 30 plus year old with more years behind you then ahead and your style of rap is out of date. No one tells you what to do next.

“It’s like going up the down stairs”, says Sparky adding that, “you think that you can maintain but you can’t.”

In 1998 while trying to get her life back together she met a man and got married. He was also an addict too. “He worked to get high,” says Sparky “He never missed a day of work, but that’s what he did. But, you know the saying ‘birds of a feather flock together’ Drugs ruined my marriage.”

It was this tumultuous relationship that had Sparky’s safety in jeopardy. “I have 42 stitches in my head as a result of domestic violence” says Sparky.

It was during this time that Doreen says she, “prayed to God to take the taste of drugs out of my mouth.” With a renewed sense of faith Doreen went about putting her life back together. She left her husband in Virginia and moved to Atlanta, Georgia to be closer to her children.

In 1998 Doreen was re-born she is an Apostolic Pentecostal now. She hadn’t listened to secular music in years. “There’s life and death in the power of the tongue, what you say out of your mouth comes into existence. First, I was delivered from smoking cigarettes, when I stopped that my friends and family reached out for me”, says Sparky. “It took faith in a higher power for me to overcome my troubles. I always believed in myself even through domestic violence.”

As a child, before she ever entertained the thought of being a rapper, a young Doreen Broadnax wanted to be a pediatrician, but the lure of rap fame killed those thoughts. She is now an EMT/C.N.A. in Atlanta, and is working on gospel material.

Please contact author for permission to use any part of this article.

Master Mix Those Number One Tunes

2007-06-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

Reggie Wells Talks About the Disco Side of Hip Hop

By Mark Skillz

MarkSkillz@aol.com

So what do you know about this here?

“Hotel/Motel, Holiday Inn, if you don’t tell, then I won’t tell, but I know where you been!”

That’s official son, that’s the original version of the chant that Big Bank Hank used in Rapper’s Delight. It started at a spot called Club 371, way back in 1976. It’s the spot where Harlem’s smooth style came to the Boogie Down Bronx. It’s also the spot where four Manhattan deejays pioneered the disco side of hip hop.

“See, after the club, if you met a young lady and you wanted to take her to a motel or whatever, the place to go was the Courtesy in Jersey”, said pioneer deejay Reggie Wells.

“We called it the “Big C”, so if you were at the “Big C” after the club and somebody saw your car there; you’d find a note on your windshield that said “Hotel/Motel, Holiday Inn, if you don’t tell then I won’t tell, but I know where you been!”

Around the same time that a Bronx deejay named Kool Herc was pioneering the break beat style that would later be called hip hop, black club deejays in Manhattan were refining a slick style of talk over disco records.

“It wasn’t really rhyming with the music, just saying slick stuff over the music,” says Wells, “I’d say something like: This is the man with the golden voice, that talks more shit than a toilet bowl can flush, do more gigs than your grand momma wear wigs, got more clothes than you should wear pantyhose, yes baby sexy lady I hear ya hummin’ I see you comin’, come on momma with your bad self, keep a pep in your step – ain’t no time for no half steppin’. It’s W-e- double L-s, the worlds exciting and most long lasting sound…WELLS…if you hear any noise, its just Reggie Wells and the boys.”

Starting in 1974, CCNY student Reggie Wells went on-air at WCCR. One of the students that was there at the time was rap pioneer Kurtis Blow. Wells, who got his inspiration to be a deejay from WWRL radio personality Hank Spann, is one of the few deejays of his generation to play in both clubs and on the radio.

With a changing voice at the age of 13, Wells took to crank calling random people in the phone book, “ I would call somebody up and say, “Hello, is this the Smith residence?” and I’d pretend like I was on the radio – I had the radio up real loud so that the person on the other end would think I was from a radio station – they’d be like, “Yeah it is!” and I’d say, “If you can name your favorite radio station, I have a grand prize selected just for you. They’d go “WWRL” and I’d say, “Yes, this is WWRL, and my name is Reggie Wells, and you just won a brand new Panasonic color television set that doesn’t work!”

“Hearing people respond as if I was on the radio, made me think, that, maybe that’s what I should be doing.”

The first club that Wells started rappin’ on the mike at, was on 67th St. and was called Le Martinique and after that, he did clubs like Cork in the Bottle and Casablanca. But the place that made him a legend in the city was Club 371 in the Bronx, that’s where he joined such legends as rap innovators Eddie Cheeba, DJ Hollywood and the late-but unsung hero DJ Junebug.

A group called the Ten Good Guys owned Club 371, and it was there, that the four deejays bought Harlem’s style to the Bronx. Men wore dress shirts, slacks and dress shoes and women got in their fly wares as well, when they went out to party at 371.

However, before it was a spot for the disco side of hip hop, it had another reputation, “Club 371 was where big-time gangsters like Nicky Barnes and his crew used to hang out at in the Bronx”, says foundation-era promoter Van Silk.

“All the hustler types that went to 371 shopped at AJ Lester’s on 125th St., you had to be making money then to shop there. We bought nothing off the rack, everything was tailor-made. Brothers today don’t know about getting their pants measured from their waist to their toes”, said Silk, who back then was known as RC.

“Ron Isley and that old R&B group Black Ivory; they shopped at AJ Lester’s too. Brothers used to go there and buy sharkskin suits and gator shoes and Al Packer sweaters,” added Silk.

On the hip hop scene at that time, at clubs like the Hevalo and the Dixie, hip hop audiences wore sneakers and jeans and mock necks to jams. But, for the most part, initially, hip hop jams were in parks where anyone could attend.

“I remember going to Club 371 and standing in the middle of the place, and a record with a break came on, and we started breaking, and Hollywood, he’s my man and I love him to death, got on the mike and said, “There will be no diving on the floor in here!” That’s the kind of spot that was,” says foundation deejay and hip hop pioneer Toney Tone of the Cold Crush Brothers.

“We played break down parts of records at Club 371, but we didn’t specialize in that,” says legendary rap innovator DJ Hollywood.

“One reason that there was no break-dancing there was, because, for one thing, you couldn’t dance with a young lady, and be spinning on the floor. Girls were not going for that”, said Wells.

“Harlem was on some smooth shit way before the Bronx. In Harlem, we were about having money, and rocking nice clothes, and having your hustle game on right. All that diving on the floor shit, naw, that wasn’t happening. See while you down there on the floor, some smooth cat has come along and stole your girl!” said Hollywood.

“The real hustlers there didn’t drink. Their thing was to keep their game sharp, so if they did drink – they drank Perrier water”, said Wells.

“At that time, we drank Pipers, Moet and Don P. Drinking Don P at that time was the equivalent of drinking Cristal today. You see, back then; it was cool to drink a split. Nowadays, you see a brother in the club, and he’s walking around the club, with a bottle of Cristal – back then, you didn’t mind drinking a split. You didn’t have to buy the bottle – and your girl didn’t mind drinking a split either. You never saw anybody walking around with a bottle, we kept it in the bucket.”

“371 was one of the best clubs I ever worked for; the management, the staff, the deejays, I liked working with all of them. It’s rare that you get so many deejays together and they all got along. I met people that would come to 371 from all over, from places like; Connecticut, New Jersey, Brooklyn, Queens, Philly; this was a club that was known by word of mouth,” says Wells.

The club was doing so well that the deejays could afford to lease cars, “Hey I had a Lincoln Continental, Hollywood had a Cadillac, Junebug had a Cadillac as well; and Eddie Cheeba had a caddy too – except I think he had a driver!”

“I’ll never forget Grandmaster Flash had a yellow Cadillac! And you know that album Kurtis Blow did, where he was wearing the white leather suit on the cover, called “Tough”? Well on the back he’s posing in front of a limousine, that was his limo!”

Over the years it has been said that the jocks at 371 played disco – and it’s true they did, but they played the popular records of that time, that would play on radio stations like WBLS and WKTU like “Melting Pot” by Booker T and the MG’s and “Double Cross” by First Choice. These are records that deejays play today when they play the type of music called ‘classics’.

“The stuff that guys like me and Hollywood, Eddie Cheeba, and god bless Junebug, the stuff that we were doing, at that time, no one else was doing in any club in New York City. I’d say, to me, rap kind of started there, in that club, even though I heard about what was going on in the parks, as far as in the clubs, on a regular basis, that’s one of the first places you heard rap. But back then, there wasn’t so much hip hop because we didn’t have hip hop on wax, the deejays were considered the hip hop artists, but we did our thing on the club scene over disco records,” says Wells.

The distinction between what the deejays did at 371 and what Flash, Bam and Herc were doing is important. Both scenes were well aware of each other, however, they played in different markets. Flash, Bam and Herc played in parks, while Hollywood, Cheeba and Reggie Wells played in clubs for an older adult audience. What is important to point out as well is that the deejays did sometimes jam together.

“I knew about Red Alert and Kool Herc and the rest of the guys, but we played in a different market,” adds Wells.

Q: So, when was the first time you met Lovebug Starski?
A: I met Starski, when he and Hollywood did a concert at CCNY. Brainstorm, Evelyn “Champagne” King and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes were on the bill that night, and Hollywood and Starski, they rocked the shit out of that crowd. I mean they totally blew them away. That style of rappin’ where they were talking with the music, I can’t tell you who really originated that style, cause you hear that this one started it - and that one started it; but for me coming from downtown, that was the first time that I had ever seen anyone do the rappin with the turntables and the mike on that level.
Q: So Hollywood was the first person that you saw rap?
A: Yes
Q: So were you aware of guys like Kool Herc, Cowboy, Timmy Tim and Coke La Rock?
A: Definitely, I had heard of them.
Q: So did you notice a big difference between what they were doing and what Hollywood was doing?
A: I heard about the deejays battling each other with lyrics, but with Hollywood, all he was doing was ad-libbing with the environment that was in front of him, so it was all about the party, just saying slick stuff and have the people respond. The other deejays, to be honest with you, I heard of them, but I really didn’t know them at that particular time, but I knew that their style was different from what were doing at that time.”

Wells came up watching the deejays before him like Pete DJ Jones, Maboya, Plummer and the late great Grandmaster Flowers. “Grandmaster Flowers was incredible, what he used to do, he would play with a record, he would take the bass out of a record, he could turn the vocals down and bring them back in…that man was creative with mixing. Not everybody can do that. I’ve been places and have watched the deejay, he’s busy cutting the record back and forth, you look up there and he’s having fun, but nobody is dancing.”

Wells can be considered a kind of deejay “shaman,” in that, he has a deep understanding of what makes a great deejay. “The job of a deejay is to maintain, sustain, create and motivate”, says Wells “I hate when deejays play by a format. Because when you play by a format in a club, and you have a consistent clientele, they get to know you and they know what to expect, change it up, crowds are different.”

One night at Paradise Garage, Wells got to witness first-hand, the “magic” of the late – but legendary club deejay Larry Levan, “I was in the booth with Larry, and he was talking, just talking a mile a minute, and I’m sitting there watching him, and I’m thinking to myself, “Does he know this record is gonna end?” and just when I was thinking that, the record ended, and all you heard was zhchczhc-zhzhzhnzk, you know the sound a record makes when it’s at the end? Well, when that happened, he and his light man, they must’ve been in sync or something, cause every time the record would make that sound…the lights went off – and would flash back on. He did that a few times, and then started the record over again, and the crowd lost their minds! See, that was a crowd that wanted to be entertained!”

One night at the Red Parrot in Manhattan, there was one audience that was not entertained by Wells; “I had to flip the script on them one night. You see the Red Parrot held about 4,000 people and on this night, there were about 3,000 people in there. So here I am playing, I’m rocking the shit out of them people, and all of a sudden…the record skipped. The next thing I knew, the crowd started booing me! So I turned the whole shit off, and got on the mike and said, “Hold up, hold up, I been playing good shit all night and I fuck up once and this is how you do ME?” I reached into my crate and pulled out the hottest shit at that time, a record called “Doin Da Butt” and they lost their minds!”

Nowadays Reggie Wells can be heard on 98.7 KISS FM on Friday nights mixing house, R&B and classic soul, with some old school rap.

Club 371 Playlist - straight from the mouths of DJ Hollywood and Reggie Wells…

Double Cross – First Choice
Soul Makossa – Manu Dubango
Pipeline
Galaxy – War
Runaway Love – Linda Clifford
Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me – Peter Brown
Shame – Evelyn Champagne King
Turn the Beat Around - Vicky Sue Robinson
Hotshot – Karen Young
Busting Loose- Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers
Super Sporm – Captain Sky
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is – Olympic Runner
Runnin’ Away – Roy Ayers
Movin’ On – Brass Construction
Dr. Love – First Choice
Love is the Message – MFSB
Ladies Night – Kool and the Gang
Let’s Get it Together – El Coco

Bounce, Rock, Skate and Roll – Vaughn Mason and Crew

Please contact author for permission to use any part of this article

You Can't Stop Us Now: The Birth of Planet Rock

2007-05-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

By Mark Skillz
MarkSkillz@aol.com

It was an age of wonder. It was the era of the pocket calculator and the digital watch. Toy manufacturer Coleco introduced the first electronic pocket-sized sports games. Video arcades were popping up in malls all over America; games like Pac Man, Centipede and Asteroids were supplanting the pinball machine as a teenager’s favorite pastime. The world of the Jetsons was slowly coming into being.

For three decades Hollywood turned out low budget sci-fi flicks that depicted a world ran by computers and policed by robots. All one had to do was to turn on the TV to get a look at what the future held for us. With all of the talk about technological advancement back then, people wondered what music would sound like in the future.

That question would be answered in 1982 with the release of the groundbreaking hit ‘Planet Rock’ on a small, struggling independent record label owned by Tom Silverman simply called Tommy Boy Records. Almost twenty-five years later the world is still feeling the impact from ‘Planet Rock’.

The Era of Soul-less Funk

By 1982 the hardcore funk music that had predominated the ‘70’s was lame. The raw and uncut funk of James Brown and Mandrill had been displaced by the tamer more crossover-oriented sounds of ‘Let It Whip’ by the Dazz Band and George Benson’s ‘Turn Your Love Around’. Even jazz/funk fusion pioneers Kool and the Gang; a group who’s string of hits in the previous decade ‘Jungle Boogie’ and ‘Hollywood Swinging’, had traded in their long Afro’s for Jheri Curls and recorded a pop piece of trash called ‘Celebrate’. The only artist at the top of the charts that could truly lay claim to being authentically funky was Rick James.

“This was a time when [black] radio was playing a kind of boring, sort of Kashif-like R&B”, says Tom Silverman, CEO of Tommy Boy Records. “Young black kids felt like there was no music for them. They adapted to hip-hop and made it their own.”

During the early to mid 80’s R&B was being marketed directly toward older more upwardly mobile African Americans. And why not? They were the ones with the money to spend. Artists like Glenn Jones, Patti Labelle, Luther Vandross, Anita Baker, James Ingram, Whitney Houston and Mtume made songs, which spoke to that audience. There were minimal background singers. The voices like the subject matter were mature – lost love, in search of love and the pain of a broken heart. Black radio openly embraced these artists. Yet they shunned hip-hop records.

In Nelson George’s book ‘The Death of Rhythm and Blues’, he described the factors that led to the sterilization of soul. Among the things that happened to black music in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s were the segregation of radio (black radio and rock radio) and major corporations buying independent record companies. This in turn led to more money for black record executives. With the money flowing in at the top, black acts were encouraged to cross over to attract a wider audience in order to sell more records. All of that was nice, except for one thing, by the early to mid-80’s the music sucked.

Musically it was an age of experimentation: different forms of dance music were colliding together under the dim lights and smoky atmospheres of clubs such as the Peppermint Lounge and Paradise Garage. On the rock side of things Modern Rock was heating up the airwaves with songs like ‘Tainted Love’ by Soft Cell, ‘I Love Rock n Roll’ by Joan Jett and ‘Don’t You Want Me’ by Human League. New Wave, Punk and Reggae were making serious inroads into popular music at the time as well. With all of the cross-pollinating of different forms of music, new recording techniques came into play. The first recording artists to use the drum machine – and use it very well, were Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder and a group of guys from Germany called Kraftwerk.

Robot Pop Meets the Sound of the Streets
Heavily experimental and long on eccentricity the group Kraftwerk started out in Germany in 1968 when two classically trained musicians Florian Schneider-Esleben and Ralf Hütter came together to form a group called the Organization. The two men played shows in art galleries and worked out of a studio called Kling Klang; it is here that their innovations would come to light. Using any sound they could get their hands on the duo crafted music from the Mini Moog, audio feedback, analog equipment and later some self-created electronic drum pads.

With songs like ‘Man Machine’ and ‘Trans Europe Express’ Kraftwerk slowly gained an underground following in the States with kids who did dances like the ‘Electric Boogie’ and the ‘Break’.

“The first time I heard Kraftwerk, Bam bought it to the house in 1977.” Recalls Mr. Biggs of the Soul Sonic Force, “Bam used to buy records just because he liked the album cover. When he bought it to my house, I was like, “Yo, these are some funky white boys.” Later on we went to go see them at the Peppermint Lounge. Bam was crazy about that group; they were different from anything that we listened to. We grew up on Parliament-Funkadelic and James Brown.”

The Mr. Biggs of the Soul Sonic Force is nothing like soul singer Ron Isley’s latest incarnation as Mister Biggs, no, this Mr. Biggs is a close friend of Bambaataa’s and one of his earliest MC’s. He was a former member of the Black Spades and is a founding member of both the Soul Sonic Force and the Zulu Nation. He is the strong but silent type, he told me he got the name ‘Biggs’ as a kid because not only was he big for his size, but one day he “threw a kid over a bench, so they started calling me Biggs after that. As I got older I added on Mister.”

The song ‘Trans Europe Express’ was an underground classic. Everybody dug it: B-boys spinning on their backs and heads absolutely treasured it; party going, Patty Duke dancin’ fly guys and girls loved it; MC’s in parks and rec centers dug it to death and deejays from so many different scenes valued it as well. At Club 371 in the Bronx, DJ Hollywood (an R&B deejay) would play the song for the older, champagne-drinkin’, gold chain wearin’, sharkskin suit-wearing crowd. “Don’t miss the train!” He’d shout into the mic with his jovial sounding golden voice as he exhorted dancers into a frenzy, all the while his deejay Junebug blended in the haunting orchestration.

Crowds everywhere were held absolutely captive by the robotic-funk of four guys from Germany. ‘Trans Europe Express’ is a 9-minute, audio- cinema excursion through Cold War Berlin. The sound was sterile, yet dark and disciplined – almost as if machines were piloting the track. The orchestration done with analog keyboards of some type, sounded like they weren’t of the 20th century, but of perhaps some later point in time. The pounding of the drums suggested an acute awareness of American funk. This was the point on wax when art met electronic experimentation and skilled musicianship.

But in the streets of America there was another sound taking hold: Rap music. At the time session musicians like Pumpkin and Friends and Wood, Steel and Brass were re-playing the break-beats that hip-hop deejays spun live at block parties.

The Little Label That Could
In 1980 there were only two real independent record companies that specialized in rap music: Enjoy and Sugar Hill Records. Make no mistake there were other labels out there like Winley, Sound of New York, Brass, Dazz and all sorts of other fly by night labels whose owners hustled records out of the trunks of their cars, but none of them packed as powerful a punch as the big two.

That would all change in 1981 when dance music aficionado Tom Silverman released ‘Jazzy Sensation’ by the Bronx group Afrika Bambaataa and the Jazzy Five. Like many rap records of that era it was based on a popular song of the day, in this case Gwen McRae’s club hit ‘Funky Sensation’.

From 1981 to 2002 Tommy Boy Records released some of the most important records of the genre. One would be hard pressed to think of what direction the music would’ve taken had Tommy Boy not released such influential classics as ‘Planet Rock’, ‘Renegades of Funk’, ‘Plug Tunin’, ‘Ladies First’, ‘Humpty Dance’, ‘O.P.P’, ‘Talkin’ All That Jazz’ and ‘Jump Around’. It can also be argued that some of the culture’s most influential acts came from the label: Queen Latifah, De La Soul, Afrika Bambaataa and the immortal Tupac Shakur.

“One of the things I always loved about the music business was that you never knew where the next hit was coming from”, said Tom Silverman CEO of Tommy Boy Music. “The thing that fascinates me the most is why one artist could have a smash hit out of nowhere, from nothing, and it could come from out of anywhere at anytime. To watch, what seems to be a sort of random process, but isn’t really a random process occur is very exciting to me, especially, when it comes from the independent sector”.

Silverman is one of the more interesting record men of his era, he is a fascinating mix of nuts and bolts business man, early ‘70’s flower child and dance music devotee who could’ve coined the term ‘thinking outside of the box’ twenty years before the phrase came into style. In fact, Silverman would probably say something like ‘there is no box’, when it comes to the record business, because during our conversation he made several references to the ‘organic process’ of record production.”

And he’s right. And it is because of his vision and ‘rebel with a cause’ kind of attitude that he was able to release some of the most innovative records in hip-hop history. He dared to go where his competition wouldn’t. The impact of ‘Planet Rock’ and ‘Plug Tunin’ is still felt today. De La Soul are the fathers of the ‘backpack movement’. Before their seminal classic ‘Three Feet High and Rising’ rappers had regular haircuts and dressed in b-boy fashions. Lyrics were easy to understand. And only those with rough dispositions grabbed for mics at jams. Back then, kids with paisley shirts with half of their hair in dreads reached for the mic at their own risk.

While reflecting on the history of his company Silverman said, “Basically, if you really look at the history intelligently, of the twenty to twenty-five years of Tommy Boy, you can say we’re a hip-hop label, but its not really what we were. We did do hip-hop, because it was the most innovative thing. We did new music, and we always tried to push the envelope with new sounds. Whether it was Bambaataa – which was radical compared to everything before it, or De La Soul – which was really radical compared to everything before it, or House of Pain or Naughty by Nature, Digital Underground or even RuPaul, and hey, how much more radical could you get than that?”

Starting out in 1978 with a newsletter simply called the ‘Disco News’, later to be called the Dance Music Report, Silverman’s tip sheet for deejays was revolutionary. Radio and club jocks all over the nation were given tips as to what records banged in the clubs.

Silverman’s first act was the Bronx based crew Afrika Bambaataa and the Jazzy Five. Their boom box classic ‘Jazzy Sensation’ was the introduction the label needed, this was the recording that introduced the public to one of hip-hop’s most eccentric founders: Afrika Bambaataa. Although ‘Jazzy Sensation’ boomed in clubs and rocked block parties, there is nothing about the record that would hint at the genius that Bambaataa would later be heralded as. ‘Jazzy Sensation’ was a straight forward, party-rockin’, pulsatin’, inflatin’, guaranteed showstopper from a crew that would never see success beyond the Tri-State area. Recorded with a band it sold 30,000 records.

However, Tommy Boy’s next record would have an impact far beyond New York’s five boroughs.

To Build A Nation
Upon meeting Afrika Bambaataa Aasim one is immediately in awe of the man. He is as tall as he is wide. He truly is a gentle giant. One is instantly struck by the humbleness of such a large man. His words are measured carefully – he never raises his voice. It was during our conversation that it struck me as to why this man speaks in such even tones: He once commanded the largest and most powerful black gang in New York City, the Black Spades. All he’d have to do is simply say ‘Get rid of him’ and a transgressor was history.

Bam is unlike any current or former gang leader I have ever met. Most gang leaders carry themselves with a rowdy kind of arrogant swagger that suggests that they are not people to mess with. But not Bambaataa, who comes across more so as a chief of a tribe than as a one time gang leader. He has clearly been involved in street wars, yet there is nothing about Bam that suggests that he’d harm anyone. I was once told that “Bam himself is not a violent man, but the people around Bam are.” Nowadays the young men that travel with him as his security call him ‘Pops’.

“Bam was always a peaceful brother”, remembers Soul Sonic Force member Mr. Biggs. “People don’t understand that if it wasn’t for Bam, there would’ve been more bodies in graves”, he told me, “Bam would squash a lot of things on the street, we’d be like “Yo, let’s get him”, Bam would be like “Nah, let him go.”

“I first met Bam in ’72 in the Bronx River Projects”, recalls Biggs, “I was right there with him when the Zulu Nation was being formed. We went from being Spades to a group called the Organization to the Zulu Nation.”

“I heard about Bam before I met him”, recalls MC G.L.O.B.E. the lyrical titan of the group who invented a futuristic style of rap called ‘MC Poppin’ – for examples of this style think of the melodic styles of RUN-DMC and Nelly. “Bronx River used to be called the “Home of the Gods” if you were into any form of hip-hop culture, whether it be graffiti, gang member or music – that was the place.”

From an early age Bam had an innate understanding of power and how to use it. Although he was the leader of the Spades 10th division, that didn’t stop him from being friendly with other groups like the Savage Skulls. With his powerful presence Bam commanded respect, “Being one of the leaders” he told me, “ I was one of the guys who had a lot of wisdom and had my ways of controlling many other leaders within the Spades. So when the first half [of the Spades] fell and disappeared, like the division in the Bronxdale Housing projects – Bronx River [projects] became the main force, and I picked a lot of who would become the next supreme president and vice president and warlord into the Spades.”

But with all of the desperation and violence taking place around him, in his heart, Bam loved two things: Black culture and funky music.

“Bam always deejayed”, remembers Biggs, “before and after a rumble, Bam would go in the house and turn on the music full blast, he’d put the speakers in the window and play music all night long.”

It was a dance called the Break and gargantuan sized sound systems that distinguished hip-hop from all other forms of music back then. Bam’s Bronx River Projects was one of the epicenters of the hip-hop movement. It was also a place where few traveled to uninvited because it was the stronghold of the Black Spades.

It was during this time in a different section of the Bronx that a Jamaican immigrant named Kool Herc was capturing hearts and minds with a mammoth sized sound system and a brand new style of spinning records.

When I asked Mr. Biggs about the first time he saw Kool Herc his response kind of caught me off guard. “You know what? People got Kool Herc all twisted”, he said.
“How so?” I asked.

“Herc had a sophisticated crowd – he catered to the older cats back then. Those guys wore mock necks and nice clothes and all that stuff – we were thugs”, Biggs tells me. “In the beginning, Herc didn’t embrace hip-hop, we were hip-hop back then. After a while he started noticing his audience dying down, so he started playing for us. He came to me and Bam and asked our permission to play Bronx River. You couldn’t just set up your sound system and play in our rec center back then”, Biggs says, “that wasn’t gonna happen.”

At a battle between Bam and Herc, Afrika Bam proved to Kool Herc (and the audience) why he was the undisputed master of records. Herc – known for his gargantuan sized sound system the Herculords, a system so powerful that if you stood too close to it, legend has it that you could literally feel the bass pound your chest. Not only did he have the Herculords, but also in his crates were weapons of mass destruction, tunes like ‘Apache’, ‘T Plays it Cool’ and ‘Yellow Sunshine’.

Bam on the other hand was determined to best any man in a contest of obscure recordings. Of all of the deejays of his era he is noted for having the widest variety of records, thus his slogan ‘Nobody Plays More Music’. His playlist included everything from the truly rare like Nigerian-born Afro beat god Fela Ransom Kuti, to the riot inciting sounds of The Sex Pistols, 60’s rockers like The Monkees and The Rolling Stones, dub reggae, soca and salsa were also thrown into the mix as well. The Zulu King didn’t have as awesome a system as Herc but he more than made up for it with music.

“I’ll never forget that night [that Bam and Herc battled] because Bam had a toothache”, recalls Mr. Biggs. “That tooth was bothering Bam, man. He bought in the record ‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen. The moment that song came on the crowd lost its mind!” Biggs tells me, “they went absolutely crazy over that record. Bam bought that record to the hip-hop community. Nobody could deal with Bam on records.”

But before there were battles on the dance floor there were wars – gang wars in the streets of the South Bronx. It got to the point where somebody had to put a stop to all of the nonsense. Starting with a core unit of brothers and sisters, Bam went from project to project with people like “B.O., Ahmed Henderson, Aziz Jackson, Sambula Nez, Queen Kenya, Queen Makeba and Queen Tamisha.” According to Bam, “We couldn’t go anywhere without those sisters. Those sisters had a lot of power.”

But how does one man get hundreds of knuckleheads to listen to him? I wondered.

“I just had a lot of wisdom and knew how to talk and use my mind.” Bam said. “I watched and mimicked a lot of the Nation of Islam ministers. They had a very powerful effect on how they used to speak and how they used to say things to grab the inner God in you that would recognize the God that was coming out that was speaking to them. I would just use that same technique. I used a lot of those techniques to speak to a lot of brothers and sisters from these other areas. I went straight for the people who I thought were ruling certain areas. I felt that if I could get control of the rulers then I could get control of the membership.”

Bambaataa introduced hundreds of young men and women to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Black Panther Party. He expounded on the lessons of Clarence 13X (Father Allah of the Nation of Gods and Earths) and Dr. Malachi York. In Bambaataa’s Nation young men are called kings and women are queens.

“Listen to me young man”, MC GLOBE admonishes me, “This is one helluva story you’re getting here. What you are getting is the truth”, he tells me. Then taking a second to reflect he says, “I’ve never met anyone like Afrika Bambaataa. I often wonder where he came from, because what he taught us was so different from anything that any of us learned at that time. When I first started hanging around Bam, we’d go to his house and eat and he would teach us things –“
“Like what?” I interrupted.
“About life, the world, he taught us some deep stuff.”

The Record That Changed the World

Every group has its chemistry; the leadership of Otis Williams; the beautiful falsetto of Eddie Kendricks; the chest vibrating bass of Melvin Franklin; the raspy but soulful baritone of David Ruffin and the smooth tenor of Paul Williams anchored the Temptations.

For the Soul Sonic Force it was the eccentric tastes of its spiritual leader Afrika Bambaataa; the strength of Mr. Biggs; the witty lyricism of MC GLOBE and the antics of the groups ‘wild child’ Pow Wow.

“Pow Wow would start stuff and I would end it”, Biggs says to me confidently.

“I went to Bronx River to go audition to get in the group the Soul Sonic Force” GLOBE remembers, “Bam and Biggs were sitting at the table. At the time there were like eight MC’s in the group. There was Lisa Lee, Sundance, Master Ice, Master Bee, Mr. Freeze, Charlie Rock, Mr. Biggs and Love Kid Hutch. I must’ve done something because after I auditioned, the Soul Sonic Force became just me, Pow Wow and Biggs.”

Bambaataa’s initial recordings were just run of the mill rap records. There was nothing to distinguish them from the dozens of rap records that were being released at the time. ‘Zulu Nation Throwdown’s Parts I and II’, ‘Death Mix’ and ‘Cotton Candy’ were just average performances. Lyrically and vocally the Jazzy 5’s ‘Jazzy Sensation’ was the real standout.

Then along came a new record from Kraftwerk called ‘Numbers’.

The song opened up with someone speaking German into a vocoder. The record was undeniably funky. The snare drum sounded like it had been processed and compressed and processed again, perhaps in someone’s garage where the higher part of the snare’s sound could reverberate off of the walls and then back into the console. The kick drum didn’t make the same thumping sound as normal drum kits of that era – this one boomed. BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM- BOOM. A reverb was placed on top of the kick drum sound so that it could stand out and compete with the snare. Multiple robotic voices made the following refrains: “One-uno-three- four – quarto. Uno – duo- tres – quarto.” And then: “Eech- Me- Sun- She.” The robots were counting in different languages.

The song rocked America just as ‘Trans Europe Express” had done years before.

One night at the Ecstasy Garage GLOBE and Pow Wow went to go see the Cold Crush perform. They were rhyming over ‘Numbers’. “We laughed to ourselves”, said GLOBE, “Because they had no idea what was coming their way.”

The idea for the Soul Sonic to use that beat had come from an unlikely source a few weeks earlier. “One of Bam’s most powerful Zulu’s was a dust head and a gangster named Poo”, GLOBE says to me, “He was the kind of guy who always had his ear to the ground, if you know what I mean. One night in the wee hours of the morning, Pow Wow and I were hanging out with him drinking beer and whatnot talking about records. We were like, “Yo man, I wanna come up with a joint that nobody else can do. That nobody can touch its gotta be something crazy.” We were like “what’s a real hot record right now?” Cause what you would do is you would rap over hot records. The Treacherous Three had used ‘Heartbeat’, the Sugar Hill Gang had used ‘Good Times’, and the Furious had used ‘Genius of Love’. So what were going to do? Well, Poo looked at us and asked, “What’s the hottest record out right now?” To which we responded ‘Numbers’.

“I wrote the song sitting on the edge of my bed. Then I got Pow Wow and we added more lyrics to it and then we got Mr. Biggs involved”, GLOBE said.

“Yeah we all three wrote the song together”, Mr. Biggs confirms for me adding that, “GLOBE came up with the flow, the melody. He had some stuff written but I was like ‘Nah, that’s corny, take that out.”

According to GLOBE, “At that time we were rappin’ over stuff like “Groove to Get Down”, ‘Impeach the President’, ‘God Made Me Funky’ and all that type of stuff. We never rapped over that fast stuff. After ‘Numbers’ came out Bam went crazy over it and we started on the song.”

But according to DJ Jazzy Jay, the architect behind many of the early Def Jam classics such as ‘It’s Yours’, ‘The Def Jam’ and ‘Cold Chillin’ In the Studio’ and who will be re-releasing the Strong City Records catalogue, “That song was based on a routine we used to do with ‘Trans Europe Express’, ‘Numbers’ and ‘Super Sporm’ – I used to cut those live. I showed up to the studio with a [cassette] tape and said ‘here play that.”

According to GLOBE, “The opening line ‘we know a place, where the nights are hot…’ “I was referring to Bronx River, we wanted to take people there and show them what a party was like where we come from.”

Produced by John Robie and Arthur Baker using a Roland 808, a keyboard and a Fairlight the song ‘Planet Rock’ would be an instant classic. The team of Robie and Baker replayed the melody to ‘Trans Europe Express’ and the drum beats to ‘Numbers’ and ‘Super Sporm’ the song was recorded for the measly sum of $800. When it hit the streets of America in the spring of 1982 it was an instant blockbuster.

The first people to hear it were deejays.

“I knew it was a hit the first time I heard it”, said Kool DJ Red Alert, who bears the distinction of being one of the first hip-hop mix deejays on commercial radio. “Mr. Biggs played the cassette tape for me at Danceteria in midtown Manhattan. He played it for me toward the end of the night when there was barely anyone in there”, Red recalls, “When he played it I nodded my head giving it my approval – I knew it was a hit.”

“Lady B the deejay out of Philly was the first to play the record on the radio”, says Mr. Biggs. For a while no one knew that it was a rap record because radio stations all over the country only the played the instrumental.

“I didn’t like it when I first heard it”, Jazzy Jay said emphatically. “It was too different from everything else that was out back then. The electronic feel didn’t really move me. It didn’t sound like ‘Trans Europe Express’, ‘Super Sporm’ or ‘Numbers’”, said Jay, “Especially coming off of ‘Jazzy Sensation’ it didn’t sound right to me.”

“It was a battle to get that record played on the radio”, remembers Tom Silverman. “Black adults hated hip-hop and fought it tooth and nail. You can only imagine the kind of comments I heard from radio programmers [when I was trying to get this record played]. I went international to try and break it internationally, and the big urban music execs were very dismissal of hip-hop. They’d say things like, “This isn’t music they’re talking on it, this is a disgrace to R&B, this is a disgrace to their race, this isn’t real music.” That’s what I got everywhere. Programmers would say, ‘Tommy, you can’t expect me to play this record, I love you, but they’re talking on this record.’ I’m telling you, we take it for granted now – hip-hop is cool, but there were like three or four stations that had one slot for hip-hop records. A lot of stations would only play the instrumental versions of records, because they didn’t play rap. It was a battle in those days to get a rap record played.”

‘Back then”, Silverman continues, “You had a lot of us banging on doors trying to get our records played. People like Will and Fred Munao, Eddie O’locklin, Bryan Turner all of us that were out there telling the majors “this is it, this is it, this is the next music’. The majors would tell us no its not, its Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.”

“The guys that were doing the first ten years of hip-hop were nothing less than musical revolutionaries”, said Silverman.

When the Planet Rocked
“The first time I heard it was on WBLS”, Jazzy Jay recalls, “I was in my car on the way to the Throgs Neck Projects. Back then in ’79, ’80 – didn’t anyone out here know anything about installing sound systems in cars. I had the woofers and tweeters and crossovers and all of that – my boys had the same things in their cars too, so if we were riding down the street listening to the radio at the same time it would sound like a block party. Anyway, here I was on my way to the Throgs Neck Projects listening to the radio when all of a sudden: “Oh snap, what’s that? We’re on the radio!” I almost crashed. I got off the highway and dropped a dime in the phone and called Bam and then my mom – we were on the radio!” Jay says to me as he recalls that day from so many years ago.

The song “Planet Rock” took off like wild fire it boomed in passing cars, boom boxes and clubs all over the world. Along with the phenomenon of this sound a new dance was introduced to the rest of the nation. It had been a part of Bronx culture for at least 10 years, it was dance that had many names ‘the b-boy’, ‘the boing-yoing’ but mostly it was known as ‘the break’. Teenagers in suburban neighborhoods were doing it with the same enthusiasm as kids in the inner cities. Everywhere you looked someone was spinning on their backs and heads, twisting their arms and legs around at gravity defying speeds. And ‘Planet Rock’ was the soundtrack.

There was a second version of the song called ‘Play At Your Own Risk’ that boomed in the hood just as hard as “Planet Rock”. It was sung by a group of session musicians that Tom Silverman dubbed “Planet Patrol” – “They weren’t really a group per se”, Silverman told me, “they were just some guys that we got to sing on the track. Really, Planet Patrol was John Robie and Arthur Baker.”

The groups first big show was in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, they shared the bill with the Jazzy Five “I knew that song was large when we played that show”, said Jazzy Jay. “There were mobs of girls chasing us and shit – it was big.”

MC GLOBE concurs “The crowd went wild for us at the Queens Day Show, they really showed us love. It was crazy. It was really crazy”, he says to me.

“When we played Studio 54” Jazzy Jay says, “People were jumping on the stage like we were Genesis or somebody like that. They were screaming – you didn’t expect that kind of reaction from a crowd like that, no way.”

“I started to like the record when it started to take me around the world – it was the first time I had ever gotten on a plane”, remembers Jay. “Tom flew us down to Florida for a fish fry at Jack the Rapper; it was me, Bam, Biggs, Pow Wow and GLOBE – now that was cool. We were just some guys from the projects in the Bronx, that was a really big deal to us.”

In the broader scope of history it was only fitting that the group would travel to Florida first. It is there that the song ‘Planet Rock’ spawned a movement: Miami Bass. “We started a phase and everyone else jumped on it”, said Jazzy Jay, ‘It spread to the Freestyle market and the whole LA scene and in Miami, Techno all of that stuff, seeing the impact – it was big.”

MC Shy D, Gigolo Tony, the 2 Live Crew, Annequette, Tag Team, 95 South and many other groups of that region owe their very careers to the song ‘Planet Rock’. Before the South was synonymous with the word ‘Crunk’ the predominate sound of that region was Miami Bass. In a whole lot of cases the producers replayed the Planet Rock beat with a heavier emphasis on the 808-kick drum. Whereas the Soul Sonic Force record went ‘boom-boom-boom boom boom- boom; the Miami records went ‘BOOM-BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM’. The thunderous rattle of the low booming bass from those songs destroyed many sound systems.

At the same time on the West Coast in Los Angeles a whole other movement was taking form, the song ‘Planet Rock’ and the funk/rockateer Prince inspired their sound. Groups like Uncle Jamm’s Army, The Dream Team, Egyptian Lover and the World Class Wrecking Crew traveled and sold out stadiums all across the country. America had been listening to New York hip-hop and was starting to rap back. Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force had taken hip-hop from the playgrounds and rec centers of their Bronx neighborhood and revolutionized music with a sound that would be the wave of the future.

Authors note: Interview with Bam was conducted in San Francisco in November 2004 with Davey D. Special thanks to Christie Z Pabon (Tools of War) for the hook ups with Bam and Tom Silverman. Extra loud shout goes to Big Jeff of the Zulu Nation.

This article was originally published in Wax Poetics.

Straight No Chaser: DJ Hollywood

2007-05-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

Every musical genre has its folk hero. In the tradition of the Delta blues men, it is said that the great Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil to give him the power to be the best blues man ever. In the early days of the rap scene, there was one name that was constantly evoked as the prime creator of the new sound of the street called rap, and that name was D.J. Hollywood.

For party-going New Yorkers in the '70's there were certain spots you had to hit, like The Loft, Paradise Garage, Justine's, and Zanzibar's. But for those that wanted to party in Harlem and the Bronx there were places like Charles Gallery, the Hotel Diplomat, Smalls Paradise, and Club 371. If you frequented places like these, you know doubt came upon a young man with crates of records and a golden voice.

Today at 50 years old, the original rhyme king is still doing his thing, he was recently honored on VH1's: "Hip Hop Honors Show", on his latest mixtape, he'll be spinning house and reggae as well as classics.

"I first made my name in Harlem because of a dance called the "Bus Stop"; I could "Bus Stop" and I could "Hustle". I was nasty at it. I wasn't Puerto Rican nasty at it- but I was good at it. I was making moves, looking good- I was really good at it. Every party I would go to people would say, "Let me see you Bus Stop! Before that, I had a rep as an entertainer; everything I did back then was theatrical. That's how I got the name Hollywood.

I was 14 years old when I left home, my mother and I just didn't see eye to eye. She had a lot of rules. My drive to go to school wasn't there. I wanted to breathe. I used to see the hustlers man, and I would just marvel at the hustlers. That was the world I wanted to be in. They had the cars and money and jewelry all that fly stuff.

I started living in the after- hours clubs around Harlem. It was a whole lot of fun back then too. What they used to do in these places was: they'd cover the windows with big dark sheets, so that it would be dark as hell in there. I mean it was completely dark. You could go in there at night and not leave until like 3 o'clock in the afternoon the next day. Hustlers used to be in there playing cards, gambling, getting' high, drinking - whatever…it was an after- hours spot.

I used to run errands for them, at 8 o'clock in the morning everybody in the spot would give me their keys to move their cars, they'd be like, "Here kid, go get me some cigarettes, and while you're at it, here's my keys go move my car." I was moving and parking Cadillac's at 14 years old.

When I was 14, maybe 15 years old, I went to a spot on 167th and Amsterdam where this guy named W.T. used to play at. He was my first real inspiration to be a deejay. He had the two turntables and a mike mixer; with no cueing; see, what he would do was, between the records, as one went off and the other came on, he would talk - I really liked his delivery.

I started playing at a couple of spots around Harlem; one was called Jet Set it was on 132nd St. and the other was called Lovely's it was on 148th St. I played at these spots 6 nights a week. I was partying all I wanted, and had all the "get high" I wanted too. That stuff later ruined my life.

A guy named Bojangles taught me how to mix. He played soul and disco stuff. Stuff like "Knock, Knock on Wood", "Melting Pot", and Sam and Dave's "Who's Making Love to Your Old Lady", stuff like that.

One of the greatest guys in Harlem though was named "Thunderbird Johnny", he was the greatest guy in existence, and he owned one of the after-hours spots I played at. I learned a lot from him.

I was a singer before I ever became a deejay. I had a natural flair for talking over the records. Before me, everybody was just announcing. I had a voice. I used to like the way Frankie Crocker would ride a track, but he wasn't syncopated to the track though. I liked Hank Spann too, but he wasn't on the one. Guys back then weren't concerned with being musical. I wanted to flow with the record. As a singer that's what you're supposed to do. I guess I had a natural awareness of when to start talking and when to stop talking over a record.

Around 1972 I started making tapes of what I was doing in the after-hours spots. I would record them onto 8-track tapes, and sell them for like 12 bucks a pop. I went around to barber shops and restaurants; I went anywhere where there was a bunch of brothers with money, that's where I would be at selling my tapes. Back then though; there was no dubbing, so I had to record each individual tape. It got to the point where, as soon as I would come outside, and say "I got tapes!" brothers would roll up and be like, "Yeah gimme one of those!" My tapes would be gone in a flash. People would rush me for them tapes. That was the real start of the mixtape game.

When the Rooftop was hot back in the day, man all them cats that had money was bidding on my tapes right there in the booth; Me and Brucie Bee were making tapes together, he had one side and I'd get the other. All those cats that were making big money back then, I'm talking about your AZ's, and Rich Porters, and Alpo's and people like that, those brothers were buying the tapes for 150 - 200 bucks right out the booth - and I'm talking about cassette tapes!"

People talk about me not being hip hop, well, it's because I spun the whole record, when the "get down" part would come on, I would keep it going. Herc and them guys, they practiced playing the obscure parts of records. I played stuff like "Paradise" and "Mambo Number Five" and "Scorpio"; but that wasn't a big part of what I did. I played for hustlers. I played for people that came sharp to the party. You really had to come correct at the spots I was playing at. Harlem was on some smooth shit way before the Bronx.

I had heard of Kool Herc and his partner Coke LaRock from a couple of friends of mine named Al and Coop, they used to play at the Hevalo on the nights that Herc wasn't playing there. They would come back and tell me about the obscure records they were playing and people diving on the floor and shit.

In 1975 I went to the Bronx and started playing at a spot called Club 371. That's when the Bronx got hip to what I was doing.

Around the time that I first started playing in the Bronx, there was this kid that used to hear my tapes. There was this friend of mine named Gary, he had a 98 Oldsmobile, he used to buy a whole lot of my tapes. I mean he had a lot of them. One day, I can't remember where right now, but this kid was sitting in Gary's car listening to one of my tapes while Gary's car was parked in front of a basketball court. Later, I started hearing about this kid, people would come up to me and be like "Yo, Wood man, there's this kid named Starski, man he gets down just like you do, he sounds just like you and everything!" I call that an indirect influence.

Now there were two guys that I can say that I did teach. I call them 1-A and 1-B. One was D.J. Smalls and the other was Junebug, god bless him. Junebug was the baddest deejay I ever saw. Period. He was a Puerto Rican cat that guy could blend his ass off, he could cut, he was the baddest deejay ever, and I taught him.

DJ Smalls kind of reminded me of myself. He was a kid who had a whole of determination; he just wanted to shine. I put a lot of cats down. I guess it was because people like Huey Newton influenced me. I always had a strong sense of black awareness. I was always about unity you know what I'm sayin'?

One day in 1975, I was at home playing records, and one of the records I pulled out was the "Black Moses" album by Isaac Hayes. It was not popular at the time. So, there I was listening to this album, and I put on a song called "Good Love 6969". Isaac Hayes was singing this part that went "I'm listed in the yellow pages, all around the world, I got 30 years experience in loving sweet young girls." That record stopped me dead in my tracks. You see, before that record I had been doing nursery rhymes. But after that record: I was doing rhymes.And not only was I doing rhymes but I was talking about love. This was another level. I told myself: "Wood, you got something here!"

I thought to myself, "What if I take what he's doing and put it with this? What would I get?" I got fame, that's what I got. I got more famous than I could ever imagine. Everybody bit that rhyme. I would go to jams and people would be saying that rhyme, and none of them, not one of them, knew where it came from. It blew my mind.

Had I known that this was gonna be a billion dollar thing - I don't think that I would've been as good at it. God sent someone to show black kids a different way. I never knew saying rhymes over a phat beat would lead to all of this. But God knew it. God used me as a vehicle. It was something for everybody to have. When a lot of people are thinking on the same wavelength, you get a multitude of sounds. It says in the Bible "Let's make a joyful noise unto the Lord", well my joyful noise came as a James Brown record."

Making of a Classic: Live at the Barbecue

2007-05-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

On one cold November night at 3 o’clock in the morning in 1990, four up and coming MC’s from Queens, entered Long Island City’s Power Play Studios to record the unforgettable classic “Live at the Barbecue”.

“Yo that barbecue joint, we just put that down, niggas was on some ol’ natural high energy, niggas was wet behind the ears shit, you know what I’m sayin?” says Large Professor a.k.a. Extra P of Flushing, Queens.

“We didn’t have any knowledge of what was in store for us in the industry or nothing like that, this was some free spirit type shit”, added Large Pro.

No record can be a classic without the main ingredient: a hot beat. In this case Large Pro sampled Vicky Anderson’s “Land of Milk and Honey” and integrated it with a 2.5 second sample of the Bob James seminal b-boy classic break “Nautilus”. “I had been messing around with “Nautilus” for mad years and shit, I had analyzed that record and chopped it up and all kinds of stuff, I knew one day I was gonna do something with it and this was the perfect opportunity”, says Large Pro. “I had the drums sampled and edited down to just before the aqua bells came in. I got it down to the “boom-bup-pa-boom-pap” and shit, I got the drums really tight. I had the drums all looped up and we was just rocking over the drums at first, until I added the loop.”

The loop, in this case was from Vicky Anderson’s “Land of Milk and Honey” a fierce funk workout featuring the JB’s with Anderson’s voice wailing over the ensembles funk celebration.

“I was always finagling with that beat, and the Bob James loop was the perfect time to use it.”

“We used a total of 16 tracks for that record, we had the main loop, the drums, the tambourine loop, the 808, and the vocals” said Large Pro.

“There wasn’t no one-shot deals happening on this night, I know rappers be on that “one take knockout shit” but believe me, we definitely had to do some re-construction of the vocals”, said Large Pro.

“Pudgee tha Fat Bastard and Nas wrote Joe Fatal’s verse; Pudge was on the phone with Fatal while Nas was writing. Everybody else had their rhymes already done, brothers had been sharpening their swords and shit for a minute. These were my dudes; whenever you get a group of MC’s together, there is competition in the air. It doesn’t have to be said, it’s just like that. It wasn’t about one person trying to blow up the others, or this one saying Yo, let me re-do my vocal after that one was done, it wasn’t like that”, said Large Pro. It was that one opportunity for the young crew of MC’s to make their mark on the industry; and they did it.

“The only person missing from the session that night that was supposed to be there, was M.F. Grimm, that was my man too!” added P.

“This was the last song of the album and Wild Pitch was calling and was like “Yo, where’s it at?” I always had Nas around me, and Ak, and Fatal; so it was just natural for me to do something with them.”

When it all came together it was like nothing the hip hop world had seen up to that point. The chorus was an old school chant: “Aaaaay yo it’s like that y’all! That y’all! That y’all! That y’all! That y’all! And that’s all!” a chant that called to mind dark nights in Colden Park in Flushing, Queens where the air was thick with the smell of the combination of herb and cigarette smoke; forty ounce bottles of Old English 800 were tucked into brown paper bags; hot and rowdy summer nights, where the dee-jay wearing a Fedora hat and pleated slacks would grab the mike with a cigarette in one hand and the mike in the other and yell: “AAAAAAY YO, STEP THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE SPEAKERS!” All of that was captured on that record.

“Streets Disciple, my raps are trifle” the first verse hit like a gunshot from, then, Nasty Nas, who, 14 years later would record the classic album entitled “Streets Disciple”. On Nas’ opening verse he aims to be the illest MC to ever come from the Queensbridge Housing Projects with lines like… “Kidnap the presidents wife without a plan, I’m hanging niggas like the Ku Klux Klan! I melt mikes ‘til the sound wave is over, before stepping to me you’d rather step to Jehovah”… Nas was on some ol’ ill-literate shit.

The final verse was Large Pro who plays resident hard rock with the line “Don’t let them kids around your way puff your head, or you’ll be the owner of a hospital bed!” A line that simultaneously played on the rock classic “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and threatened sap MC’s at the same time.

According to Bay Area hip hop radio pioneer D.J. Kevvy Kev “Cool Breeze” of Stanford’s 90.1 KZSU, “The first time I heard BBQ, I was lovin' it. My favorite part? Too many of 'em. That's why a word that's as overused as "classic" is appropriate here.” Kev’s show ‘The Drum” has been rocking Bay Area audiences every Sunday consistently for the last 20 years.

Akinyele scored with a couple of hits in the mid-90’s with “It’s the Ak” and “Put It In Your Mouth”; Pudgee tha Phat Bastard had a couple of hit records as well in the mid-90’s with “Money Don’t Make Your World Stop” and “On the Regular”.

“When we walked out of there at 5:30 in the morning – we knew we had a classic” said P.