The story of Charlie Rock aka DJ Stitches is a classic example of how brutal the music industry can be. As a founding member of De La Soul, only himself discarded once they signed their first record deal, he went on to score a contract with Mercury Records for his next group – Class A Felony – only to have the album stuck in limbo for two years after his MC was brutally murdered in a bungled robbery attempt. Having also been involved with records for Uptown and Ilacoin, Stitches shared a number of behind-the-scenes incidents during his extended tour of duty in the rap world, and revealed some untold Long Island hip-hop history.

Robbie: What inspired you become a DJ originally?

DJ Stitches: I’m from South Jamaica, Queens – Southside. The hip-hop scene in Queens – 1978, 1979 – I seen some DJ’s, and my cousin from The Bronx, Mixmaster TC and the Soul City Crew, he used to let me mess around on his turntables. I mighta been like eleven or twelve. Me and my cousin Blinky kinda had the bug since then, and I migrated to Long Island in ninth grade and then came to North Amityville.

Which high school did you attend out there?

Initially my parents moved to Wyandanche , Long Island. We only stayed there six months, it was just like South Jamaica so my parents said, “No way, we outta here.” But in ninth grade I met a good friend, and his name is William W. Griffin, aka Rakim. I went to school with Rakim and we were in the Wyandanche Marching Band together. We kept in contact and I wound up selling some music to Rakim in ‘94 when him and Eric B broke up. A couple of other guys were there – some of the Groove B. Chill dudes, my man Nate Tinsley, who’s a great engineer, did a lotta recording at his house. I moved to North Amityville and Mase lived around the corner from me and Trugoy lived around another corner. Me and Pos and Trugoy, class of ‘86. Me and Trugoy’s brother Mike initially were friends, and he used to tell me, “Yo, my brother can rap!” He was rapping with some other cats but it wasn’t going nowhere, so me and Trugoy started hanging out, tinkering around with music. We started developing stuff – I’ll honestly say, as far production of that first De La Soul album? I was highly influential in most of that stuff you guys heard.

“Plug Tunin’” was actually made in my mother’s house. These guys tell a whole bunch of other stories, and I’m always “the other member” that they mention but never mention my name, because there’s a little bit of bad blood. I felt, “Alright, you guy’s are taking the record deal, Prince Paul is hooking you up,” and me and Paul were never friends. I was friends with the guy he always used to have battles with, Cutmaster Divine. Divine is this real street, thuggish type dude, and so am I, but Paul is the total opposite. I developed all of that shit, Paul got it when it was done. He heard it and was like, “Whoa! I can get you guys a deal!” Stetsasonic had a deal on Tommy Boy and was comin’ up, so he had a little pull. I didn’t have any pull with anybody, I just was making beats! Me and Dave and Pos were making beats, coming up with songs, coming up with concepts. We started buying equipment, little Casio samplers, and coming up with stuff.

Mase was a small factor in it because he was trying to take another deal with another rapper. His name was Gangster B, they had a song, “Cold Waxin’ The Party.” Mr. Collins, who was a music teacher at the junior high school, he was a backup drummer for the Isley Brothers, he had a little pull. So Mase, while we were developing “Plug Tunin’” and all this stuff, he wasn’t even around. I see all his interviews where he claims this, that and the other, but “Potholes,” the original “Buddy,” “Plug Tunin’” – those are DJ Stitches tracks. They can say what they want to about it and I ain’t even mad at it, cos I’ve been through record deals and I’ve always said, “If people are clapping for you guys then they’re really clapping for me too,” and I just kept pursuing my music career. You listen to any of my other production – Class A Felony, Ilacoin, anything that came out after that – you’ll be like, “Wow, that’s some real similar sounding stuff,” cos I actually was the nucleus. My sister’s boyfriend at the time brought his equipment out to my mother’s house for us to do recording. Mike Mitchell, that’s his name.

Back then it wasn’t about money, it was about who’s the nicest, and a lotta stuff was samples. I can’t say, “I made it up!” It was records that I had and ideas I had formulated. But once they got the record deal it was like, “Forget Stitches (they called me Charlie Rock back then), we’re just gonna take everything that he was working on and it’s gonna be on our album.” Everything on there I didn’t have nothing to do with, but the majority of the stuff that people heard? My ideas. Me and Dave are still cool, cos we have a mutual friend – Joe Buck, who did a lotta their artwork – and I ain’t got nothing bad to say about them, everyone grew up to do what they did. Music business makes you do certain things. Back then, North Amityville, money was falling out the sky from drug sales and this, that and the other, so you’ll hear Mase talking about how he was in the streets – he was talking about me. He don’t mention my name because he actually wanted to be me, have the respect that I had. The dudes that I ran with back then and still have connections with? They done wrote books about some of the stuff me and my team done later on in life.

You also worked with Uptown, right?

Uptown used to battle every MC in Amityville and destroy them. He would let MC’s go in with 64 bars worth and then he’d just smoke ‘em with a nice 32. He made one of my MC’s cry! I had another MC named Finesse – he made Finesse cry at a party! Uptown – very great lyricist, and he’s still fucking sharp! Me and Uptown – most of the demos that he had, I made! He wound up rapping in front of Dante Ross at a studio session with Mase and them, and Dante was like, “Ohh, gotta have it!” I’m mentioned on his twelve inch in very small type: “Scratches by DJ Charlie Rock.” Like really? That’s it? That was a whole ‘nother issue. I seen the Dante interview that you got up there, we could go and shoot holes through those interviews or whatever but that was twenty-something odd years ago, I don’t even care, it was it was. You’d get jerked in the music business if you wasn’t smart. Tommy Boy – Tom Silverman, Monica Lynch – they were one of the people that would jerk you to death.

I don’t know if him and Mase are actually cousins, I know they grew-up in Brooklyn together, but Uptown would come up to Amityville and don’t even go see Mase, he would come right to my house. Me and him would hang out and do stuff that Mase wasn’t even allowed to do. There’s a spot, Great Neck and Albany, in Amityville – that’s where all the drugs, all the bad shit was happening. You wasn’t allowed up there if you wasn’t somebody or affiliated with somebody. He was never up there! He talks about how he used to sell some drugs – I’m like, “When was that? You had a record deal in high school!” Mase is two, three years younger than everybody else. We worked at Burger King together and all that, but when I left Burger King I shot up to the block with my other crew, who didn’t do music and they always used to be like, “Yo, what are you doing with those nerdy dudes? They rappers? They never did a party!” They were straight studio rappers, but I made it like that. I’m a perfectionist. So before anybody was hearing anything, we were doing the talent shows in high school. I was the nucleus to that shit.

Even though they had a secret meeting, voted me out the group and took the deal, their first couple of shows I was there yelling the loudest for them. I was happy for them. There was a club called Milky Way, might have been one of their first shows, I damn near broke DMC’s glasses, elbowed him by accident, because I’m yelling for these dudes. He’s like, “This motherfucker almost broke my Cazals!” Mind you, I’ve got some Cazals on too. We just looked at each and I went, “Those are my peoples up there on stage! Pardon me.” And I just kept cheering for them. But as time went on, I was like, “Wait a minute! That’s one of my fuckin’ beats!” Every other release that I was hearing and I’m like, “Holy shit! You guys are gonna rape me like that?” But I figured, “You guys are gonna rape me like, but you’re gonna put me on.” They never, never attempted.

I still had a relationship with them even though they were fuckin’ shitting on me, cos I’m a cool dude! So I come by, Dave’s got the drum track on and he’s like, “Damn, I wanna use the drum track but I can’t find the sample to go with it.” I said, “You know what, Dave? I’ve got a sample right now that will lock right in.” I got on my bike, rode through the junior high, went to my parents house and came back with The Commodores record. They didn’t give me no fuckin’ credit for that! That’s why I used that beat again for a song with Illacoin later on. That De La Soul album was a great album, and I’ll always say that it’s a great album because I had a lot to do with it. I’m the core member! The rest of them are Plug’s Two, Three and Four – I’m Plug fuckin’ One if you really want to put it into perspective. Dave wouldn’t given a fuck if they made one record and it was over, that’s how Trugoy was, and I knew that. I’ve still got love for that brother.

So did they re-record the songs you had worked on when they made the album?

Me and Mase shared a collection of records, so when I knew I was voted out the group we split-up everything. But the ideas that I had, he grabbed the records and was like, “Yo, let’s use this!” If you actually listen to any of their interviews, they give Paul credit for doing it and Paul gives them credit for doing it, so who really did it? It was damn near already hashed-up for most of the ideas. I didn’t have nothing to do with “Say No Go” with the Hall and Oates sample, I didn’t have anything to do with “Jenifa,” but a lotta those skits? That’s me and Dave. When you hear Paul’s production it’s got more comical stuff to it – when you hear DJ Stitches’ production, it’s more cynical, it’s more dark – so what Paul did was take a lotta the stuff I had preset already and put twists on it. Like “Potholes…” how it’s got that stupid spring noise on it. I’d never put that in there cos I didn’t think something like that needed to go on those hard-ass drums with that damn harmonica. Whoever used a harmonica back then?

When I found that War sample out of my father’s record collection, “Magic Mountain” – once I hear something I know I could use it, regardless of what genre it came from. “Plug Tunin’”? I guess the original copy got re-altered once Paul heard it, took it to Tommy Boy and took them into the studio and did it over. I had a 45 and I slowed it on to 33, and that was an accident! You fuck around and put the record on and don’t have it on 45 and start playing it. I’m like, “Oh shit! That’s fucking nuts!” That next week my sister’s boyfriend brought his cassette 8-track out to my parent’s house and “Plug Tunin’” was made right then. No other songs were actually made when Paul heard that. That was enough for him to try to get them a deal, minus me.

Did anyone in De La ever explain why they didn’t invite to to sign the record deal with them?

My man Gary G, who used to throw “cut” parties, he used to spin too. He lived two doors away from Dave, and as time went by we had a conversation. “Yo, I bet you really never knew what happened with that situation. Dave told me they voted you out because so-called Tommy Boy didn’t want another group with two DJ’s because they had Too Poetic already.” I was like, “That’s bullshit, I know what it was. I was in the streets a little bit and I wasn’t no dummy.” See, Paul wasn’t going to have me sign nothing where I wasn’t going to receive the money that I was supposed to get, because for that first album they didn’t get the money that they were supposed to get. They might’ve split-up thirty grand between the three of ‘em – that ain’t no money for a Grammy-nominated album! Paul knew he couldn’t control me, and once cats know you can’t be controlled? They say, “Nah, he’s not good for the industry.”

So you’re saying that it was Prince Paul who ripped them off or was it Tommy Boy?

Both of them! Paul was riding around in gold Corvettes and these guys didn’t have anything, they barely had cars. If you can’t go right now and drop money and buy a car? Then you aren’t doing nothing. It’s like when Paul did the Resident Alien deal – he took a lotta money for that, but he didn’t give out a lotta money! When he did the Horror City deal for Prince Amongst Thieves he dangled like nine grand in front of the guys from our town, but I know he got like $500,000 for that project. Me and Mase have an ongoing friction thing, but he won’t bring it to me because he knows the type of motherfucker I am. Before I had the deal with Mercury Records and me and Dumar were having some tough times. I even humbled myself and went to Mase like,”Yo, I need to borrow a couple of bucks, man,” cos he was like my son, I used to do a lot of stuff for him. When I came out here, he didn’t have his turntables, some other dudes had kinda housed his stuff. I went to they house and was like, “Yo! Those turntables better be back around the corner by the end of the fucking week!” A they sure enough were there, so we could DJ. He puts on this persona like he’s this big tough guy and I’m like, “Yo dude, you’re not that guy. Definitely not.”

As far as music? I’ve edged myself in this game. I’ve done work with The 45 King, he gave us five songs on the Class A Felony album when we got signed to Mercury Records. The reason I was in that group is because there’s an MC named Superstar who’s on the Horror City stuff, him and my man Lord Dumar used to always battle. One night at a party they were gonna battle and Mase was deejaying when Superstar was rapping. When the other guy Dumar said, “I’m about to get on but I don’t want this guy deejaying. I want the dude with the glasses to cut for me,” which was me. Because Mase isn’t the nicest DJ, he couldn’t stay on-time with beats and my man wanted someone to be fine. From then on we became the group Class A Felony.

Lord Dumar.

Dumar Israel, Class A Felony, he was probably my best MC. He was like Biggie before Biggie – he was 300 something pounds, 6’ 3”, deep voice. Our first record we did was “Time To Get The Donuts,” we made that record in ‘87. The original version of it was “Poppa Was A Rolling Stone” [sample]. We winded up not using that, Dumar wound up going to jail for two years, and before he came home he wrote me a letter saying, “Whoever you’ve got as an MC? Cut them off, cos when I come home I’ve got $1,000 and I’m battling anybody who you’re working with right now.” That song “They’re All Gonna Laugh At You” is dedicated to Prince Paul, Resident Alien – all those groups from Amityville who tried to come out and act like they didn’t know who we were! Milo from Leaders of the New School – my man Dumar put it down them. “You guys are gonna get knocked out the box!” Unfortunately he got murdered, but they knew it was coming. When they found out we were signed, they were like, “Holy shit! What we gonna do now? The floodgate has opened, we’ve got two motherfuckers that don’t like us gunning for us!” That was Dumar, like, “Anybody that grab a mic, I’mma destroy them! These guys gotta understand and know that everybody can’t be an MC.” If you’re grabbing a mic? That’s like picking up a sword in the arena – you must wanna challenge.

How did The 45 King become involved with the album?

The 45 King had the dopest beats on the radio back in ‘89, ‘90 – he was the king of production back then. Our friend Lance, told us he was 45 King’s cousin and we were like, “You lyin’!” He calls him in front of us and the first thing Mark says is, “Lance who? I don’t have no cousin named Lance from Long Island!” We were like, “Ahh man! You’re bullshitting us!” He was like, “Yo, I’m Scotty’s little brother!” And he was like, “Oh snap! I know you!” So he said, “I’ve got a group that’s ready to go.” He’s like, “Come out here one day, let me hear some of your stuff.” We had three songs already cocked and ready to go – “I’m Not The Herb You’re Looking For,” “They’re All Gonna Laugh At Us” and a song called “Rita.” He was like, “Wow, this shit is ready to go. You know what you’re doing on production, don’t you?”

One of the friends he went to college with was Lisa Cortez, who just got the job as Head of Black Music at Mercury Records, and he took our stuff to Lisa. We got signed when Black Sheep got signed, Ultramagnetic and I think Bobby Konders and Mikey Jarrett. She sat us down and said, “You know what? I’m signing you two right because I’m sick of all this pussy rap out!” We were like, “Oh yeah!” When me and Dumar signed, Mercury gave us twenty stacks up front. Back then that was a lotta money! You probably wouldn’t have even heard of Black Sheep – see, my man Dumar got murdered maybe six months before the album got released. Some knuckleheads ran-up in his house and thought we had $150,000 cash, cos that’s what our deal was worth. They wound up coming in his house and killing him. So the project was delayed, it didn’t come out until ‘93 but it was actually finished in ‘91.

Mercury put a big ball of red tape on the table and said, “Hey Stitches! Unravel this and we’ll release this record!” As diligent as I was, I unraveled that red tape and I made them release that record with a little bit of promotions – very little, because they didn’t know how to promote a dead rapper back then. It wasn’t like Tupac and Biggie. We had Diamond D and Lakim Shabazz do a song on there [“I Can’t Take No More”], 45 King gave us five tracks – charged us fifty grand, damn near! [laughs] But that’s how it was, I learned a lotta stuff from Mark, he’s a very intelligent person. He showed me a lotta tricks in the game – when to take your money, try to clear the sample or play it over, or take as much money as you can upfront and don’t lose no sleep about it. Those were some of the rules back then.

Did Dumar have a problem with De La Soul or was that you who wrote the liner notes directed at them?

Back then I had vengeance in my heart because Mase is the type of guy he thinks no one else could do what they did. I was like, “Really, dude? Me and Dumar are gonna smash the world.” So on there, I wrote: “To the fake, frontin’ fraud crew – you’re all filthy fucking savages!” I put it in print for them to see. Even if they’ve never read those liner notes, that stuff is there and I stick by that because that’s how I felt. Y’all guys perpetrating, y’all didn’t even represent North Amityville. People from Amityville didn’t even know they were from Amityville! Like, “Who the hell are these guys?” So when me and Dumar got on, the “A” in Class A Felony stood for Amityville. When people say, “Oh, the Daisy Age!” Me and Dave came up with that, D.A.I.S.Y. Age really stands for DA Ill Shit Y’all, not DA Inner Sound Y’all. I guess Paul made ‘em change that. Tommy Boy made them one of those groups that always had to have the funny haircuts; Mase start telling people, “Oh, I drink ketchup all day!” He’s never done that! That was some dumb gimmick shit. Me and Dumar weren’t putting on no costumes for nobody. Class A Felony was ahead of it’s time with the sample bank that I used. The only person I thought had real obscure samples like I was using was Mista Lawnge from Black Sheep. The beats on Black Sheep album were dope! I just think Dres an MC for back then? Yeah, he was alright, they had a hit record, but lyrically? He wasn’t no Dumar. None of them were on the level of Dumar.

A lot of samples that I used, I was the first to use. Uptown did have the “Save Your Soul” sample, we found that shit rummaging through records. He never used it, I used it for Dumar’s 12” but our record label and lawyer fucked us royally and couldn’t clear the sample, so we got Hamilton Bohannon’s number in Atlanta, Georgia, got about $10 worth of change and went to the phone booth and was talking to this man about using his record, and finally convinced him. There’s a line in “Warriors Come Out To Play” that says” “Some say they’re paid in full/but I’m not paid in full so I’m a raging bull.” That was for Rakim, cos that time that we needed some money he went to Rakim and I went to Mase, and neither of them would let us hold five fucking dollars. Dumar was righteous, Rakim was righteous, these guys would see each other at the parliament and build, but when it came down to some real shit nobody really tried to help us.

In ‘93, ‘94 my man S.I.D – Sid & B-Tonn, he’s Rakim’s brother-in-law or something – had heard some music I was doing and said, “You know Ra working on an album by himself, him and Eric B broke up. He needs beats.” I said, “Tell Papo to get at me.” Before he was Kid Splash or Kid Wizard or Rakim or Kid Wiz, I knew him as Papo, because we used to have classes together and hang-out and zone off a bunch of old Cold Crush 4 tapes. I’m coming from Queens so I’ve got every party, every Cold Crush, Fearless 4, Kool Moe Dee on cassettes, he was amazed. Long Island and Queens, even though they’re connected it’s just two different worlds back then. I wound up letting Rakim hear a bit of a music and I got a little money out of it. He never used the stuff. At one point, the dude Broadway at MCA – I guess he was head of A&R up there – had me in charge of the whole damn project. He knew I had an ear for music, and RapPages gave me a little write-up.

Who else from Long Island have you worked with?

Bumpy Knuckles‘ brother was locked-up – Tah, god bless the dead – he used to go upstate to visit his brother on family days, and he would bring some prostitutes and they always needed a DJ to spin music – that was me. Cats that his brother was cool with, they’d get them behind those thick-ass auditorium curtains and the prostitutes would give cats blowjobs and shit! I used to work out of the Firehouse Studios, at one point I didn’t even have no equipment, all the beats I would do were in my head. I would get to the studio and start laying shit down. I used to go to Charlie Marotta’s, he taught me a lot of stuff too, so I guess I ended up getting a degree in engineering, in tweaking sounds, just by going to the studio without having to go to school! [laughs] I’ve never been mad about the industry because I know how it does. I’ve always kept a job, I’ve always made my money in other avenues, so the music money is just extra to me. Once my son was born in 1990 I had to ground-up. I think I did good by putting my family first and not putting the music first.

Superbad Solace and Oprime39 first made some noise with their Brugal & Presidentes EP in 2012, and followed-up with their debut album Rock-It Science the following year. With a new EP and album due soon, it seemed like the perfect time to build with these two brothers from Flushing, Queens to talk about music, their iconic neighborhood and the importance of dressing fresh.

Robbie: Did you both grow-up in Flushing, Queens?

Solace: We moved out here in in 1988 because my father was a building superintendent and he landed a gig right here. We were living in Corona before that and that was a dream job back in the day, so he took the whole family out here.

Oprime: He was a super out in Lefrak at the time and an opportunity popped up in Flushing. We’ve been out here ever since.

Solace: The ill shit with a superintendent job is you also get the rent-free apartment.

How was it different than Corona at the time?

Back in the 90’s there was a lotta Dominicans in the area where we grew up so it felt like a little DR. Our grandparents were out there, all you would hear was Spanish music – Dominicans running the bodegas, the barber shops and local businesses. Towards the millennium it really changed, a lot of South and Central Americans started moving in and they just took over. A lot of Dominicans relocated to Florida, others got deported. Flushing is very mixed. The junior high school we went to was predominantly Black and Spanish and the main street is like Little China. You’ve got Korean and Japanese people, Indians, then you’ve got blocks that are just all Black people, blocks that are all Spanish people. It’s a real crazy melting pot in Flushing.

Oprime: We be seeing them halal trucks come out and they be carrying the skinned goats over their shoulders with flies buzzing around and all that craziness.

At what stage did you start rhyming?

Solace: Prime was always immersed in hip-hop in some way, shape or form, he wrote graff and he was around a lot of the Flushing legends. I was always just watching, as the younger brother. Around 2006 we were both rhyming here and there and we just decided, “Yo, let’s do this. It’s just us, we don’t need nobody else.” Then my brother went to college with Meyhem and they figured out the right studio situation, and that’s how we landed up at Hydra. That was homebase, that’s where we started recording.

Jerry Famolari’s spot?

Oprime: Jerry was never in the cut, but we would always hear about him. Max Vargas was holding it down and that took part in us really taking it to the next level and trying to put out quality work because that studio was so fuckin’ comfortable. Wild shit happened there, it was real gritty, it felt right. It had a huge lounge so we’d kick it there – drink, smoke and just hang out and do music. Working with Max, it felt like a job. Max was mad professional so it felt like we was on the clock.

Solace: Max is not an opinionated engineer, he won’t insert his thoughts on what you’re doing. The music is up to you, he’s there to record. His mixing and engineering is unparalleled, but he’s not gonna become the third member of the group. That was pre-Timeless Truth, we were just Oprime and Solace at that time. One of the last joints we did there was the joint with G Rap, but everything before that a lot of that stuff was demo shit.

Did you used to see Godfather Don and Screwball come through the studio?

Oprime: Nah, this was after all of that. The kind of characters that were coming out of that studio was Outdoorsmen – that’s when [Action] Bronson was up in there, Meyhem – I think Lake was recording outta there, J-Love was working heavy out there. I remember bumping into Large a few times out there.

Solace: The Screwball presence was definitely felt, they still had all the stickers, the posters. They flooded that spot.

What was the next step?

Oprime: Organic collaborations like Outdoorsmen / Timeless Truth started happening, we started fuckin’ with J-Love. That led to us fuckin’ with PF Cuttin’ when Hydra shut down and that led to us fuckin’ with Sean P and then meeting dudes like Masta Killa. One thing led to the next, man.

Solace: It wasn’t about just putting music out for the sport of it, we never fell into that trap – record a million freestyles and gives the blogs a freestyle just to have your name out. We were more focused on putting together a good song. Quality over quantity all day.

Oprime: We were schooled on how to do this music shit by the original dudes, where you would perfect a project, try to pitch that project, have somebody pick-up and pay you for that project. Nowadays we have to adapt to it in this tech era where you’re managing yourself and there isn’t a machine behind you.

How did you guys connect with Roc Marciano?

We met Roc being fans of the U.N. stuff and reaching out through MySpace. The internet is a beautiful thing! Two days later we were meeting up on Jamaica Ave. and building a little bit. He came through PF Cuttin’s studio and laid something and then from there he threw us a whole bunch of beats. We built a friendship from that point on. He wasn’t crazy tech-savvy in the beginning and we were a little more inclined, so we would help each other. He was also one of them dudes who was used to doing everything, so building with him really taught us about doing shit on your own and building your own empire.

Solace: He’d always tell us, “Treat your rap book like a check book. When you write a verse, make that a check out to yourself.” I thought that was one of the illest gems anybody’s ever dropped on us.

When did you start building with Large Professor?

Oprime: When we did the “Wavelength” video we were just cruising in the whip and I was like, “Yo Large, you remember when we started fucking with each other?” When the internet and MySpace first started popping, I was doing rooftops on the 7 line with an old bombing partner by the name of UNED. We was in Corona, and that day we were walking down Main street with a box just bumping “Ijustwannachill” and when we did the rooftop we hooked-up “Large Professor” on the rooftop. I took that opportunity to connect with him and send him pictures of the shit we did on that rooftop and told him we do music. He said, “I still cruise by Flushing, I’ll hit you up next time I’m around.” He showed up to Max’s studio on a snowy day with a fuckin’ mask on, he laid the beat down and said “Get busy” and just bounced!

Solace: He never took the mask off.

Oprime: He had a ski mask on the whole time! You can’t even see what his facial expressions are, you just seen the guy’s eyes. That wasn’t even the “Wavelength” joint, that was even further when he started throwing us a few more bones.

What did he used to write?

He used to write GAZE, and I think he also used to also write GHETTO. I was connected with Flushing writers who were older than me and they knew all about him since the Bowne days. He had another cat that he used to bomb with by the name of See3, and it was like archaeology because in our garage I used to see See3 throw-ups, and Large told us, “Back in the days I used to breakdance in your building.” It was like carrying on tradition.

Who else from Flushing did you used to mess with?

I used to be partners with this cat UEND, he was ten years older than me. He was running around crazy in the 80’s and 90’s. There was Stae2, LC, Sire from Latimer, Diego127, a DJ dude named DJ Reverse, who I linked up with early and this dude Shen, he was one of the first dudes to give us beats. He was like an encyclopedia when it came to old funk and jazz records. We had a crew back in the day called CND, we started killing the 7 with productions – I used to write PSYCK. For a while that was what I was really into, then from ‘05 the music just started taking full force.

Can you speak on the importance of Polo outfit architecture?

That’s another piece of New York city – the mentality, the lifestyle – always trying to be fly. That aspirational mentality to get what you’re not really supposed to have. Take it and make it yours. It’s a meticulous thing, making sure that everything is right, down to the laces, the kicks, everything is matching. It’s piecing a puzzle together, making it all form a picture. But it’s just the uniform, it ain’t the job.

What are your thoughts on Kool G Rap’s legacy?

Solace: G Rap is a master wordsmith. Who hasn’t he influenced?

Oprime: The 4,5,6 album specifically had the biggest impact on us in terms of the technicality, the beats, the storytelling, the flows. That album did a lot for us in terms of finding our lane and finding where we wanted to take it.

What makes Queens MC’s stand out?

Solace: Queens niggas are just so fresh. Brooklyn arrogance and Queens is very different. A Queens cat will play the cut, but when it’s time to do what it does, a Queens cat will get busy. Queens is it’s own world.

Oprime: It’s less about the flashiness and it’s really just about the skill. We don’t need to showboat and hype everything up. We know what we got and when it’s time we just do what we do. That’s an ill characteristic that you see throughout the Queens’ legends – Mobb, Nas and Tragedy – those dudes understand what they got, they know their skill, everyone has their own character.

Solace: It’s just nonchalant. “This is how we are and I know it’s better than you.”

Anything else you want to let the people know about?

You’ve got an ill site, man. You really are responsible for a lotta ill shit as far as this documentation shit, it’s needed. A lotta people try to do it but they don’t do it the right way. You’re coming from another place in the world and nobody would even fuckin’ know it! That’s dope, man.

Oprime: We definitely been rocking with Unkut for a hot minute.

Cheers. What’s next for you guys?

The next project is an EP called Dominican Diner, which is gonna smack a lotta people upside the head. Shortly thereafter we’ve got Codewave, and “Wavelength” appears on that joint. We’ve got Arch Druids production on there, Skizz blessed us with some heat, Large Pro, RTNC, we got a joint with Ill Bill, Roc Marcy production on there as well.

Philidelphia’s own Lushlife caught my ear in 2012 with his Plateau Vision album, which saw him realize the potential heard on Cassette City and match the quality of his production with his rhymes. Currently working on a new album with producers CSLSX, I caught-up with Lushlife over the phone while he was midway through attempting to enjoy pizza and beer at a local bar to find out what inspired him to channel “Broken Language,” his appreciation for The LOX and why drinks cost so much in London.

Robbie: Did you start out as a producer or a rapper?

Lushlife: It didn’t even occur to me that I would rap. I had been making beats and doing production for many years, and I didn’t even want to go into the world of trying to find people to rhyme over my instrumentals. The moment that I got a mic at 20 – after a lifetime of listening and memorising rap songs – something just came out. As a hip-hop fan, I was like, “This is worthwhile shit!” So I just ran with that. The MC side of it came way second.

How old were you when you made your first beat?

The way I first injected myself into hip-hop was through deejaying. I got my first set of turntables at eleven years old. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood – Pete Rock wasn’t my cousin’s uncle or anything – I was kinda in this bubble. When I got my first decks I didn’t know about blending or cutting or anything, I had no real understanding of any of it. I feel like I went through the entire history – from the baby scratch to really well thought-out scratching and mixing – on my own fucking druthers. I progressed in the same way that deejaying progressed from 1979 to 1989 in my life, cos I had nobody to teach me, I just figured it all out. I literally discovered beat-matching on my own, it was like, “Oh shit! You can take two records and make them run at the same tempo!” As a producer now, the era that goes along with having gone through all of that is so deeply ingrained in me.

It seems that people who start out as DJ’s are generally better producers, as a rule.

Exactly. From ten to fourteen years of age I was doing the DJ thing and I had been playing piano as a child. When I was ten I started playing drums in the jazz band in my school, so I was naturally progressing towards creating. In the early 90’s, and the SP-12 was $1,500 so it was unattainable to someone like me, so I would listen to the rap records I loved and imagine how they were made. Not really knowing it, but I imagined so long and so hard that when it became possible for me I understood how to construct that shit. I was eighteen years old when Fruity Loops became available very easily to be pirated online in the same way that 9th Wonder and so many other cats started at that time. That to me was a revelation, “Oh my god! This was a tool that allows me to create the soundscapes that I want to create.” My early stuff was very much on the tip of DJ Shadow, it didn’t have my own thumbprint on it. It was a real lesson to take the sonics of guys like Pete or Premier and try to make something very much like that. Once you have all that in your bag of tricks then you can start to think about how you can push things forward.

Was West Sounds the first project you released?

That was the very first thing I put out to the public. At the same time I was falling in love with A Tribe Called Quest and learning how to play jazz drums I was realizing the synergy, and ended up at university studying Jazz Composition for two years. I eventually dropped out because at that point I was making beats and started buying things too. I was depressed, I was living in New York and unhappy and nineteen, I had broken up with some girlfriend and decided to move to London. When I landed in London there was a small label called Scenario Records that was interested in putting out some of my stuff. They were like, “Can you put something together to get your rep up a little bit?” This was literally the week that Dangermouse dropped The Grey Album. I was a huge Beach Boys fan, and I knew that they had a box set that included all the instrumentals and accapellas, and Kanye West was popping off then too, so it was just a young me trying to ride the wave. This was the early days of MySpace, there was really no sense of virality. We put that out there, no P.R. or nothing, and there were a million downloads in less than a month. The West Sounds thing was an amazing experience for me and I have misgivings about it in terms of it’s sense of originality, conceptually, but I learned a lot from it.

What was the first official release you did through Scenario?

It’s called Order of Operations. It only had a release in UK and Japan. I consider it Lushlife demos, even though it had a full CD/LP release. The first track on there is literally the first song that I ever tried to rap on, so it’s really a time capsule to me. I think that’s unique amongst MC’s, to have the very first time that they blessed the mic to be committed to wax. That record is very jazz-influenced, it’s more informed by my influences than it is about my desire to bring some new concepts to hip-hop. There was a Japanese label called MicLife who were totally hyped to license it and it did surprisingly well in Japan so I went out there and I toured for a little while. When I returned to the UK I was really disenchanted, I remember I order a drink from the bar at it was like 11 pounds. I remember thinking to myself, “Fuck, this is like $19! I need to go home, I’m fuckin’ broke!”

So I came back here to Philly and was able to set up a deal with K-7 for the next record. I’m in my mid-20’s and this is magnum opus type shit – get a good budget and make the record you really want to make. At this point my aesthetics are changing – Cassette City is about creating this seamless world og hip-hop with orchestral pop stuff and indy experimentation and throwing into the pot in a way that I felt I’m uniquely capable of doing to make it all feel like classic boom-bap, where you don’t know where the samples end and the live instrumentation begins and it all feels like one thing. I spent a little over two years on it, and I’m so extremely proud of that release. It was totally a labor of love.

How did you get Camp Lo and Elzhi involved?

It was my teenage self from the past going, “Oh my god, imagine if I could get Camp Lo in a record!” [laughs] It was reaching out on some MySpace shit. I spent months putting that beat together in their image and was able to make that happen and I was stoked that I was. As an MC I feel like Camp Lo were able to project that idea that it’s not quite about telling some kind of A to B story, it’s about saying some nebula shit that just sounds cool coming off of their tongues. I feel like they had a lot of influence on the way I rap that’s a little more dadaist – it’s just floating there and you have to pull all these strings to find a meaning – but in the end it just has to sound cool as shit.

What was the reaction like to the album?

It got me a core fanbase in a really organic way, and that core fanbase still carries me in ways that are just mind blowing to me. It was also a critical success, it just wasn’t a financial success! I had a $25,000 advance on that record and I spent every dollar of it paying my rent, drinking, drugging and paying for featured artists on my record. It’s still not in the red, but as a work of art I’m pretty proud of it.

I feel like you really hit your stride vocally on the Plateau Vision LP on tracks like “Big Sur” and “The Anthem.”

I think you’re very right. With Plateau Vision from a lyrical standpoint, I felt very comfortable with myself as an MC to the point where I didn’t feel gun shy about pushing the envelope a little bit as far as what I’m rapping about as far as the references and still knowing that it will be internalized by the audience as real fucking rap music.

I appreciated the “Broken Language” adaption you had on there.

I was dying for years to do a “Broken Language” hook! That record is fucking incredible, it’s 20th century art. There’s nothing like Smooth The Hustler and Trigga The Gambler on that shit. I wanted to on one hand pay homage to it but at the same time push the concept out a little bit so it’s Lushlife talking about these touchstones of classic beat poetry in 1950’s California and folk art against the structure of the Brooklyn-structured Smooth The Hustler joint.

What made you reach out to Styles P for a feature?

A lot of indy motherfuckers tend to put “mainstream” motherfuckers in a box, where it’s just as minimizing as the shit that happens the other way around. The LOX are talking about keys of coke and shit but it’s always been a little bit envelope pushing and out there. I always wanted to get someone of that sort of ilk onto the record I was doing – “Still I Hear The Word Progress” – which has a Crystal Castles kinda feel to it, and see how he evolves on it.

What’s the motivation behind song titles like “She’s a Buddhist, I’m A Cubist”?

I was describing my failing relationship with a girl that I was dating at the time I was writing that song and I was describing it as such to a friend of mine, and I was like, “Oh shit, that’s really got gravity as a song title.” It’s not coming out of some desire to be like indy, long-winded song titles or anything. [laughs] It’s grabbing things out of the air of my life, that’s honestly who I am.

The liner notes mention that you recorded the album to ¼ inch tape for the final mixdown. Why did you decide to take that approach?

I wanted to emote the cassette tape qualities of all the classic rap that I listened to growing up made you feel. Not because of the recordings themselves but because you’d listen to it on your box over and over again and it would start to warble and shit, and that becomes the sound of hip-hop. Trying to project that feeling, not only did it all go to ¼ inch tape but it went through deep outboard compression, and that album has a consistent sound that I hope makes people feel like they’re twelve years old listening to Dred Scott for the first time or Artifacts for the first time.

Dred Scott! [laughs] Haven’t heard that name for a while! Why did you decide to leave both New York and London behind?

New York and London are always cities I dreamed of living in, and New York always felt to me like a big, wild city – and it is! The year and a few months that I lived there, I realized that it was just too much for me. It was sensory overload. Then I moved to London for three and a half years and it was even more sprawling and more international. In the end, Philly is provincial meets small town vibe, where it’s urbane but it’s got a lot of the trappings of the city but you can squirrel away to your quiet neighborhood block. That’s something that I cherish. And frankly, as an artist? I’m 31 years old and I can live more than comfortably. All my friends that are in bands and rappers and producers in the city – they would be living in a shoe box in New York or in London – and all of us have houses and studios. It’s livable in the long term, I value the comfort.

If you could make your own version of “The Symphony” with any rappers, living or dead, who would you pick to join you?

Oh word, I think about this all the time! [laughs] The answer is concrete in my mind – Black Thought, Nas and Jay Electronica.

The longest serving member of the Mobb Deep crew not named Havoc or Prodigy is Big Noyd, who was along for the ride through all of the highs and lows that the music industry had to throw at them, as well as surviving his fair share of challenging experiences as a soloist. Currently living in North Carolina, Rapper Noyd is currently working on his fourth official solo album with his old QB buddy Ron Artest aka Metta World Peace, and he took some time out to speak in detail about his long career in the rap game.

Robbie: How did it all start for you?

Big Noyd: We all were friends first, before rap. I used to be up in Queensbridge, then I moved to Brooklyn to stay with my aunts for a couple of years. Before I left, we used to listen to rap but we wasn’t really doing it. When I came back to visit on the weekend, Scarface Twin [Gambino] was like, “Yo, Havoc and Prodigy are in the studio. They signed with 4th & Broadway and they working on a rap album.” I was like, “Get the fuck outta here! Wow…cool.” I went there just to hang out in the studio and they were working on “Stomp ‘Em Out” and I was rhyming in there, I liked the beat. I was just doing what I liked to do, my own little rhyme, and then they heard it and they were like, “Yo, repeat that rhyme again! That’s perfect for this song we working on.” I was like, “Well if anything I’ll write a new verse.” Cos this verse was on something I was working on just for myself at the time – no record companies or anything like that – I had to be about fourteen years old. They were like, “Can you write another one? It won’t take that much time?” I write faster now, but back then it took me about an hour. I laid down the sixteen bars and it was perfect – history begin.

So you had been in Brooklyn during the Poetical Prophets / Unsigned Hype era?

Correct. At that same time, Nas was working on “Back To The Grill Again” with MC Serch. I knew them guys since I was kids, like five, six years old. Those couple of years I lived in Brooklyn is when they started getting serious about the music. We used to listen to MC Shan, check MC Shan clothes out, see what chain he was wearing; we’d listen to Red Alert on the weekend, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl.

But you’d started writing rhymes yourself as well?

Yeah, just to give it to people at the school and music class. After we did our music session for school you’d have a little fifteen minutes left to showcase your talent, whether you was a guitar player, piano player, write lyrics, whatever. I used to just say my rhymes to kids I used to hang out with and things like that.

How did you get the name Noyd?

That came from another mutual friend from Queensbridge. You know how they roast celebrities? In the hood, we call it ranking. One of the guys was trying to roast me and he called me the Noyd from Dominos pizza and everyone started laughing. The name just stuck, and when guys used to see me – “Ay, Noyd!” – just making fun of me, and then it actually stuck and became my nickname before rap.

What happened after the Juvenile Hell album?

I would came back to Queensbridge a little bit more often, cos I was fifteen going on sixteen and able to travel alone without supervision. I would call from Brooklyn to ask what day they were going to the studio and i would just show up. Every time they worked on a project, even if I wasn’t on the song, I’d always just write. If I was in the studio with them I’d just write, write, write. This went on for years, and when they started working on The Infamous album I was always ready and prepared. I would write to the same beat they were writing [to] or the same concept they were on and it came to a point where they’d say, “Oh, what you got over there?” And I’d say a rhyme and some of the stuff fit, some of it didn’t. The songs that I’m on, it just fit. I’m writing to the songs not knowing if I’m going to be on the song or not, it was just for me. Every Mobb Deep album except Blood Money, I was on.

Were you considering becoming a full-time rapper at that stage?

I still wasn’t looking to be an MC or a rapper, I was just following Havoc and P’s lead, being more supportive to them. We didn’t have a lot of money at the time, so when we had studio sessions everybody would chip-in to buy the 40 ounces, buy the weed, buy the cigars and make a session out of it. Even when I did the “Give Up The Goods” single, the record label wanted to make sure I was in the video and I didn’t even take it serious. If you really look detailed, there’s somebody else playing my role! I was there for the beginning but it was so boring for me, I really wasn’t interested. It was taking so long, I wasn’t used to it, I wound up leaving. I did my part and the director was like, “We need you to stay around for the end.” I didn’t really know about video making and that it would take so many hours, so I showed my support and did what I had to do for the video and I left. They were so angry at me, I’ll never forget. They had to put in a Noyd stunt double! The record company had this idea, “We want Noyd to come down the steps with the girls” and I was already gone. The director was like, “What?!” [laughs] They got a guy that was slim like me at the time, same type of skin complexion and he put on the same clothes that I had for the video shoot and filled in the rest! It’s so crazy, I look back now and I would never leave a video shoot. Not only am I an artist but I’m a fan first of rap and I understand the business, I would never waste somebody’s time or waste money like that again, but back then I didn’t want to be an MC.

So everyone who would hang at the studio just started to write stuff over time?

Right. Instead of just sitting around nothing, everybody would just pick up a pen and pad and do it because they like it. It happened for Twin Gambino, for Ty Nitty, for Godfather – it would fit. This rhyme was just OK from Nitty so he wouldn’t be on the song but the rhyme that Godfather wrote would be amazing so they’d leave that on the album. Before you know it we’ve got 40, 50 songs and Mobb Deep would just pick the best twelve or fifteen songs and use it for an album.

With the popularity of the second Mobb album, is that make you take rapping more seriously?

It kind of forced me, because now it being Mobb Deep’s second single and they doing all these shows, people kind of expected me to be there, that was a big song for them. So then I had to perform that song, and when I did I never knew it would get such a reaction – people would be reciting my verse while I was on stage. Just my luck, there was a big show for college in Virginia and an A&R from Tommy Boy was in the crowd. It was Mobb Deep and Onyx and Faith and Total. When I did that verse, I came out and the crowd went nuts! I’d been performing the song for a while, but this was the biggest response that I’d got and it made me hype, so I go crazy cos the crowd is going crazy and take off my bandanna – people know we’ve been wearing bandannas before Tupac – and I threw it in the crowd and you see all these girls jumping for it like it’s a bouquet of flowers at a wedding!

At the end of the show this lady comes up to me and introduces herself, “I’m from Tommy Boy Records and we would love to set a meeting for you Monday morning.” My friend just jumped in, he’s a little older than us and used to travel with us, “I’m his manager, just give me your name and your number and we’ll be there!” I’m like, “Whatever.” I’m just looking for the girls that grabbed the bandanna, “Where they at?” [laughs] My friend actually stayed on top of it and that Monday morning he came to my house and said, “Let’s go!” I’m like, “Nah, I’m not going to that, man. What are we going to say when we get there?” “I don’t know, let’s go find out!” We went there and they offered me a deal. We took the deal back to Havoc and Prodigy and they said, “We’re just learning ourselves, but this is definitely an official record contract.” I wasn’t even looking for it, but before you know it I had a deal with Tommy Boy, just from one verse. So I made my friend my manager, he was loyal and took the initiative.

Did you ever find the girls who had grabbed your bandanna at that show?

Hell yeah! They were waiting right outside. When I didn’t even have to talk anymore and I could just throw bandannas and we would find the lucky girl and meet her in the dressing room? That’s when I knew rap was for me. [laughs]

How was the process of recording your own stuff?

Nothing changed, it was still the same vibe. The best thing that I had was Havoc and Prodigy, because I didn’t have to worry about going and making a Noyd album alone. Instead of Loud paying for the studio budget, it was Tommy Boy paying for the budget. We would go the studio and make three songs a day, so it didn’t have to look like, “OK, this song’s for Mobb Deep, this song’s for Big Noyd.” We would just go and record music,and the best of the best we would we keep. We might change where I go first and Prodigy go last, or Prodigy be on the hook and Havoc go last, where we can form it to be a Noyd song or Mobb Deep song but it was still underneath one roof.

So what happened during the recording of Episodes of a Hustla?

It was short lived because me still keeping one foot in the hood and not having the state of mind of “here’s an opportunity to change my life,” I still wasn’t taking it seriously. I was getting paid for it now, but I was still just being Noyd – the projects, having fun as a young kid and doing things that adults do that I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I had gotten into some drama, just a little bit of beef – we had argued and then we’d fought and then it came to where I had shot somebody and I went to jail in the middle of Episodes of a Hustla. That’s why it’s only an EP instead of an LP. I had some songs that were completed, I had some songs that were just a verse or two verses on it and no hook. I was in the middle of making it and I got arrested for attempted murder, and then I had to take all the money I had just signed for Tommy Boy to use as a lawyer to fight my court case. Thanks god I beat the case, but when I came home the deal was already finished and Tommy Boy didn’t want to lose anymore money than they still had. They just took all the things they could and with the help of Havoc they put it together with an A&R. They puzzled it together from the material I had left them.

Were you happy with how it came together without your final input?

I was really happy because it still was all me. They would actually go through Havoc so he would be there to oversee it, and Stretch Armstrong helped out when Havoc wasn’t there.

But not being able to promote the project must have hurt it?

Back then you used to do a lot of college tours to promote a new project, that was a big step. They felt like if college say it’s good then it’s good, so I wasn’t able to do a college tour, but my songs were still getting played on Hot 97. I was in prison listening on my headphones and they go, “We’ve got a new exclusive – Big Noyd!” They used to have “Battle of the Beats” on Angie Martinez, and my song was against Fat Joe’s song. I lost, but it still felt great to have my music out in the world while I was locked up. I only stayed in prison for seven months, and when I came home my contract was over but I was grateful for what they’d done by keeping me relevant while I was locked-up. It was time to move on and I just continued to work on Mobb Deep projects. The next round was Hell On Earth, I was on a song with Nas so even though it wasn’t a single it was still big for me, because Nas was big and Mobb Deep was big, so it made me look big. We was travelling a lot, doing shows, making good money, it was still good.

Then Alchemist came aboard. Infamous Mobb got a record deal and he helped produce that album, so me and Alchemist got tight and he introduced me to Bob Perry from Landspeed Records and he offered me a deal for a solo album. That’s when we stepped it up as a business, we knew how to conduct ourselves and save money and not let the record company just charge you for anything. After all this time, that’s when I said I want to make a Noyd solo album, this is my bread and butter. So me and Alchemist became partners and produced the Only The Strong album and it was good. We saved a lot of money and made a lot of money. But Noyd being Noyd – the project’s going well, we’re just about to shoot the first video for “Shoot ‘Em Up (Bang Bang)” and what Noyd go do? I found out that they were pressing up t-shirts with the date on the album, and I never gave them a date. We were close to completion but I wanted to compare it with Mobb Deep’s next project so we could tour together, and these guys moved ahead without my say so and made t-shirts with the title of my album and a date. Instead of going in there as a businessman and working things out, I go punch the guy in the face. Once I did that, he didn’t want to do a video, he wouldn’t pay for the studio sessions anymore.

He held a grudge?

Right. He had a grudge that I punched him in the face, which is only right because businessmen don’t do that, but coming from the hood – you disrespect somebody, that’s what happens! You get punched in the face! They’d already paid me so I had to give them the music, but all the extra perks that come with it – video budgets, tour budgets – he held a grudge and he didn’t want to move forward, so I just put it in the stores and whatever it did, it did. People respected the quality of the music but as far as record sales? It didn’t do too good. For an independent artist it was still good, I made good money, but there was no push for the mainstream. I could have gone gold on an independent scale – I’d be a millionaire by now – but he held back and I fucked that up. I blame myself, I could have handled that a lot better.

So you consider that your first proper album?

Right. And that was my decision to make a Noyd album – before it just kinda happened. This time I was like, “Let’s do this!” What kind of sound I’m looking for, what kind of producers I’m looking for, what kind of features I want to have on it, what kind of ideas I’m trying to push.

How did the Murda Muzik movie come about?

The Murda Muzik album was the first time ever that Mobb Deep went platinum after a few of months, and that was it – everything was a go. We had ideas out the wahzoo! “Let’s open our own studio, let’s make a movie…” Prodigy was like, “When I thought about the idea for this movie, it came to me just from the way you act in real life. You’re official to the key.” The movie was pretty good, we got good reviews from the hood, I got a lotta love for that, but at that point I still didn’t have a record deal because I’d punched someone in the face. People didn’t want to do business with me no more, but I was still relevant from being on the Mobb Deep album and being in the movie. Then me and Bob Perry patched up, but his record company was going through problems because they were selling that 50 Cent album [Guess Who’s Back] – which was legal – but then Jimmy Iovine and them had a meeting with them and said, “Stop selling the 50 Cent album and we’ll give you X amount of dollars, cos now 50 Cent is gonna be signed to Eminem.” This guy is such a crooked dude he goes and accepts the deal from Jimmy Iovine but then he stills sells the 50 Cent album! So they wound up suing them and shut down Landspeed.

So me and the guy make our amends, and he says, “I just got offered a job up at KOCH. I’m gonna bring you in as one of my artists, I’m gonna get Cormega and we’re gonna do a compilation album and then a solo Noyd album and a solo Cormega album, so he can start his label off at KOCH again to make up for the stuff that he lost at Landspeed.” That was going good until KOCH had an identity crisis – they didn’t know if they really wanted to be involved with rap – they used to do a lot of Pokemon stuff, wrestling stuff. They wanted the business of rap, but they didn’t want to deal with it, so it was gonna be a headache. They wasn’t ready for it. They had the money and the means and the connections to do it, but they were just playing with it. They didn’t really take it seriously and that kinda hurt it.

This was the Illustrious album? What about the other CD’s in between that and Only The Strong?

After a while I said, “OK, enough’s enough. I can’t rely on Havoc and Prodigy that much, they’ve got their own business to deal – we’re grown men now. I’m doing all this work for these record companies and then somehow I keep getting the short end of the stick!” So I got up with some guys that I grew-up with and we started Monopolee Records. So I wound-up putting out Stick-Up Kid and a couple of mixtapes. A lot of stuff that I put out was mixtapes but people consider it as albums because it was coming out on our own label. It was a big difference. Sometimes you’ll do 40 songs, you’ll keep the best twelve for an album. The rest? You don’t want to throw ‘em away, so you put out a mixtape, start building some hype. Only the DJ’s really did mixtapes – you would all original songs but then you would have a DJ hosting it. I didn’t have time to do all that, I would just put out music to get some firecrackers popping off before the big bomb drops.

So which of your CD’s do you consider official Big Noyd albums?

Only The Strong, On The Grind and Illustrious is the only three solo albums I’ve had. Everything else is street albums or mixtapes or whatever you call it.

Why weren’t you on Blood Money?

Mobb Deep had fired Chris Lighty – god bless the dead – he was their manager and they fired him. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but they had brought in a new guy who had just come home from jail. I guess when you sit in prison for that many years all you can do is think, so I respect that he came home and had aspirations, but I knew he wasn’t ready for a Mobb Deep. Mobb Deep was a household name. He convinced them to fire Chris Lighty, who was a great manager, and I didn’t agree with that so I told Havoc and Prodigy, “No love lost, but I’m gonna step away from this one, because I just don’t trust the guy.” This is the album before Blood Money when they got signed to Jive. That didn’t work out, but lucky enough they got signed to 50 Cent. I was on the Jive album, but not the way I would usually be where I’m on ten fucking songs and they just pick the best. I just went in for one particular song, did a verse and that was it.

So I wasn’t around them for the transition to the 50 Cent deal, and I’m not fake like that, I wasn’t going to just jump back in. I knew I had to earn my way back in, even though it was never no love lost, just out of respect as grown men and as MC’s I had to show and prove again. A lot of people thought signing to G-Unit was a bad idea – I thought it was a great idea! This is an artist who knows our music and our struggle, so he’s not gonna ask you to put out fake music just because. It was a great deal, I don’t think the sales reflected it because the fans didn’t like Mobb Deep being under 50 Cent. They felt like Mobb Deep paid they dues too much to have 50 Cent as they boss. They just couldn’t accept that.

You’ve always stuck by the crew through thick and thin it seems.

That’s for sure. Even before rap, as kids we used to get in a lot of beef. Queensbridge is a big place, man. It’s one project, but it’s like a borough! As kids we were always going around fighting other guys, battling other guys in rap and chasing girls. Surviving, doing little kid hustles like going up the grocery store and packing bags. Even if me Havoc and Prodigy were not working together musically? I’d still be at his house at Thanksgiving or New Years. His moms, I call her aunty, not just miss such-and-such, cos my mom and his mom know each other. It goes way beyond music for me.

If you could make a new “Symphony,” who would join you?

It would be me, Biggie, Prodigy and I gotta go with Kool G Rap.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Shout out to my whole hood, and shout out to New York, man. I love Nas, but I tell him to his face – Biggie is my favorite artist, hand’s down. This is comparing to the people I grew-up listening to – Kool G Rap, Rakim – no disrespect to them guys, I love ‘em to death, but Biggie has something I wish my fucking rhymes woulda came out like. That metaphor shit that I always look for when I write rhymes. That storytelling way of doing it? Biggie is the best.

Big thanks to DJ Skizz for making this interview happen.

After enduring a number of false starts in the music game, QB MC Foul Monday is preparing his debut album title I Hate Fucking Mondays with a number of local and European producers. Having worked with Killa Sha and Ron Artest in the past, Foul has witnessed a lot of Queensbridge rap history, and he took a minute out to explain the finer points of that thun language with me.

Robbie: What inspired you to take rapping seriously?

Foul Monday: It was actually two different forces – one that made me start rhyming, and one that wanted me to start making music. I met Starvin B in the eighth grade – he’s Irish and Indonesian, so you can imagine what that package looks like rapping! At the time he was one of the best rappers in our school, so I was kinda inspired to be that. I’m thinking, “If this kid can do it, I can do it.” As fate would have it, he was transferred over to my class and we became good friends and he helped me find an identity with this rapping stuff. When you start out, you emulate, you steal, but he helped me find my own voice. As far as wanting to make music? That came from Killa Sha and the Killa Kidz. Those were my friends from the neighborhood, at that point they were already doing music and pressing up vinyls. Making music wasn’t realistic goal until I saw them doing it, so I just strived to get better and better until folks started acknowledging me for my talent.

Plus Sha had been deejaying for Mobb Deep in the early days, right?

Yeah, Sha was way, way into the music business before anybody. After his run as Mobb Deep’s DJ came to an end he pulled in all his friends that actually could rap and they became a group. They were making some noise for a bit, and then Baby Sham – who was in the group – got signed to Busta Rhymes’ Flipmode Squad, so they put even more light on us but it kinda changed the dynamic of the group so they were looking to fill that spot. That’s where Ruc Da Jackel – Mr. QB – comes in. Then another member left, Sham’s brother. He’d basically followed Sham to try to help him grow his career a little more, so that’s when I came in. I guess that was around 2000. The Killa Kidz manager, True Force, he was impressed by what I could do and he gave me beats to rhyme on and stuff, kinda like an audition. I passed the test and I was in the group for a while, then all that stuff dissipated with the Ron Artest deals and Sha getting deals with other places. Around 2001, 2002 we all went our separate ways.

What about the Mud Brothers?

Me and Sha came together and created the group Mud Brothers. We went together really well, but as a group it didn’t spark too much interest. Sha was able to solidify some solo things and Mud Brothers grew in size, we added Starvin B. Sha got too busy to do a group thing so the Mud Brothers became just me and Starvin B. We put out two small mixtapes, we did OK, moved a couple of units. In the midst of that is when I got the Ron Artest solo deal and I went to do that for five or six years.

Who else did he sign at the time?

Going back to when we all went our separate ways, Chalice and Ruc Da Jackel had went with Ron Artest, he offered them a deal. He always wanted to deal with me but I guess he had people in his ear like, “He’s messing with Sha over here.” So it took him a while to come around, but he got to me. I put out a mixtape, Foul Monday Country, hosted by Kay Slay. That was my only release on the label. I worked on a couple of albums but nothing ever came to fruition. The guy wasn’t really knowledgeable of the music industry and how to do certain things, it just didn’t work out the way it was planned. It’s no love lost though, he tried.

When did you step away from that?

Around 2008, 2009 I stepped away from Tru Warier. I took a little break for a while, you feel a little disillusioned when things are not really going your way and I had three situations that really didn’t go my way, so it was kind of a bummer for me. My man Easily Crippled, he’s another artist out here in Queens, he inspired me to get back in the studio like, “You shouldn’t waste your talent just sitting around.” A lot of people believed in me, so it’s like, “I’ve gotta go for it.” Once you actually get back in the studio it feels good, it’s like riding a bike. It’s something I’m supposed to be doing, whether I make it or not. Around two years ago I really got the bug to start doing music again. Starvin B was making a lot of good music and after hearing his incredible album Something In The Water, I was thinking, “I can do something this good.” Like the eighth grade, he just inspired me again.

Have you ever recorded with Chinky?

We’ve actually got a song together but it’s really, really rough. It’s a good song, but the session was lost and I’ve just got this real shitty mp3 of it, it’s not mixed or anything. That’s just one of the unfortunate things that happened at Tru Warrior – losing songs and having to do them all over again. That was just one session that happened to get lost. A lot of people are like, “You guys are related, why don’t you have a shitload of music together?”

You and Chinky are related?

That’s my first cousin.

The mid 90’s must have been an exciting time in Queensbridge for music.

I remember just walking around Queens with a radio, just getting into shit, vandalizing – all that shit! It was almost a carefree time. I don’t know if the times are different or if I’m older, but it just doesn’t have the same feeling anymore.

When did you start recording stuff with Starvin B?

We had this kid, his name was DJ Sonic Boom. He used to let us come down and rap over instrumentals and he would tape it and put scratches and samples behind it. That was our first introduction into making music, but all that shit was just shit. It was all practice. We didn’t start going into the studio until some time in the 2000’s. In the eighth grade we thought we had to get a deal to get in the studio!

This was before everyone was recording onto laptops?

Dudes coming up would have no idea what it’s like to have to do the whole god damn song in one take, or you’re doing a verse and the guy just completely fucks up and you’ve gotta start up all over again. All that shit has basically been eliminated with computers. All the strife and the hard work and shit. Before that you had guys cutting and pasting tapes out of takes, making hot songs. The struggle is gone, and I believe that’s the key thing that’s missing from hip-hop right now. Nobody’s struggling – and if they are struggling, they’re trying to forget about it, they don’t want to make music about that. You’ve gotta have struggle, cos this shit all came from struggle. I’m not against coming out sounding all happy, but there’s gotta be a balance. There’s gotta be some reality to that shit.

How did you get the name Foul Monday?

Killa Sha gave that to me. The first song I had with Killa Kids, I didn’t have a name so they were saying, “What are we going to put that identifies you?” In a joking manner, he said, “We’re going to put Foul Monday.” Everybody laughed, but then it kinda hit everybody, “That’s kind of a dope name!” It just fuckin’ stuck from there.

What’s your favorite memory of Killa Sha?

We out in Vegas with Marley, and he’s got these two assistants. Two pretty cool guys, and all they kept talking about is, “Prostitution is legal in fucking Vegas!” They actually have brochures for hookers, so they picked this shit up and it has the girls on there and it says $69, $80, shit like that, so they’re thinking that those are the prices for the girls. So these fuckin’ idiots go and call up some girls. They get to the room and she’s like, “What do you guys wanna do?” The guy goes, “You know what we wanna do. What do we get for $70?” “$70? No sweetie, that’s some type of membership fee.” These girls basically wanted $400, so everybody’s freaking out, nobody’s got $400, but there’s another problem – there’s a $125 cancellation fee. Me and Sha look at each other and it’s like, “You know what? We don’t have nothing to do with this!” As we leave the room the elevator doors open and the biggest fuckin’ bald-headed, biker-lookin’ white dude stepped off that elevator and went straight into that fuckin’ room – I guess that was the protection or something – and we almost shit ourselves! We waited for the violence to start, we knew those dudes didn’t have no money. They would’ve had to give those girls at least $250 just to get them out the fuckin’ room, and that Stone Cold Steve Austin guy is clearly there to beat somebody’s ass. I don’t know what they said, but they didn’t get their asses beat. Maybe he just looked at ‘em and saw that they were just tourists. We were telling them from the jump, “Why do you wanna fuck with prostitutes? There are enough drunk women downstairs, betting and drinking!”

You were telling me about how each of the blocks in QB has it’s own personality last time. Can you break that down?

Every block is like it’s own little world out here. Like I’m a Vernon nigga, that’s straight-up QB slang. Anybody from 12th Street is a 12th street nigga wherever you from, that’s how we identify you. Once we hear that, we know how to deal with you, because you might be the stereotypical Vernon dude, or the stereotypical 12th street dude. 41st and 12th street dudes are pretty much your typical scumbags. That’s where all Mobb Deep’s music originates from. I don’t feel comfortable around any of these dudes, cos they’re fuckin’ grimy, and it’s crazy because some of my best friends are from that block. Then you’ve got the 40th side of 12th street, those guys are kinda the same but they’re more low-key. They’re real sneaky scumbags, they keep it more subdued. Those dudes aren’t loud and boisterous idiot hoodlums, they’re real quiet, but they’ll hurt you just as bad as the other five blocks – but they’re not going to announce it to the world first. That would be a 41st side of 12th street dude, “I’mma shot this dude in the head!” Then he goes and shoots him and wonders why he went to jail. Your 41st and 10th street guys, that’s where a lot of athletes came from – Ron Artest – a lotta ball players. My block and the 40th side of Vernon is all the rappers and the comedians and the actors. For some reason that side of the projects is where that particular type of talent came from. Once you go more towards 21st street and further away from the river is where you start getting into the idiots for a lack of a better description. If there was a party of 12th street, we would go but we would be on edge the whole time. There would be a couple of guys there that had some animosity towards us because we lived a block away! Which is something I never got, but I dealt with it cos I gotta live out here. It was always a fuckin’ 12th street idiot fuckin’ up the party. Just fuckin’ loud for no fuckin’ reason.

Who was the guy who started the whole “thun” slang?

It came from my man Bumpy. He’s still around, he owns a barber shop out here. He had a slight speech impediment and he couldn’t really say “son,” cos that was the popular slang word at the time – “Whattup son!” He couldn’t really say it so it came out as “thun.” it’s funny he shit that catches on out here. It originated in this project, and I’ve heard people say that shit in California! It blows my mind.

So the correct spelling is Thun instead of Dun?

You could put dun. I would say dun is more like the cockney ingrained English, where if you’re not from there you don’t know what they’re talking about. But the official spelling is T.H.U.N.

What about “kiko”?

I don’t know where that came from but I think that’s a Queensbridge too. Not for nothing, but a lot of these words originated from 12th street, I’ve gotta give them credit. They ain’t have shit to do but make up words.

Who should we look out for from QB?

There’s a guy, Chef Lau, he’s pretty dope. Ant Live is pretty dope. But there’s a flipside to that, there are a lotta guys out here who are fuckin’ kidding themselves. You’ve got dudes out here doing freestyles to South beats. You’ve already lost, kid, cos I don’t even wanna hear this beat, and you’re talking that same old “bang bang shoot ‘em up” shit. I don’t want to hear that shit already.

If you could make your own version of “The Symphony” who would you pick to join you?

Sean Price, Jay-Z and Black Thought from The Roots. I think that’d be fuckin’ crazy record.

Following the Foul Monday interview, fellow Killa Kidz member Ruc Da Jackel reached out to tell his story. Having been in the game since the age of twelve, Mr. QB has worked with Killa Sha, Nas and Ron Artest, and is currently preparing his debut solo album, I Am Queensbridge and just launched his I Am QB clothing line.

Robbie: What got you started in the rap game?

Ruc Da Jackel: It was just the element of Queensbridge. It’s always been around us, rap music has always been a part of our community. Having all them influences of hip-hop around me had me making raps up, banging on the lunchroom table. From there, just kept going.

How did you get your name?

I got the name Ruc just from being a little wild kid in Queensbridge – always into ruckus, always into drama. My man Lake The Kid gave the handle “The Jackal” when we were working on the 41st Side album. “Mr. Queensbridge” – I take on the title of the whole hood, now.

How did that project come about?

First I was down with Killa Kidz, that was made up with – rest in peace – my man Killa Sha. We all grew up on the same block, the 41st Side of Vernon, and their group was just starting. It was basically Baby Cham, my man Challice, Prince A.D., Supurb and Baby Cham brother, Third Surge. They were doing a couple of songs, recording, and me being friends and on the block and around, friends was just hyping me up. At that young age I was already hanging out with Challice and Prince A.D. so they were like, “Yo, what do you think about our group?” I went in front of their manager Tyrel – True Force at the time – and he was just feeling the kid. So we did maybe ten, fifteen tracks. We did the single “Time To Shine,” we did “‘96 Phenomenon” a couple of joints that made it to wax. We were just performing and really doing it and then the group kinda separated. Cham got signed to Busta’s Flipmode Squad, me and my little man Challice went over and started dealing with Nas, working on the QB’s Finest album.

At what point did you did you start dealing with Ron Artest?

After doing the song with Nas, that ripple effect into me working with Ron Artest and his record label, he had Tru Warier Records just on the come-up, me and my man Challice were travelling the world with Ron, doing a whole bunch of music and seeing things. He had signed the girl group Allure and we just went on the road. We went everywhere in the States and then we did it really big overseas, opening up for Fat Joe, that was awesome. Ron was on many different teams, so we went from state to state. We did mixtapes, DVD’s and appeared on Ron’s album.

Had you known Ron from the old days?

Queensbridge is a community so we always knew of each other, we’re just from different blocks. He’s nothing as they show him as, he’s very humble, the most down-to-earth athlete you could probably meet, ever.

What’s your best memory of Killa Sha?

I remember when we were cultivating songs we used to go to Killa Sha’s house, he had the DJ equipment set-up, he’d put them records on, make a beat out of some drops and some cuts. We’d just be in there, passing the microphone around, just rhyming as Killa Kidz with all crates of records lying around. We had a lot of fun doing a lot of things, but the element of the natural hip-hop with him and cultivating us as artists was really dope. Killa Sha was monumental in my life in giving me a shot and keeping me wanting to do music and keeping us inspired. When he started the group we were 14, 15 years old. He gave us direction, helped us focus and helped us build our craft. He believed in us and knew ahead of time where we were going. He had the vision.

He seemed like a real character.

It was always fun with Sha. You’re going to laugh, he always had a joke in there. He had a great spirit.

Foul Monday was saying he joined the crew towards the end?

Opportunities starred presenting themselves outside of the group. We had started making little separate groups within the click, we had Mud Brothers and then we had Crud Brothers. Mud Brothers was Foul Monday and Killa Sha, Crud Brothers was me and my man Chalice.

What was it like working with Nas on his project?

The song with Nas, “Real Niggas” was almost like a hood anthem, we named everybody in the projects so it was giving recognition to the people that make up the stories that were told. I remember recording that record, we was all in the studio and even people that really didn’t get along with each other inside the projects was up in the studio, listening to the song and just coming together and vibing. It was a real element of community and our power. That song really displayed that and brought me to the forefront. He did over a thousand songs for that project and only a few of them made the cut. I happened to be incarcerated when the call came in for the Killa Kidz. I was talkin’ to my man Challice, I called home, he was like “Yo we were just in the studio with Nas, we laid down two songs. We biggin’ you up.” When I got home I went straight to the studio every day, listening to the songs, watching Nas create. Then one day he came to me, “You ready? It’s your turn.” I went in the booth and I kicked a rhyme that I had and it just fit with the beat. The next day Nas was like, “Yo, can I get on that song with you?” So he laid his verse and then Mike Delorean from Bars ‘N Hooks had wrote the names down of everybody in the projects – I mean everybody – and Nas just recited everything and made it right.

What can you tell me about the I Am Queensbridge album?

It’s me, but it’s everybody. It’s featuring Blaq Poet, Tragedy Khadafi, Nature, Roxanne Shante, Marley Marl, Craig G, Bars ‘N Hooks, G.O.D. and Mobb Deep – showcasing everybody from Queensbridge. It’s almost like QB’s Finest all over again except that I’m on every song with them. I started real young, so it’s time for me to spread my wings and it wasn’t really hard for me to get this music from all these Queensbridge artists. Being from the community and being involved in music for so long I’ve met these people or even seen them just going to the store, as long as you keep yourself as a respectful person and they see what I’m doing in my craft and it’s not a talent being wasted? Then they’re going to support. This is our legacy.

Matt Fingaz is living proof that unpaid internships can be more than just slave labor for record companies, as he was able to parlay his connections into an independent record label with Guesswhyld Records before he made the move into project co-ordination with the B.O.C (Business of Coordination) management company with Stat Quo, which handles with music, sport and fashion. Matt took some time out to kick it about those idealistic days when making an underground rap record was as simple as knowing the right guys in the neighborhood, as he helped everyone from Mos Def and Talib Kweli to Sha Money XL get their feet in the door of the music game.

Robbie: What led to you getting involved with starting a label?

Matt Fingaz: In 1994 I was a DJ for college radio and I interned for Blunt Records – Mic Geronimo, Royal Flush and Cash Money Click – Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and Tuesday and Thursday I was interning at Relativity, when Common and the Beatnuts and Fat Joe and Bone Thugs was popular. I just loved vinyl, I loved collecting records – I didn’t even want to be in the music business! One day my friend Brandon put out this record called The Derelicts, and I said, “Wow! You put out your own record?!” He said, “Yeah, and I put it out in Japan!” He had this check and it said “$1,000”. I was like, “Oh, you’re rich!” Cos we were just kids. I was nineteen years old and I was really good with the college promotions and marketing, but I was terrible in the mail room. Basically I didn’t know how to tape up packages, and they hated me so they complained. I used to work under Irv Gotti – he was DJ Irv at the time – and I worked under this guy Chappy. Chappy was like, “I’m sorry but we can’t use your services anymore.” I’m like, “You’re firing me? I’m working for free!”

I’m sitting in this hallway and I had a choice to make. “Do I continue with school and economics? Everyone’s up in this label saying, ‘Oh, Mic Geronimo should get this producer’ and ‘He should get this feature’ but they’re not doing anything! You know what I’m going to to do? I’m going to take all this information and apply it to myself and put out a record!” So I said, “Brandon, help me find Hub Servall in New Jersey with distribution and manufacturing.” This is before Fat Beats even had distribution. I just needed to find the right artist. Somebody I knew knew Lace Da Booms and I went up to meet him at his college and said, “Hey! I’ve got a little bit of money that I saved up when I was thirteen years old, I’ve got connections with Domingo and Buckwild and all these people now. Let’s do a record!”

Where did you sell that first record?

I went direct when I first started. Fat Beats was just starting their warehouse and they were like, “Let’s get 3,000” and then Rock & Soul would say, “Give us this amount” and then Manhattan Records in Japan would say, “We need a thousand of this.” I was just going hand-to-hand, and eventually Fat Beats Distribution started developing, and then B.U.D.S. Distribution and then Landspeed and Sandbox Automatic with Ed Wong. That’s when things started taking off.

That would have cut out a lot of leg work for you I imagine?

Oh yeah. I was done with taking my mom’s truck and driving around the city with all the boxes of records. That was ridiculous! [laughs]

Was “Cut That Weak Shit” your first release?

Yeah, 1996. Domingo did the b-side, the a-side was Buckwild.

How many copies of that did you sell?

Almost 10,000. That allowed me to put out Mike Zoot. That record brought in the income to make it legitimate business so that my uncle would lend me money – because he saw that I was bringing in money. Deals to do double vinyl in Japan of Lace Da Booms and Mike Zoot, so Manhattan Records would give me an advance and be like, “Can we do an EP with you?” One record would lead to the next one, and I was always big on attention to detail. I always wanted to making sure I was putting out independent records that sounded as major as possible.

How did you meet Mike Zoot?

A friend of mine named Druts who knew Lace Da Booms, they grew up in East Flatbush together. He said, “Matt, I’ve got this artist for you – Lace!” Then he said, “Yo! You’re not working with Lace no more? I got Mike Zoot. He’s on some De La Soul meets Redman type thing.” So me, Mike and Druts met up at McDonalds on 14th Street on Union Square, 1996, towards the end of the year. I just said, “You’re exactly the type of artist I want to work with!” We did our first record with EZ-Elpee, they made a good chemistry and me and Mike and Kweli would always hang out so it was like, “Let’s do a record with Hi-Tek and Mos Def.”

You gave a lot of producers their first placements as well, such as Sha Money XL?

Just Blaze, 88 Keys first work. Hi-Tek’s first record, which was “High Drama” with Mike Zoot and Mos Def, Talib Kweli’s first features before Rawkus, Mos Def’s first independent features. For a lot of people it was their first time working independent and getting out there was through Guesswyld. Kweli I knew through when I worked at TVT because he was my friend Chappy was like, “Matt, I want you to meet Hi-Tek. He’s been producing for Mood.” Mood was on Blunt and Kweli was cool with them, but nobody knew who Kweli was because he hadn’t put out a record, so Kweli was like, “Matt, let’s put out Reflection Eternal.” I was like, “OK, cool.” But I was a kid! I didn’t have the type of budget necessary to fund other projects. I was just happy getting Mike Zoot out. Mos Def did the same, he was like, “Yo Matt, can you put out ‘Universal Magnetic’?” I was like, “Oh man, I would love to, but I’m doing all this out of a bunk bed!” I’ve got my G.I. Joes and Transformers on my bunk bed and I’ve got a bunch of records! They just dug how I dealt with them personally, but Rawkus at the end of the day had Rupert Murdoch money, FOX money, so that’s really what started that whole history off.

How did meet people like DJ Spinna and Buckwild?

Buckwild I met because he was working with Royal Flush and being at all those studio sessions. It’s word of mouth, I would hear a record and ask somebody at Fat Beats, “Who did that record?” “It’s DJ Spinna.” “Yo, I need to speak to him!” Or if I did a record with Buckwild he would say, “Matt, you should work with Showbiz. You should work with O.Gee. You should work with Lord Finesse.” It started with them and then it just spawned out. Sha Self (Sha Money) was working with Royal Flush, so a lot of it came from my intern days. That really made a big difference.

Did you have a long-term plan at that stage or were you just going from record to record?

The long-term plan wasn’t a proper perception of the music business, because you’ll say, “I want a label deal,” but you don’t really understand what you’re asking for when you say that, because you have to put up half the marketing money, you have to put up half the money to put through the records. If you want a production deal and an imprint? That’s different. When you’re a young kid you really don’t know what to ask for, because we were dealing with a time period where there were no mentors. We were kids doing something together for the first time, like trial and error learning. For me, it was constantly adapting. When I did the Tommy Tee record, people overseas would say, “Yo Matt, can you get us Mos Def for a concert? Can you get him for a feature with a Norwegian rapper?” So then I started Project Co-Ordinating and it became more than just Guesswyld, It became a broader business. But my goal was always to get Mike Zoot on Loud Records! I always wanted to do something like that.

Did you ever have meetings with those guys about that idea?

Yeah, I knew all the record label people. It’s just that back then, what would sell on record labels was Ma$e, Puff – big commercial records. You’re doing a record with scratching on the hook? It wasn’t something that a lot of people were going to throw money at. A lot of these artists on the underground didn’t really know how to make that crossover record, and a lot of them didn’t want to! They looked down upon it. Mos Def had leverage because of acting, that really made a huge difference. But these artists are not Mos Def! He was only one of the few – Common, Kweli – there’s only a couple of guys from that genre that really broke through during that time period. Mobb Deep/Wu-Tang is a whole ‘nother level.

It got to the point where it was a full time job to keep up with all the new records coming out.

That’s where the issue started coming up for me. When I started up there was six people putting out records – Tru Criminal, Spinna was putting out records, Bobbito was putting out records – it wasn’t a lot! All of a sudden, everybody’s got posse cuts! Everybody’s got Masta Ace and Sadat X on their record. I didn’t do a posse cut because it was cool names on a record. I did it because I heard a voice that matched the beat and thought, “Oh, Pharoahe Monch! Then Mike Zoot can come four bars after that! Then Prince Po can come after F.T.!” I really cared about the songs more than just the political statements I was trying to make with it – they just happened to have big names. What a lot of these artists didn’t understand is that hip-hop – to really make it as a career – is entertainment. You need to have a good live show, you need to be out there promoting your records, going to the radio stations. You can’t sit at home all day just doing songs! It’s not enough.

Is that in relation to the artists you worked with or in general?

It’s a general statement, I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. Sometimes people don’t want to evolve their music, and you can’t force them to. You can say, “You should do something with so-and-so singing on there” and they want to rap for fifty bars. I give them the best platform possible and they do they best they can. I think Mike Zoot really maxed it out. He did really well for an artist with no music videos and he rapped with every major person at that time period and he did some really quality records. A lot of rappers grow up – whether it be Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens – and everybody in the neighborhood is like, “Hey! When are you gonna be on MTV? When are you gonna be on BET?” But they don’t really understand that there’s something valuable with being independent and doing what we did. So the rapper would always say, “Oh, that’s nice. I’m gonna do a show with so-and-so in Norway. No, I wanna be on MTV! It’s not good enough!” So it’s like the grass is greener, and when they get to the other side of that grass it’s like, “Oh, I kinda wanna go back t getting $2,000 a week for features and do records with Buckwild and Spinna again.” I’d be like, “Yo, it’s over!”

At what point did the independent record business lose it’s appeal for you?

What really changed things was Fat Beats and these companies, instead of being distribution companies they became A&R’s. They were trying to tell everybody what type of records to put out. They were like, “We need Ed OG on the feature and Pete Rock on the beat” or “This M.O.P record isn’t exactly ‘Ante Up’” They actually said that to me. So I said, “Well you try to talk to Lil’ Fame inside of a club and you try to talk to D.R. Period and see if you can go get ‘Ante Up’. Even if I gave you ‘Ante Up,’ do you have the radio push behind it to do what it’s supposed to do?” And it was no. It became very frustrating for me because this wasn’t why I got into this business. If I want to be told what to do I’m going to go corporate! At least I’ll be properly compensated for it! And when people started getting home equipment and Fruity Loops and being able to record at home, and MySpace came around? That was the worst part of hip-hop, because everybody became an artist. Back when we did it, if you wanted to be a rapper you had to pay money out your pocket for studio time. If you wanted to be a producer you needed $2,000 to get an SP-1200 or an MPC. You couldn’t just get something for $100 online and start playing around. It showed you who was serious and who’s not.

How did you get into deejaying originally?

When I went to college there was a guy named Dan McNeil and Dan was a DJ. There was something about the hand to the needle to the record to the sound that just looked so cool! So I said, “Ma, I gotta get some turntables!” So I got some turntables and I didn’t know that you needed slipmats, I used the big rubber mats. So the first time I put a record on there, I’m scratching and I said, “It’s not working! These turntables are broken!” I go to Sam Ash and they told me, “They’re not broken! Take that rubber matt off and use this.” I used to get Evil Dee mixtapes – I told him this – and I used to imitate Evil Dee’s scratches. Tragedy named my Matt Fingahz because I get my hands on everything. Before that I my name was Finger Tip, but I hated people calling me Finger Tip cos they would call me Tip. “Nah, that’s Q-Tip!”

It seems like all the best producers started off as DJs.

BPM’s definitely help drum programming. I think some of the best drum programmers were DJ’s. There’s only one producer I know that was not a DJ who’s one of the best producers in hip-hop history, and that’s Q-Tip.

If you could A&R a new version of “The Symphony” who would you put up?

I think Biggie, Big Pun, Nas and Jay-Z would be a serious song. What?! If I was going to put together a top four sleeper team it would be Pharoahe Monch, Black Thought, Mos Def and Busta Rhymes.

What about your efforts as a rapper? “I’m on some wild out white shit!”

Oh my god! [laughs] That was the third record that I ever rapped on, I was like, “I wanna do a record with M.O.P and I want them to do my adlibs!” It was like a kid with candy! I was never a full time artist, now I’m even better than I was back then, I’ll do records with Game or Prodigy or Elzhi – you name it, I’ve rapped with them. But I felt like coordinating and connecting the dots and doing great things and putting them together was my strong point. But jumping off stages with Young Zee and Rah Diggah and G-Unit in Norway! Large Professor brought me out at Lincoln Centre with The Roots and Jay-Z, I got to perform there. That was one of my favorite hip-hop moments.

What was the story with that song you did with Large Pro, Rahzel and The Game?

I was working on an album, early 2000’s, and me and Large Pro did a song with Rahzel. I sat on it for five years, because back then it cost so much money to make the records! I got free beats back then, but I was still paying $1,000 a session to record it! So I started and didn’t have money to finish! I said, “I got a Kweli verse I did with The Beatminerz, I got Rahzel and Large and then I’ve got a song with Game. Just Blaze did a record…let’s put all of their voices on this one song and make it a resume record. So when I go to get coordination jobs they’ll hear this record and they’ll hear all these people co-signing me and giving my email address out at the end of the song. It was never supposed to be a “song” song, but Green Lantern would play it and some other people so it was kinda cool. It’s literally an audio resume.

Did it work?

I got one big account that changed my life.

Pete Rock loves his food. So much so that he’s never let a pesky phone interview get in the way of his looking after the needs of his stomach. Back in 2008, while I attempted to extract some slivers of information from him for a cover feature for Hip Hop Connection magazine, the Soul Brother # 1 proceeded to chow down on an entire order of Chinese take-out while he fielded questions, noisily chewing into the mouthpiece like a bored boom-bap bovine. Six years later, I catch him between flights en route to Australia to play a series of club dates with DJ Premier, and the lure of the airport food lounge proved too much before he’d even made it halfway through my allotted ten minutes. Nevertheless, he did share a couple of interesting tidbits about his early days, which is what we’re here for anyway.

Robbie: Who gave you your DJ name?

Pete Rock: My cousin gave me the name. He started calling me “Pete Rock” and I liked it. I’ve had that name since I was seven years old.

Seven? How old were you when you first messed with a turntable?

Probably around three. When I started scratching was about seven, but I was always into the records that my father collected and always tried to play them on the record player at home.

How important is the deejaying aspect to your career?

I always loved deejaying at parties, it gives me a sense of who I am and how I started in the business. It keeps me grounded, so that’s the main reason why I do it.

What are some of your best memories of working on Marley Marl’s In Control radio show?

Riding down from my hood, downtown to Manhattan to the city – big lights and the place that never sleeps – to DJ something that I loved doing from my bedroom. I was lucky enough to get a job with Marley Marl through Heavy D, that was the main thing. Without those two guys I wouldn’t have been heard of, or it would have took me longer to come out, so I’m very grateful.

That must have been a great place to develop your production and remix skills with all the ‘Special Mixes’ you guys would drop.

I was playing a lot of breaks and cuts on the radio at that time, and everything that came out in that era, like Special Ed and Chubb Rock, when they were all new artists. I was playing De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest and a lot of unknown artists. Doing ‘Special Mixes,’ remixes, bringing my drum machine there and taking accapellas and playing them over a beat that I made – we used to do all that stuff, it was fun.

Can you speak on the importance of James Brown to you personally?

I met James Brown when I was seven years old. My mom took me to a concert in Mt. Vernon, New York. He came and performed and me and my younger brother met him. My younger brother was six and I was seven and we met James Brown. It was crazy! When we met him I think he passed something on to me. I wasn’t the same after I met him.

Do you agree that James Brown is the foundation of hip-hop music as we know it?

James Brown is definitely the creator of hip-hop because he’s the creator of “the one” and the snare hit, and the one and the two. “On the one” – that was important to him, and he wanted people to know how that’s done and what he was listening to in his head.

What’s your best memory of Heavy D?

That he’s my cousin and I love him to death, I miss him daily, and it’s always tough losing family. But he’s there in spirit and he’s going to live on through his music.

Originally written for Acclaim Magazine.

As a founding member of The UN with Roc Marciano, Dino Brave has experienced a lot of Long Island rap history first hand. Inspired by the Spectrum City crew coming up (which would later evolve into Public Enemy), Brave had his time in the spotlight cut short thanks to bad timing in the crumbling music industry. But with the recent re-release of UN Or U Out, a new generation of rap fanatics are getting the chance to hear Brave, Laku, Mike Raw and Roc Marciano in action once again.

Robbie: How did everything start for you?

Dino Brave: It was kinda handed down to me, man. A lotta people in the family did music. My older brothers played instruments – they played guitar, they played the drums, made beats, keyboard players – all sorts of things. I grew-up with production studios in my house! I got into deejaying, it was the cheapest equipment I could get my hands on, putting two record players together and a mixer. I started deejaying around seven, touching official turntables. I was doing pretty everything that I wanted to do with the turntable, that I seen the great’s doing – it was boring for me at that point. So I decided to pick up the mic at thirteen. I heard “My Melody” and that made me want to write my first rap. I went to school with it, dude’s used to bang beats on the table and stuff like that. I kicked the rhyme, and my cousin who I was in school with loved it. He was like, “Run with it,” so I ran with it. I kept writing, did talent shows coming up and just start making tapes after school. I went to school with dude’s from The UN, so they were those guys at the lunch table, beating on the tables and making rhymes.

What were you calling yourself back then?

I was changing names every other day. I used to call myself Wiz, but that was then. Went through a bunch of street names and attributes coming up, but that was the first name.

Were you old enough to go the Spectrum City parties?

How do you know about all of that, man? I thought you was from London, man. You sound like you from out here! What you know about Spectrum City, man? Those dudes got me by about ten years. Those dudes came up with my brothers, ironically. My cousin Kyle Jason and my brother BT – god rest his soul – them dude’s was part of a group called The Come Alive Five and they used to battle against Spectrum City in the parks. I was too young to go to them jams, this was like ‘81, ’82. I used to sit there and have my tape ready though, when Flavor [Flav] used to be on the radio station at WBAU, and later on Wildman Steve came up with it. Original Concept was outta Westbury. I didn’t get to participate with those dudes but it was an intricate part of me learning hip-hop – I got it from that generation.

Did you go to the auditions that the Bomb Squad held for new groups?

510 Studios was the studio in Hempstead – Chuck and the Bomb Squad had one level, and Paul Shabazz had the downstairs. I used to go up in there as a kid, it was an honor. Ice Cube left NWA and came to Hempstead and did his first album at 510 Studio with Chuck and them. 510 was the spot back then. [Charlie] Brown and all of them got they names from Chuck, he started naming ‘em and helping ‘em with they project. Brown’s older brother’s an old DJ from back then, he had a lotta connections and got them going. Brown’s brother actually used to battle my brother. That Spectrum City family, man. Hempstead, Freeport, Roosevelt, Uniondale connection.

Apparently Eddie Murphy used to perform at those Spectrum City parties?

Yeah, Eddie Murphy used to come to the house. I went to school with his younger cousin, Rich. Everybody is sorta related in a funny way, whether they know it or not. My family’s been out here a long time, so it was nothing to see Eddie Murphy at the house, come through on his way to Saturday Night Live in the 80’s.

Going back to your story, what was the next step after high school?

There was always a battle going on, we came up battling. We wasn’t a group, I had my thing with my cousin. Rakeem, he was doing his solo thing – Roc Marc, Mike Raw was doing his solo thing. Raw had deals on the table – fresh outta high school – he was turning down. Laku was rapping, everybody was rapping. It was like, “Who didn’t rap?” almost. It was a cultural thing. As time went on, the EPMD’s, the Public Enemy’s, the Biz Mark’s and all of that – money was starting to develop. Run-DMC used to come around here; Jam Master Jay signed Serious-Lee-Fine from around here – that was The Choice Five – that was another clique that was part of that Spectrum City era. Woody Rock went on and did his solo shit up at Uptown Records. There was always rapper’s around here. We didn’t actively start looking for deals until the mid-to-late 90’s, and by that time we were out of school. We were out in the streets doing things that maybe we shouldn’t have been doing, but it made us who we are.

So you were just in it for the sport for a long time?

We was just never the type to go ask nobody for no favors. None of us were star struck, we were used to people who had money and were famous entertainers, it was nothing to see them in our neighborhood barbershops and parks and clubs. We wasn’t asking nobody for nothing – if it came it came, if it didn’t it didn’t – that was our attitude. Even the way we got on was sort of a fluke. Schott Free, we met up with him off the strength of another rap group – a dude that we was doing demos with around the way – he mistakenly played our stuff trying to cue up their stuff. It was I.G.T., it was their session. They were one of the last groups to sign with Loud Records before they folded, and my man G. Gary was up in the studio playing some beats for them and he played a song that The UN did, and Schott Free was like, “Yo, who’s that?” That’s how is started.

Who was I.G.T?

Schott Free and Matty [C] had signed them, but they didn’t drop. They recorded the album and everything, but by the time they were gonna come out Loud Records had closed their doors. Those were some good brothers though.

When did you decide to call yourselves The UN?

We came up with The UN around ‘98, me and him [Marciano], being that we all went to school in Uniondale, and fashioned ourselves after the political structure – people from different places, coming together. None of us were a group prior to that. We knew each other for rhyming and we put ourselves in that position, like, “We could do it by ourselves, but we choose to come together as one government and do it together to strengthen our chances of getting a deal.” We done played ball together, fought together, eat and drink together, fuck chicks together, all that shit. We grew up together, so it felt very natural. There was nothing made-up about it, we lived it. We lived all that stuff we was talking about. We were kinda tired of living it! We wanted to talk about it more! Tired of living the struggle, let’s just talk about the struggle! [laughs]

So how long after Schott hearing you did the deal happen?

It was a three year process between Schott Free hearing our stuff and when Carson Daley even came into the picture. It was a grind in between that. When Schott Free heard the stuff he was still working with Loud Records. He started calling for brothers to come meet him at the studio at Greene Street. We started recording a professional demo and it was there that we met Pete Rock. We didn’t have no deal, and it just so happened that we were in one studio and Pete Rock was recording in another. You know how it the studio settings is – you go into the lobby to get into your food and drink and allathat, and you’re hearing stuff. He was hearing what we doing, we were hearing what he doing. He was working on the Petestramental album at the time, he had the deal with BBE. We just started building with each other, and before you know it he threw a track out there for us to jump on – it was “Nothin’ Lesser.” He took it to the radio station [Future Flavas] and I guess he was getting a lotta good feedback, and before we knew it he said, “You know what? I wanna put y’all on the album. I wanna put y’all on the single.”

You were just “featured artists” at that stage?

Exactly, we still didn’t have no deal. That gave us even more light and we shopped and shopped and shopped at different spots. Loud folded, so [Schott] decided he was gonna start his own thing and we ran with him. The industry was changing though – a couple of other labels folded, studios started closing – music started going into the digital world and money wasn’t as lucrative. They weren’t giving the big deals like that no more. Before Loud closed, a $500,000 budget was nothing, anybody could get that. When we came in, it was deaded. It was hard to get a $100,000 deal unless you were a made dude already, so that’s how we ended up going the independent route. We ended up over at 4,5,6 with John Rifkind [brother of Loud Records' Steve Rifkind] and Carson Daley.

What was the story with the World Domination CD?

Somebody leaked our shit! All of that material was recorded at Greene Street, so whoever leaked it got it from Greene Street. We were formulating a professional demo up at Greene Street, so the format of that demo sounds structured like an album because we were building it to be a demo. Somebody ran with it and started pressing it up, so I guess that was our welcome to the business – you get bootlegged and you get jerked. That nice little package, that starter kit.

There was some great stuff on there, like the remake of EPMD’s “Hardcore.”

That song was done with I.G.T, and Reek The Villian was on that song too, being that we from around here, and PMD even talked over it.

Why were you listed as Godfree on the cover of that bootleg?

My peoples in the streets out here, they call me Godfree. But Brave is the MC name. Pete ran with it cos we in the studio and he just assumed that was the MC name when it came time to put the names down, cos that’s what brothers call me. But it wasn’t like a misprint or I changed my name or anything.

Can you tell me about the process of recording the UN Or U Out LP?

Half of that album was originally recorded on reel-to-reel at Greene Street. The other half was recorded in Pro Tools over there at Daddy’s House – we was on the top floor, which was actually John Lennon’s old studio on West 44th, they were calling it Street Light. That’s the studio he left right before he got killed. Once we went to Pro Tools we ended up restructuring it so that everything was inside of Pro Tools – “Golden Grail,” “Mind Blowin,” a couple of other joints. Not to take nothing away from nobody but we would have been happy as we wanted to be if coulda just done that whole album by ourselves. We were sorta playing the political game – Schott Free felt, “If you collab with this person or if you get on this beat and you include these people, people will be quicker to look, listen and observe.” As opposed to, “Who are these guys rhymin’ on they own beats?” I guess it worked, it was a wise decision, but creatively we could have done it by ourselves, man. It would have sounded as good, if not better.

Were you happy with how 4,5,6 handled the project?

Once we got signed to 4,5,6 we had half of the album already done, so it was a fairly quick process. We knocked it out in maybe a month or two, then there was the process of doing the single. Honestly, they was rushing us. We were just getting warm and they pulled the plug. “We got enough, that’s the album!” 4,5,6 got into a beef with distributors and as a result the distributors didn’t even wanna mess with nobody else on they label. There was a bunch of rock groups on the label and we were the only rap group, and the distributors didn’t want to distribute them dudes, they only wanted to distribute us. 4,5,6 was like, “You gotta distribute everybody or nobody!” They was like, “Then we ain’t distributing nobody!” Whatever got pressed-up with that first little batch got sold, and nothing else got pressed-up no more, cos I guess those dudes had exclusive rights to the distribution.

So that stopped the album dead in it’s tracks?

Yeah. And not for nothing, but they were kinda slacking on releasing that joint. If it wasn’t for Strength & Honor they probably would have hemmed-in hard on releasing that album to begin with! We went back to my man D.O.A. house and we was recording over there. We did the Strength & Honor and that was all us. That’s what The UN album should have been, it was supposed to be our shit and it didn’t feel like it was our shit no more, and that’s the bitch thing of it. When we did Strength & Honor, man? That was my favorite shit. We put that out there to the street and that shit was getting mad love, and them niggas was like, “Fuck it, we gotta put out the album.” Then it was done, there was no talk about no videos, and we wasn’t as swift with the business as we were with the pen. Dudes was really frustrated with the way everything went down. To be doing this shit for so many years and to finally get to that point? It was discouraging. I love hip-hop, but I don’t love the business.

So you took up a trade?

I started my own business. I do heating ventilation, refrigeration, pipe fitter. Skills pays the bills, man. I’ve never stopped doing the music, but I wasn’t trying to pursue money musically, because the past showed me that the business is funny style.

What can we expect from you in the future?

You’re going to hear some solo stuff. I owe it myself, I owe it to the people to get a complete story from me. I got tonnes of material, I produce, I rhyme. People act like they wanna hear something from the kid.

Do you remember when Cam’Ron and Vado came out with their own UN crew?

I remember it. [laughs] That probably would not have happened if we were doing what we set out to do, I can’t fault them. They coulda got upset at us for calling ourselves UN when they was Diplomats! How can I be mad at them? It’s word association, for real.

Photo: richdirection

Andre The Giant has been holding down Bronx tradition ever since he first got his starting shot on Lord Finesse’s “Back To Back Rhyming” and “Keep It Flowin’” from the Funky Technician LP. From there he formed Showbiz & AG and ushered in the birth of the Diggin’ In The Crates crew. Twenty four years later he continues to rep the crew, as he and Show complete work on a new album. AG took some time out while touring to speak on his connection to The Bronx, inspiration, winning recognition from his peers and the memory of Party Arty in this refreshingly honest conversation.

Robbie: Do you remember the moment you decided you wanted to pursue rap seriously?

AG: I remember exactly when! I always played around with it, because my older brother LB was always into the culture. He’s a clothes designer now, and a great graffiti artist. He used to MC too, so I used to have to do what he did. He cultivated me – he kinda forced it on me at first – but I took to it cos I was pretty good at it. I just would play around, but the moment I heard “My Melody” the first time in a park jam it was in 23 Park, in Forest projects in The Bronx. It was right before the summer of me going to high school, and the Five Percenters – the Nation of the Gods and the Earths – were in the same park, away from the crowd cos it was a big park jam, on the other side of the gate in a huge cipher. I didn’t know what it was, but I was attracted to the cipher at the time. I was just trying to figure out what they were doing. It looked so on point, they were disciplined, you could tell they knew what they were talking about.

So while the music is going on and my friends are looking at girls and talking, I’m staring through the fence at this cipher of about fifty people. One dude or one girl would get in the middle and start building and then go back and somebody else would get in the middle. I’ve never saw this before, I’m like, “What is this going on?” So as I’m watching it, “My Melody” came on. It’s the first time I’d ever heard it, I’m like, “This is dope!” As soon as it came on, the cipher – all of them, simultaneously, just started shouting. At the time I didn’t know, but Rakim is Five Percent, they obviously related to what he was doing, so I connected that song to these people I was watching at the time. He sounded different to any rapper I’ve ever heard – the things that he’s saying, it’s not normal words and he’s not saying it the way other rappers were saying it. I’m like, “I wish I could have that type of power,” because when his record came on a whole crowd of people gravitated with his energy and were synonymous with his record, and I wanted that. I’m like, “If I can do that, I’ll do it for the rest of my life.”

Right after that I saw Grandmaster Flash and Grand Wizard Theodore at 18 Park in my project, Patterson projects in the South Bronx. When I saw them control the crowd without words? I’m like, “This thing – this energy – there’s nothing like it!” First I heard a dude rap and have a whole crowd gravitate to him, and then just by some dudes playing records and scratching and doing things with the record we’ve never saw, I saw a whole park gravitate and freeze! This is what I want to be a part of! I don’t want to be a DJ, but I know I can rap, and I want to be dope enough to do it this way. If I can’t do it this way? I’ll quit, I won’t do it. I have to be really good because the people I’m listening to – Rakim – changed my life. That was the very first moment I knew I’m gonna pursue this and do it the rest of my life.

So you set on a path of wanting to have the same power and impact that Rakim had?

Yes, but in a conscious way though. I was been inspired by Melle Mel, he’s from The Bronx, and when I heard “The Message” I’ve never heard a record like this in my life. Everything he said in that song, with the burnt down buildings in the video – I lived right across from that block! They would come through with Rolls Royces and all that, and their outfits were crazy. I was definitely inspired by him first, but it wasn’t to the point of “I’m going to take this serious for the rest of my life.” When I heard Melle Mel I probably wasn’t that good or I wasn’t rapping at all, so it had no correlation to what I wanted to do. When I heard Rakim I was writing rhymes, so that record really changed everything. I said, “I’ve gotta take this serious, cos I’m not as good as this dude who’s rhyming right now, and I need to be – or at least try to be!”

Were you calling yourself AG at that point?

No, I had a thousand names! [laughs] At that time I was Dre Smooth. Right after that weekend when I went back to school, one of the guys from my class in junior high school was in that cipher, and I had to ask him, “Who were those dudes and what was that record played?” He enlightened me, and then I became part of the Nation of Gods and Earths, so Rakim changed my life in more than one way.

Is it true that you were originally calling yourself Infinite in the early days?

Indeed, Infinite Barkim. I went to the New Music Seminar with Lord Finesse, while he was recording his first album, and Stu Fine – the owner of Wild Pitch. When we went to the Marriott Marquis on 42nd, when you register to get in you get a badge to let you in every event. Infinite Barkim was a powerful name, but I needed something that stood out so when a person looked at the badge and looked at me they would wanna know more about me. I needed something more universal. As a conscious dude, dealing with the Nation of the Gods and the Earths, I’m not really supposed to use my government name – that’s the name you give up, that’s your slave name – but once I had knowledge of self I thought I had the power to do whatever I wanted do, cos I could explain it, I could defend it, I could honor it. So I said, “You know what? I’m gonna be Andre The Giant.” When I said that and the person filling out the application looked at me and laughed? I knew that was it.

Were you a big fan of the wrestler?

I was a big wrestling fan, but my uncle who lived next door called me that all the time. “Andre The Giant,” because I was always the littlest guy out of everything, in height. I used to laugh cos he knew I liked the wrestler, but I had never put it together until that day. So now I’m walking around the Seminar and dudes are looking at me and laughing – not at me, but like, “Dag, that’s slick!” So it worked tremendously. When we went to press the first record, me and Show, Andre The Giant was a name I couldn’t use, and I used to say in my rhyme, “Andre The Giant – AG for short.” Show had to make a decision, so when he brings the box of records I look at the title [Showbiz & AG] and I’m like, “This is dope!” I ran with it ever since. So Show kinda named me AG.

Was this the 1989 NMS?

Yes. That’s also a moment that solidified “No turning back.” I met Salt ‘N Pepa, I met Ice-T, I met Just-Ice, I met MC Lyte. I never knew I’d meet these people from television, and now here I am. Lord Finesse did real well in that Seminar – actually, he got jerked, he shoulda won – and the people were coming up to him, “Yo, you did so good yesterday.” And I’m like, “Finesse – you know Salt ‘N Pepa?” He was like, “Yeah, they was there yesterday!” I’ve got pictures with all of ‘em. King Sun was the first guy in the industry to show me some real love, and I’ll never forget that. We ran around the New Music Seminar together and he had “On The Club Tip” out and he had a hit song, so all attention was on him. We related from the Five Percent anyway, so he would pass the attention on to me and Lord Finesse.

Did you continue attending the NMS in the years after that?

It used to be a real big thing and I used to look forward to it for real, and then after a while it started getting watered down. It started getting really corny – the guys who were winning weren’t really supposed to be winning and the guys who lost went on to make hit records, so it was like, “OK, I’m concerned with that anymore.” I was thinking about getting in it, because that’s my sport, but all the dope dudes who made the hit songs didn’t win, so I was like, “I’ll just stick to that.”

I’ve got this theory that everything in hip-hop boils down to a sport and that competitive spirit. Do you agree?

Yes. It’s about competing, and I think if someone doesn’t think that they’re even close or wanna say that they’re the best then I don’t think this is what they should be doing. Them guys who be like, “Nah, I know I’m not the best, I’m just trying to…”? Strive for that, or give it up, because that’s what this is about. This is a blood sport.

How did that first appearance on Lord Finesse’s Funky Technician album happen?

Me and Finesse battled, that’s how I met him. He came up to my school, cos I was running shit in my high school, me and my man Shabazz. Finesse was bold, man! He came up to my school with my home crowd, and Clinton at the time had like 4,000 students, so he really didn’t care. I’m in class and this guy comes to my home room and he goes, “Yo Inf, you need to go outside, cos this dude Rob is outside and he’s illmatic.” And I’m like, “What?!” My man 40 Oz., he was telling me in gym class, “Yo, I’mma bring my man Rob Finesse to school so we can get it in!” Cos my man 40 Oz. was nice as well, and I would go, “I’m waiting! I’m waiting!” When I walked out the building and I saw the huge crowd making noise and cheering that’s when the butterflies set in. “Oh, the dude’s really as good as they said he was!” I just remember him that day, I’ve never heard nobody rhyme like that before. His punchlines, his metaphors, his humor – I’ve never heard that all in one. We’re going back and forth for a long time, but I’m saying a lot of scientific rhymes, cos that’s what I was into, I was into my culture, and he had the girls on his side! He had the dudes as well, but that was the school of the Gods, so a lotta dudes were very relative to what I was saying. In my mind, when he walked away I felt, “This is my school, this is my home crowd – if it’s a draw then he should get the advantage.” When I walked up the hill to give him love he said the same thing about me, so we exchanged numbers. We lost contact, cos that’s how life is sometimes, and I was at a girlfriend’s house one day. I had just broken up with the group I was in – I had a partner and a DJ – and they just moved on, cos I was into the street too much. That kinda woke me up, it hurt me. Now I can’t record? This is horrible!

My girlfriend knew how much it meant to me and she goes, “They’ve got this guy over here who DJ’s. Maybe you can use him for DJ?” Her brother goes downstairs and gets the guy, and it’s Lord Finesse. I’m like, “Oh shit!” He was like, “You still spittin’?” I spit a long rhyme for him, and he’s like, “I’m recording my album tomorrow, you should come with me.” The next day I went to the studio, and when I walk in the first person I saw was DJ Premier. I’m like, “This is crazy!” I’m watching him on “Words That I Manifest” on the TV and now I’m in the studio and he’s right here. Show was on a machine, making a beat. That’s the first time I met him too. Stu Fine was there too, so I was like, “This is your shot, A!”

When I went in the booth, it had no windows, so they can’t see me and I can’t see them, so that made me go extra harder. The unsurety of not knowing if they liked me and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for records. I spit it with everything I had, and when I walked out the booth and I saw everybody looking at me a certain way, smiling, I knew I was ready. Me and Show start vibing like, “Yo, we should work on some music together.” If you look on the Finesse album, the one he did was Art of Noise chopped up, and he was chopping it and I was like, “What is that?” Dude’s was looping records, dude’s was rhyming over whole records – this dude took this record and made something else? This was a few levels up from the group that I was a part of, so I felt that I’d just took one step back and ten forward. We went in the studio and we recorded a few songs, and one of them was “Soul Clap.” I knew from there that I was gonna rock with this dude for a long time.

What was the name of the group that had moved on without you?

The name of the group was R2D2 – it was my friend Rodney [aka Sick Lyrical Damager]. It’s “Rodney 2 Dre & Dre 2 The People,” that’s what R2D2 stood for. They moved on cos I was in the street, I was bullshitting, I wasn’t taking it as serious as them. When I seen their first promo picture with matching suits and their names on the suits, it really hurt. I said, “Oh man, I messed up!” I’m so thankful for Dana Brookes – that’s her name, my ex-girlfriend – she connected me back with Lord Finesse and it’s been a wrap since. That’s my brother for 26 years. Never had an argument, never had a fallout, he’s never had me sign a piece of paper for putting me on. That’s one of my big brothers that’ll hold me down to the finish. If you’re close to him, he’ll go all out for you.
That must have been crazy to be featured on his first album.

I’m the only guy on that album, so he really showed me how he felt about my talent. He has a cousin that rhymes, Harry-O, who wound up on one of the other songs [“Show ‘Em How We Do Things” from the second album], he had a lot of people he coulda put on. He took me everywhere, I started doing promo tours with him and Jeff Sledge, so I got to see it before I was actually in it. That was critical to learn that instead of just diving in, headfirst. Then I did this showcase called Car Wash – there’d be like twenty to thirty acts on it! Nine of the acts on it went on to make records and be famous, like the Fu-Schnickens. That was my first organized live show. DJ Premier deejayed for me at that joint, before I did any shows with Show. That connection was like family, and that’s when Premier lived in The Bronx – him, GURU and HL Rock lived up on University. I used to just go rent an OJ and go hang with Premier or Finesse. I had made some bad moves, like I said I was in the street, and I wound up going to jail. When I got out and they brought me out the back and into the courtroom, Lord Finesse and Premier were standing right there. The whole courtroom is looking at them because they both have videos and are famous at the time, and it just meant so much to me. It was like God helping me, like, “This is who you’re supposed to be hanging with.” I’m cool with both of them to this day.

It showed you they were down through thick and thin.

I remember when Finesse took me to Pete Rock’s house over on Mt. Vernon, before I was on or any of that, we went to his basement. I remember buying his first album, looking on the back and he shouted out eight people, and I was one of them. That was big for me.

We’ve seen a lot of alternative versions of Lord Finesse tracks released in recent years. Was that always the way you guys would record?

I believe everyone in Diggin’ In The Crates are semi-perfectionists. The process still goes on to this day. Me and Show are recording an album right now called While You Were Sleeping. Everybody’s on it, so there’s production from Diamond, there’s production from Show, there’s production from Buck, there’s production from ‘Ness, we got a Big L verse that no one heard. But when I get back home all the Show tracks might totally be different. This is how my crew is. Runaway Slave was done over three times, and I don’t mean at one time – I mean each song. These guys hear a beat for a week and then next week they’re like, “Nah, I don’t like that no more, I don’t like the snare.” So now I don’t even take records home when I do ‘em, I don’t put ‘em on my mp3, I don’t do anything until the album is fully complete because I don’t want to get used to a song and then it’s a new song! [laughs]

When you and Show did that first EP, that must have been an exciting to generate that buzz by yourselves.

That same EP was what we sold out the truck of the car, so when we got on Payday we just added a few songs and artwork. It was basically the same thing that we were running around the Tri-State area with. When the world heard “Soul Clap” is was a year and a half old. Kid Capri was the first guy to really break the record, because he also was on the record “Party Groove.” Show took one of his tapes and took the “Bend and stretch!” and made a song out of it so he gave him the record in person and Kid Capri threw it on right there. It took off after that.

After the first EP, how different was the process of recording Runaway Slave?

A lot of the ground work to Runaway Slave was done in Jazzy Jay’s studio. Jazzy Jay is a mentor to Diggin’ In The Crates, period. Jay is a great soul and he’s straight-forward, like, “You need to go back in the booth and do that verse over” or “Yo Show, this beat is cool but you need to change the drums, they not hitting hard enough.” And we would listen! He was guiding us on how to do an album.

Do you miss having Showbiz rhyming on songs with you?

I always felt Show was a real dope MC. A lotta people don’t know, on Runaway Slave if you listen to the songs, I start a lot of my rhymes the same way he starts his. I actually duplicated my shit after him, and I’m the MC! [laughs]

Plus he has such a good voice.

He has a great voice, his melody is crazy and his musical knowledge is crazy and he’s a hype record dude. “Fat Pockets” and those type of records are really his records. If you listen to “Fat Pockets,” he rhymes twice, I rhyme once. If you take me off “Fat Pockets” and just listen to his rhymes, this is what a Showbiz album would sound like, and I would love to hear that.

Did that put a lot of pressure on you for the second album without him to play off?

He was like, “I’mma fall back and do these beats. You better hold this shit down.” That’s why Goodfellas is totally different – soundwise – than Runaway Slave. I feel like Runaway Slave was a better album, but it was directed by Show – most of the concepts, the songs, the interludes, the intro – I’m just playing my part. Now I’ve gotta be the front man and do everything. I accepted the challenge, and at one time during the album it was like, “Hmm, I’m doing OK.” One day he’s driving me home and he’s like, “Yo, you gotta step up even more, cos you holding it down by yourself now.” That took me to a whole ‘nother level. So we stopped going to the studio for a week. “Just stay in the house and get your shit crazy.” So I did, and that’s where that song [“All Out”] comes from: “If I was a nice motherfuck I wouldn’t be here!” – the Redman sample I took. That’s my personal song, saying “Damn, I’ve gotta step up to the plate now, the pressures on!” You’ll hear the process of what I just told you, in the rhyme. Show has always done that for me though – even now, even during this album – he pushed me to a place where if he wasn’t there I probably wouldn’t go to that place.

Is that why you recruited the Ghetto Dwellas [Party Arty and D-Flow] to get on that album?

This isn’t just a record thing for me. I had these two dope dudes in the same projects, right under my nose, and I just started taking them everywhere. I think timing and everything was perfect when he said, “You’re gonna do it yourself.” I’m like, “I wanna throw my dudes on there” and he’s like, “Do whatever you want, let’s just make it hot.” So the motivation and the push that I needed, that I used to get from Show? I was getting from them.

My favorite Show & AG song is “Medicine.” What can you tell me about that track?

“The Medicine” was really inspirational, because that went along with “All Out.” It was me trying to prove something, and hip-hop at the time was sounding real crazy to us. Runaway Slave came out ‘92, Goodfellas came out ‘95, so that little hiatus we seen the changes in the music and the gimmicks that’s popping up. We were really getting conscious and bringing truth to the forefront, but dude’s is sick so that song was supposed to be the medicine. Originally [the album] was gonna be called The Medicine – the cure for these other dudes.

It was a great loss when Party Arty passed away. Do you have a specific memory of him you’d like to share?

I never met nobody like that dude. He really didn’t give a fuck, he was confident in what he did and he was a character – similar to Ol’ Dirty Bastard type character. He was before his time, I think he was better than me, then, and he would push me. His voice, his delivery. He came up under me, so I inspired him, but it came to a point where I knew – I didn’t guess, I didn’t think. On any given day, I really think I’m the best line-for-line lyricist, ever. That’s just the bloodsport of it. There’s days when he made me feel like I wasn’t. Just hearing him – so young, raw, untampered with – anywhere we went where we took the stage or song – he got the same response.

Big L is doing his album and he’s doing the song “Da Graveyard” with Jay-Z, Microphone Nut and Grand Daddy IU. I was the other person on that song, and I pulled L into the other room and said, “Do me a favor – take me off the song and put my man Party Arty on the song.” He’s like, “You’re buggin’!” Show flipped on me, “Yo, what are you doing?” I’m like, “Hear my man out.” He hears him spit one time and he’s like, “All good.” That’s how Party Arty got on that “Graveyard” record, because I felt in my heart this dude might be better than me! Not to be disrespectful in any way, but if you listen the song he sounds way better than Jay-Z. I’m trying to show you how advanced he was at that time.

Can you recall any life changing moments from when you were young?

I took Chuck D’s order when I worked at McDonalds. When he walked in I was in the back and my cousin was on the register. I was like, “You gotta let me take this order!” Everybody there knew I was rhyming, so they were like, “Go ahead.” After he ordered, I’m like, “Yo, I rap and I think I’m really good at it.” He looked me dead in my eyes and said, “You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it, but you’ve gotta put your whole mind to it.” It wasn’t corny to me, it wasn’t a speech – it was simple. I quit the next day. Now I’m AG – it’s popping, “Soul Clap” is out – I’m at The Bronx Armoury, they have some Five Percent thing there, Farrakhan is there, all the conscious rappers from the east coast, west coast was there – it was huge, and Chuck D walks by and says, “You know Andre The Giant is the fattest name in hip-hop?” I’m looking at him and I said, “Do you remember me?” He said, “Nah, have I met you before?” I said, “I took your order when I worked at McDonalds.” He’s like, “Get outta here! What’d I tell you?” “You said I could do anything if I put my mind to it.” He said, “Yeah, that sounds like something I would say.” Then I performed “Diggin’ In The Crates” with Public Enemy in London in front of 10,000 people and he shouted me out on stage. I’m like, “This life is crazy.”

My man was on 145th street earlier in the year and Rakim comes up to him and says, “Yo, I know you from somewhere. I seen you around.” He’s like, “I run with Showbiz & AG.” He was like, “AG? Yo, I gotta get with the God,” and gives him his phone number. I call him, we start chopping it up, I’m like, “Yo, I just need you to get on my album.” He’s like, “Yo, sixteen for sixteen. I’ll do one for your, you do one for mine.” That was the highlight of my career, man. Remember I told you I wanted to do what this guy did to this crowd, and now I got this guy reaching out to me, talking about he wants me on his shit! That’s crazy to me. It’s crazy to be in a studio and KRS-One is doing “I Can’t Wake Up” and he shouted me out. I used to sit across from B-Boy Records to see if he would come out! I was really on it, and they never would come out, but it’s three blocks from where I live and I’m waiting for KRS-One. So when we finally met and he did that? Then I saw on VH-1 on the ‘Top 50 Albums’ and he had Runaway Slave as the greatest album of all time? That was it for me, man. Not say that I’m gonna die, but if I die tomorrow? I’m above the clouds.

My first real idols were Run-DMC, because of the way they did it. The sneaker deals, the leather jackets, the way “Sucker MC’s” didn’t have a bassline! Run-DMC and Rakim, all-time are my favorite. Rakim was so conscious and Run-DMC were so big and star-ish, rock group-ish, I just loved the contrast. Then I did the 19 Naughty III tour with Run-DMC, 53 dates and I’m with Run-DMC on the same stage! Then we did Barcelona with Big Daddy Kane. Big Daddy Kane! If you know the Rap’s Outta Control show with DJ Eclipse? The opening intro is me and Kool G Rap, we did a show in LA with Slick Rick. So somewhere along the line, everybody I really stole from or wanted to follow, we’ve all connected and it’s became full circle where we’re on the same playing field, and that validates me. Not no record sales. The fan’s love is always dope, but it’s the love I get from other artists that really makes me feel that I belong.

What is it about being a Bronx dude that separates you from the other boroughs?

The same concrete that birthed hip-hop, birthed me. I was raised right alongside hip-hop. I was born in 1970, hip-hop was born in 1973. As far as I can remember I’ve heard it, I’ve seen it, it’s different. Park jams – I witnessed every aspect of it, it didn’t have to get to me, it was right where I was at anyway. THat’s what I carry with me and I think that makes me different from anyone anywhere else. I lived around the corner from Funky 4+1, B-Boy Records was down the street, Afrika Bambaata lives right here in Bronx River, Kool Herc is right here over on Sedgwick and Cedar, it’s all right in my neighborhood! Seeing that, letting that be a part of me, putting it in my body – it’s forever. This is why I have to make the records that I make now. If I didn’t see that I probably could be some sell-out rapper! [laughs] I can’t do nothing but stick to the rules because it’s not something that I caught second hand. It’s something that I experienced first hand.

An edited version of this feature first appeared in Acclaim Magazine.

Aaron Fuchs continues discussing key moments in Tuff City history, including working with Teddy Riley, Spoonie Gee, Marley Marl, DJ Hot Day and the Cold Crush Brothers.

Aaron Fuchs discusses working with Pumpkin, addresses the Ultramagnetic Basement Tapes controvery, names his three favorite Tuff City records and reflects and how the music histroy books will view his legacy.

Starting out as a promising young DJ and producer in Boston, Joe Mansfield was responsible for the first Ed OG album and was heavily involved in Scientifik‘s tragically short career, while also producing some amazing white label remizes with DJ Shame and Sean C. as the Vinyl Reanimators. He also started Traffic Entertainment and Get On Down, while amassing an incredible collection of drum machines, some of which featured in his first book, titled Beat Box – A Drum Machine Obsession. I had the chance to pick his brain last Friday on all things drum computer…

Robbie: How did you start working with Ed OG?

Joe Mansfield: I was doing beats at the time, trying to find MC’s that were willing to rhyme over some of my tracks. A friend of Ed’s, this guy Money 1, was someone I working with and he happened to live nearby me. He brought Ed by my basement studio one day and we kinda clicked. I started making tracks for him and through that process we came up with his whole first album, pretty much.

So the Awesome Two were involved more in an A&R kind of role?

Yeah, they were more executive producers – Ted was Ed’s cousin. We would record tracks at my studio – well, my basement. It wasn’t a real studio, it was pretty primative. On the weekends, Ed would go up to New York and bring ‘em to his cousins to check out, so they shopped the tracks to labels and got the record deal. I did the beats and they handled the financial end of that record. The backbone of everything was done in my basement and then I would go up to Powerplay with my sequencer and my sampler and just dump everything down there.

What equipment did you use for that project?

I used an ASQ-10, it was the sequencer part of the MPC-60 without the sampler part or the drum pads. Rodger Linn made that. At that stage I couldn’t afford an MPC. It was agreat sequencer, really easy to work with. At taht time I had an 808, I would have used some of the hi-hat every once in a while, and I had an Emax sampler, which is made by E-MU, so it sounds alot like an SP-1200. It has the same filters and you get the same gritty sound but it’s a keyboard sampler. The tamborine from “I Got Ta Have It” is from the Roland R-8 drum machine, and the snare from “Be A Father To Your Child.”

What about your work with Scientifik?

He was from Ed’s crew, so while we were recording the album, Ed and I teamed-up and signed Scientifik to that company. The same time I was working on Ed’s first album I was also recording Scientifik in my basement studio every other day. They were The Most Blunted tracks, and by the time we finally ended up getting him a record deal, some of those started to get a little older so we didn’t use many of them for Criminal. We brought in new producers and started doing new stuff. The first label that wanted to sign him was Loud Records, and we didn’t end up taking that deal. Steve Rifkind made us an offer we were really close to signing, and at the time we were just kids and Chemistry offered us more money and we went with them. Looking back, it was a bad move because I feel that Loud would have put something behind him and he would have been a lot bigger. He got slept-on just because he fell through the cracks. He was a really good MC. Chemistry didn’t push it because they were having financial troubles at the time and the label was falling apart.

At least you got a Diamond D beat out of it though! A lot of the loops on The Most Blunted turned up on other records too, like “I Ain’t The Damn One” rocking the “Memory Lane” beat that Nas used.

Yeah, I recorded 50 tracks with Scientifik and by the time we recorded Criminal it startered sounding old to him. In hindsight it would have been cool to revamp that and use it on Criminal with new vocals, but it didn’t work out.

What was the first piece of equipment you ever purchased?

The first drum machine I ever bought was a used [TR] 808 out of a classified ad in the paper when I was fifteen years-old. I was a big fan of Run-DMC and Bambatta, so I was interested in the sound of the 808 when I figured out what it was, to try to remake “Planet Rock” ot whatever. I originally bought the machines to augment my production and it grew from there. In the early 90′s I would go on the road a lot, record hunting. I would drive from Boston across the country and stay on the road for weeks, searching out record stores in other cities just to find loops and beats and rare groove stuff. I would also shop at thrift stores to find records and they would sometimes have instruments or stereo gear. So on those trips I found a lotta drum machines that were really cheap. The little ‘Rhythm In A Box’ machines that were always cheap and people just disregarded them, but I always thought they looked and sounded cool and I would just buy ‘em when I saw ‘em, ‘cos they were like ten or twenty bucks. After years when I made a bit more money I could buy the more expensive ones but I just kinda got hooked on ‘em and just kept buying ‘em.

When did you realize it had become an obsession?

I had already experienced an obsession with record collecting where it got to a point where i couldn’t fit my records anywhere and they would take up my whole basement. Between the stacks of drum machines and stacks of records, I couldn’t move. For someone who wasn’t into music it would look like a madhouse, like, “Why would somebody have all this stuff?” [laughs]

I always had the idea that Duke Bootee used the Linn Drum on those Beauty and the Beat singles. Would you agree?

It sounds like he would have been using the DMX or the DX. Around ’86 or ’86 you could switch out sounds in those machines. If you had a DX you could get all the Linn Drum sounds and put it in there by switching out the EPROM chips on these machines. There were companies that would make EPROM chips that had 808 sounds that were samped on the computer chips so you could take out from the existing chips with the standard sounds. I’d like to talk to him though, because whatever machine he used he got a really great sound out of it.

How did you source all of those original print ads for the machines in the book?

When I had the idea of the book I had all of the drum machines and a lot of the manuals but I didn’t have the advertisements, so over the last three years I started collecting magazines to find that stuff. I would know the release date of some of the drum machines through my research and the try to anticipate which magazines some of those machines would run ads in and buy a whole series across a year to find which ones had the ads in them.

What inspired you to start Traffic Entertainment?

Being in the business for a while I was always interested in the distribution end. I worked at Landspeed Records for a while and left there with some people I met to start Traffic with Sean C. to put out stuff that we liked. Later we started the boutique label Get On Down to showcase design elements along with the music and present stuff in a really elaborate way. There were cool rock releases with super elaborate packaging but nobody was doing that with hip-hop and we felt like that needed to be done.

Is there a ‘holy grail’ machine that still eludes you?

There’s a machine called the EKO ComputeRhythm that’s super expensive. When they come up they go for up to $10,000, so I don’t know if I can spend ten grand on a drum machine. I recently found one that’s been on my list for a while from a guy in Perth, Australia last week. It’s not quite as rare as the other one but it’s a machine called the Acetone FR-15.

Do you plan to make a follow-up to the Beat Box book?

Two drum machine books might be a bit much, but if I could do another one I’d like to do it on the super-obscure ones that I only touched apon in the book. I had to give people enough that would recognise from songs that they loved. Even a book on the guy who invented the 808 would be cool, maybe [Dave] Tompkins, he’d be good for it. I’m not enough of an author to do the research – I’m just a drum machine guy who wanted a book of drum machines.

Him-Lo has been dropping music on these here internets for the past couple of years, but it wasn’t until his Horsepower mixtape that I really paid attention. Turns out this Philly Lo-Lifer has been deep in this here shit since the golden era of Philadelphia hip-hop, and his brand of non-progressive, anti-social rap is just what the city needs right now.

Robbie: How did you get started?

Him-Lo: We’ve been rhyming for a long time, ever since we were teenagers. We were part of a few different crews before we cut it down to just me and Clever One – The Buze Bruvaz. We were also in a group called Bermuda Triangle at one point with a few other members, we grew up with them also. Clever One, that’s my brother, and those other dudes we were at grammar school with, so we’ve been rhyming for a long time. Matter of fact, when we started rhyming the game was completely different. Now everybody’s rhyming. We would go somewhere and when people found out we were doing this they were excited, “Oh, you rap? Kick a rap for us!” It was so different at the time. So we were doing it at a young age, and I’m 40 now. We were so heavy into hip-hop at such an early age – not just the rapping, all aspects of it – we grew up as graffiti writers, battling people and breakdancing, deejaying, doing everything. That’s why even at this age now we still do it, just for fun. It’s what we do, we can’t really shake it!

So you grew up around Schoolly-D and Hilltop Hustlers?

All of that stuff – Schoolly-D, Steady B, Cool C. Matter of fact, one of the dudes who does the cutting and scratching for us was in an old school Philly rap group called the Tuff Crew back in the days – DJ Too Tuff. We’ve been hanging around him for years, and every now and then he adds scratches on our records, cos that’s one thing we try to do, we try to make sure the scratching is kept alive. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the group Three Times Dope?

That’s my shit!

We used to see them come around the way on our block when they were first doing their thing, trying to get on. I remember being young and first hearing Schoolly-D, sneaking into spots to see these dudes performing and stuff like that. There was a spot in Philadelphia back then called Dates and Skates, it was a skating rink where they had a dance floor and a lot of groups from Philly used to come in there and perform. We were a little younger but we still used to sneak into these things and see performances. I remember being maybe 8 years old and Sugarhill Gang had a song out, I think it was called “8th Wonder”, and I sat down one night and just played it, played it, played it and then I went to school the next day and I kicked the whole rap like it was mine! I was frontin’, I was a biter, and all the other kids weren’t familiar with it. I was kicking it and they were looking amazed at me, but after a while I was like, “I gotta write my own raps!” Hip-hop just got in me at a very young age, and I just can’t get away from it.

What was your first MC name?

I didn’t really have an MC name because I was trying to experiment with graffiti and come up with the right name for graffiti. There was a graffiti writer named SEEN, and I figured he’s got one of the illest names you can have for a graffiti writer, so I named myself HEARD at one time. I was running around with that name for a second before I changed my name to DRIP. My first actual MC name was given to me at the time that we we used to be boostin’ Polo really heavy and boostin’ Hilfiger and stuff like that. They took the name Tommy Hilfiger and they called me Slimey Illfingers. I ran with that for a long time.

So you were part of that whole ‘Million Man Rush’ era?

We did a lotta boostin’ and running into stores and stealing Polo and various different clothes. So my first MC name was called Slimey Illfingers, and after some years went on I grew tired of it. I knew some people in this one neighborhood I lived in, they were going around calling people “him.” When they were calling me that it stuck to me, and people kept calling me Him. It didn’t go away. So I took it, and what it really means is Having Illegal Money, and I threw the “Lo” on the end as far as the Lo-Life culture, so it became Him-Lo. Clever One, that’s self-explanatory, cos at the time he was coming up with so many different lines in his rhymes. Before that he was just MC Pu.

How did you get down with the Lo-Life crew?

I was introduced to a Lo-Life who moved to Philly from Brooklyn, named B-Bill. That was in ‘92 or ‘93. Me and homie Ant used to go out boostin’ and stealing cars and going into leather coat stores and stealing all the leather coats and stuff like that. He started dealing with a girl named Big Shirley, and she was stealing too – she was a crook, she was a thief – and we would sometimes go check her out. She introduced to B-Bill, and that’s when we started doing missions with B-Bill and rolling with Lo-Lifes. We would boost in stores and take a whole bunch of clothes, and then come back to the hood and we would sell most of the stuff but then keep all the Polo stuff.

You must have a crazy collection by now.

We had a crazy collection. I’ve lost a lotta things over the years, because in the past we were going to jail for a lotta different things, and when you do that your family members try to steal your clothes! We’ve still got a good collection, but a lot of that stuff is gone. I wouldn’t have fit into half of it anyway, so it’s aiight.

In the mid 80’s, all the best rap that wasn’t from New York was coming from Philly. Why do you think that was?

We’re just an hour-and-a-half from New York, so when they were doing things we were right there, catching right on to it. We had our own thing we were already doing over here, because the graffiti culture was already over here also. It’s a common misconception – a lotta people think graffiti started in New York – they don’t know that there were already graffiti artists here in Philadelphia. As far as the music and the emceeing? They mighta kicked it off, you can’t deny that, but anybody who does any history on that will see that there were already graffiti writers here. You can go on the internet and hear about a guy named CORNBREAD. One of the benefits of being raised in Philly is everything New York was doing, we heard it! But we had our own different sound and artists that they didn’t hear. We had our own brand of emceeing that was popping here that they didn’t really have access to, but we had access to their stuff.

Plus all the best DJ’s came from Philly back then.

That’s hands down! MC-wise, they had so many more MC’s, so I couldn’t take nothing away from that, but DJ’s? We got Jazzy Jeff, Cash Money, Tat Money, DJ Miz, DJ Too Tuff. We got some swift hands! We always stood tall when it came to deejaying. When they started having all those DJ battles, the first few years only Philly DJ’s would win it!

What was the first project that you released to the public?

We just started doing that, believe it or not! The first one may have been a year [back], on Chopped Herring Records. A project called Cheesesteakz N Beat Breakz. We had so much music but we didn’t know the alleyways as far as putting it out. We weren’t all that concerned with that, we rhyme cos we like rhyming. A lotta people started saying, “Yo, you need to push that, get it out there.” At one time when we were starting to really get into the game, maybe ‘93, we didn’t do what we needed to do. There was more of us at the time and a lot of different issues between the group, everyone had their little demons they had to deal with. But now we more focused and the way that the internet is set-up we can push it out there. Bob from Chopped Herring reached out to us, which we appreciate greatly. He helped get us out there a little bit more. We’ve got a lot of projects finished and done right now, with covers and artwork. Everything’s done and pressed-up but we just never pushed it. We just done it and had it as our own collection of music.

How did connect with Dallas Penn?

My good friend Marc Spekt, he introduced us. He came to Philly for a sneaker event, and I’m a sneaker head too, so we built and we took it from there. Dallas Penn looks out hardbody, and Marc Spekt – same thing. They ridin’ for us.

If you could make your own version of “The Symphony,” who would the other three MC’s?

Wooo! I’mma tell you someone that’s always someone I’ve rocked with – they’ve been fronting on him for some reason lately – Method Man is always my man. I love his rhymes all the time, I always rock with Meth. Big Pun was always my man, and then I gotta put Clever One.

Do you know what happened to the guys from Three Times Dope?

I think EST is in Atlanta, I know he writes songs for R&B singers. I think he even writes songs for Beyonce, so he goin’ in, he’s making some major moves out there.

I feel like he never got the recognition he deserved.

He was dope, just like a lotta other MC’s in the 80’s. The problem was we didn’t have any major hip-hop labels in Philadelphia, so you had to deal with either New York labels or other labels that weren’t used to having hip-hop artists, so they didn’t know how to push ‘em the way that they should have. They did the best that they could, but like you said, he shoulda got more recognition cos Three Times Dope was killing it. Their first album, Original Stylin’, had some classics on it. They were on Arista, and at the time that hip-hop stuff was new to them, so things didn’t work out the way that they should have.

Who are some good local crews that never really put records out?

The early 90’s, there was a group called Tainted Minds that I used to listen to, they was pretty dope. There was a group called 100X who I always liked. There was an MC back in the 80’s named Jewel-T who was pretty dope too.

Jewel-T put a single out on an indy label back then. What are your top 5 Philly rap anthems?

The Tuff Crew had one called “My Part of Town,” that’s classic all day. Schoolly-D had a song called “Parkside 5-2” about 52nd and Market, or around that area – 52nd and Parkside out West Philly. Even though it wasn’t all the way just strictly about Philly, I love “Summertime” from Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff, that’s always classic. Beanie Segal had one with Eve called “Where I’m From,” and mine! I got one called “Philly Fanatic” on Chopped Herring Records, my solo project. Late Nite Dinners At The Brothel. I feel like I described my city to a tee.

What’s the next project from you?

We got Buze Brovaz EP called the Sinna’ City Pickpocketz. It’s about seven songs on there, that’s gonna be a free download similar to Horsepower. Then after that I gotta see what I can do to try to get some bread! [laughs] The next project gotta count, cos we’re doing this stuff and we invest a lot in this. You’ve gotta sit down and write the rhymes, you gotta select beats, you gotta come-up with hooks, you gotta pay for studio time, you gotta pay to get the artwork and the covers done. There’s only but so many free download projects we can put out there.

Just read this wonderfully comprehensive feature on Big L over at Complex, titled Casualty of the Game: The Big L Story, and was inspired to collate a few stories of my own from past interviews. T-Ray, Peter Oasis, Milano and AG all share some memories involving The Devil’s Son…

T-Ray: I produced his first appearance ["Yes, You May" remix], but Finesse really had Big L. It was Finesse’s session and Big L was coming down, so I ended up producing his first session because I was doing the track, but it wasn’t like I discovered Big L. What happened is that I had another beat that Finesse wanted me to loop up for him. I didn’t like the way the beat he wanted sounded. I had brought a bunch of records with me, and I said, “Yo Finesse, I got somethin’ right here man. I’m actually thinking about hookin’ it up, it’s supposed to be for Biz but if you want it I’ll give it to you for this, ’cause it would work perfectly for this.” So basically, I hooked-up the beat right there in the studio. That final is not even a final, what people hear on that record – that was just a rough mix! I made that beat in about 30 minutes in the studio. Finesse went through his book of rhymes to figure out what rhyme he was droppin’, and Big L came in and I said, “Yo, kick me what rhyme you wanna do.” It was his first time in the studio so he was really green, he was new, and he kicked me his rhyme and it was like, “Oh, this is great!” Percee was actually supposed to come down and be on that, but he didn’t end-up makin’ it. I just threw that beat together, that’s why in the chorus when it goes to the [does the horn part] there’s nothin’ on it! I intended to throw some more shit on top of that, but Finesse had a deadline that he didn’t tell me about. So he just ended up sending it to his A&R and they just pressed it up and put it out!

AG: Big L is doing his album and he’s doing the song “Da Graveyard” with Jay-Z, Microphone Nut and Grand Daddy IU. I was the other person on that song, and I pulled L into the other room and said, “Do me a favor – take me off the song and put my man Party Arty on the song.” He’s like, “You’re buggin’!” Show flipped on me, “Yo, what are you doing?” I’m like, “Hear my man out.” He hears him spit one time and he’s like, “All good.” That’s how Party Arty got on that “Graveyard” record, because I felt in my heart this dude might be better than me! Not to be disrespectful in any way, but if you listen the song he sounds way better than Jay-Z. I’m trying to show you how advanced he was at that time.

Peter Oasis: The other show which stands out more than any show was when Big L was murdered. I had gotten a phone call from Finesse on the day that Big L was killed. I wasn’t heavy on the internet then, I got the news like everyone else by listening to Hot 97. I got a phone call from Finesse – I remember exactly where I was in my mother’s bedroom back in my house in Queens – he spoke for about an hour and a half. he was like, “Listen, I just lost my brother Big Pun, and now I lost Big L. I‘m gonna go back and ask everyone in the crew if they still wanna do this show.” ‘Cos we had a show that was advertised, it was a Diggin’ In The Crates show with everyone in the crew – including Big L. We had to go back and revise the flyers, and a Diggin In The Crates show became a tribute show for their brother Big L. And from that show came the intro to the the Gang Starr album, “Big L – Rest In Peace!” Premier was on the turntables all night long, said, “Put Your L’s Up! Big L Rest In Peace!” Over and over. I remember Fat Joe rolled up with fifty soldiers – like deep – they stood on line like soldiers, he came in, he wrecked his set. He ran through fifteen to twenty minutes of it and tore the club down. When “Flow Joe” started to play, people just erupted! You could feel the floor. I think I may have done one of Big L’s last shows – he came out during a Brand Nubian show at Tramps and did two or three songs. He was supposed to come back again on the Diggin’ show and he never made it, and it’s pretty sad.

Milano: I wasn’t around L as frequent, but the times I was I seen him do a verse in five minutes. I’m like, “That’s impossible!” I was actually in D&D, and we were upstairs. He come in and he was like, “Yo! I gotta do a verse!” We were like, “We’re leaving,” and he was like, “I’ll be out in five minutes.” He comes down in five minutes, and I’m like, “Did you do the verse?” and he’s like, “Yeah, ad-libs and everything”. I heard the song the next day and I was like, “He did that? He’s a fuckin’ beast!” Just being around people like that, you’ve gotta keep your sword so very sharp.

T-Ray: I keep a picture of Big L on my mixing board every day. He called me and he wanted me to bring him some beats – this was long after the first record and shit – and he lived way uptown. I had a brand new Landcruiser at the time and I took my whole family with me, my wife and my two little kids – a little boy and a little girl. Now they’re in the backseat in car seats, I drive up to fuckin’ meet L in front of his buildin’, call him up and his mom answers. He comes running down, I’ll never forget, he had a big fluffy coat on – I think it was red – he leaned into my window, we kicked it for a minute and it was just like, “Yo, thanks for coming out T!” He couldn’t have been more cool, this man could not have been as innocent, as happy… it was just a moment of us talking about beats, rhymes. No gangster, killer, fuckin’ drug dealer shit! I mean in his rhymes he always talks a lotta shit, I’m just saying though – at that moment the essence of who he was, was just a young man who loved rhyming, who loved beats, lived in not the best area – but not the worst, either. I give him the cassette, I pull off – I don’t get two blocks down and two or three undercover cop cars pull me over, forcing me off the road! Not only forcing me off the road, but four or five cops get out with their guns drawn, pointed right at my head. My kids are in the backseat, my wife is next to me, and they’ve got guns pointed at my wife from her side, pointed at my head! These guns are loaded, man! You know what they said to me? “What are you doing here?!” I was like “What am I doing here?! What the fuck are you doing with this gun pointed at me? I’m a producer, that’s a rapper, we’re talking music – what the fuck are you doing?” Then they said, “Just last week, seven people were shot right on that block! That kid that you were talking to is a known cocaine dealer!” I’m like, “Man, will you shut up! That is Big L! We’re trying to become famous!” Just what you hear him rapping about [on "The Enemy"]. He’s rhyming about how these Federals won’t get off his back – that is the fucking truth! I never really got the full low-down on why he got killed, but those cops and all that fake bullshit that’s going on in the world – that had a lot to do with it. There was no reason for that man to die.

Tommy Boy Records founder Tom Silverman started the New Music Seminar in 1980 as a music industry networking event, and in 1985 introduced the MC and Beatbox Battle for World Supremacy (the beatboxing was replaced by DJ’s the following year), which would provide a fertile showcase for both new and established rappers and DJ’s to make a name for themselves. The following is a selection of memories from some of the rapper dudes who either competed or were in attendance.

Role Call:

MC Chill – Cleveland born rapper who signed to Fever Records and had a couple of hits with “MC Story” and “Bust That Rhyme.”

Mikey D – Queens street battle legend who once ran with LL Cool J and would later replace Large Professor in Main Source.

Percee-P – Bronx lyricist who battled Lord Finesse and gave the world the flawless “Yes, You May” verse and “Lung Collapsing Lyrics.”

Johnny Juice – Founding member of Kings of Pressure and long time Public Enemy associate.

Uptown – Brooklyn MC who gave us “Dope On Plastic” and featured on a number of Buckshot LeFonque records.

Freshco – BK rhyme slinger who formed a group with fellow NMS champion DJ Miz and later recorded with Biggie Smalls.

Prince Paul – Stetsasonic‘s DJ and production mastermind behind De La Soul.

MF Grimm – Former battle rapper who went on to work with Kool G Rap and MF Doom.

AG – Showbiz‘s MC partner and founding member of Diggin’ In The Crates.

MC Chill: I first went to the New Music Seminar in ’85 when I came to sign the deal with Fever. That was the time when Roxanne Shante and Busy Bee battled each other in the finals. Busy Bee won, but clearly Roxanne Shante actually won. Kurtis Blow was a judge, and I can remember him saying, “I’mma vote for Busy Bee because he’s from the old school!” We started a whole Cleveland dominance in ’85, because another beatboxer – Earl Hollerman – won. He beat Wise from Stetsasonic in the finals. That was the last year they had human beatboxing in the New Music Seminar. Since Tommy Boy basically ran the New Music Seminar, I said to Funkenklein, “How can I get some people into the World Supremacy Battle? I got this kid named Bango, The B-Boy Outlaw”. He was like, “Maybe we can make him an alternate”. They thinking they got all these New York people, they got a couple of LA people, and I’m trying to put these people from Cleveland. They thinking we don’t stand a chance!

So I get Bango in as an alternate, and he ends up getting in. “OK, we got your boy in, Chill. He better be good!” I’m like, “Oh, he’s gonna be good!” [laughs] So Bang comes in – and he’s doing real freestyles. You got cats doing writtens and then they add something at the end – and he made it to the final four. He did such a good job that they said, “OK, next year your boy’s back in.” I was saying, “I got this other kid named Serge.” Serge was an acronym for Serious Effects Rhymes Giving Education. Serge started coming up the ranks of the Conflict as the next hot freestyler. By then, Bang had hooked-up with Ice-T, so by the time he came back next year, he was basically reppin’ Rhyme Syndicate and not the Conflict. So I’m saying, “I got another kid who may be even better than Bango – this guy Serge”, so they got Serge in as an alternate, so he was there but he didn’t get to go in that year. At that point, Bango had moved to LA, and he knew that if Bando got in the same year he was in it, it would come down to him and Serge. So Bango got to the finals with Mikey-D and lost to him. Again, I thought that Bango clearly won and a lot of people that was there thought Bango won, but if you’re from Cleveland you’re not gonna come up and win the New Music Seminar – not in New York and not in the MC battle.

Mikey D: That seminar was the illest experience of my life, and the most memorable time of my whole career. All of my years of battling paid off at the New Music Seminar. Mantronik heard about us out there, and Mantronik wanted us to get down with Sleeping Bag so he could produce. So Sleeping Bag signed us off Mantronik’s word and they asked me, “If I enter the seminar, do I think I can win?” And I said, “Yeah!” so i went. The first round was a preliminary match, I had to go up against one of my friends from Jamaica, Queens – Mr. Z. He did “We Drink Old Gold.” We went two rounds, I beat him, and then we had to come back the next day. That night we partied all night, ‘cos a lotta seminar events were going on. We didn’t get home until the crack of dawn, and then I had to come all the way back to the city. I didn’t get no sleep, and the whole of my crew that was with me, nobody woke up. Only me and Johnny Quest went back. I was exhausted, but the adrenaline rush from being around all of the celebrities and knowing I’m about to battle knocked all of that tiredness and hangover stuff right out me. I was good! I must have gone six or seven rounds against different rappers. It was two rounds a piece until you got to the last round. I battled King Sun, I battled Bango, MC Serch and a few others in between. Bango was the last person that I had to battle, and then I won the competition overall.

Johnny Juice: I was runner-up in the ’88 New Music Seminar Battle For Supremacy, behind [DJ] Scratch. That was fucked-up because my needles got stolen at that event, along with half of my records. That’s the night Mikey D battled Melle Mel, and Melle Mel took his belt and left. Melle came up on stage dressed like a World Wrestling Federation dude. He had these tights on and a dude with him who looked like a referee [Grandmaster Caz]. Dude was wearing a white and black striped shirt and the black pants. [Melle] said: ‘To be the man, you gotta beat the man! Whoever wins takes both belts home’”.

MC Chill: Melle Mel just walked up on Mikey-D with his belt from last year – the ’87 belt – basically saying, “Hey, put your belt up against my belt!” Mike is like, “Ehh, I don’t know…” and all the people are like, “Dude, don’t do it!”

Mikey D: He’s talking about :He’s nobody! He don’t deserve this belt!” I said, “I’m not gonna battle you for the belt, ’cos I just won this!”

Johnny Juice: But the crowd was like “Come on! What the fuck? That’s some bullshit! You gonna let him talk to you like that?” So Mikey was like, “Alright, fuck it! Let’s do it!”

Mikey D: So he said his shit, and I liked it – it was pretty cute. But then it was my turn. Now this guy had the nerve to start doing push-ups on stage! I tell the guys with the SP-12’s, “Turn the music off!” and I started goin’ on him, off the beats of his push-ups! The crowd went wild! That was round one.

Johnny Juice: Mikey came back on his second verse and destroyed Melle. Mel came back and started doing a written rhyme – it wasn’t even a battle rhyme – and everybody started booing. In the middle of his rhymes he was like, “Well fuck y’all motherfuckers! I’m takin’ the belts anyway!”

Mikey D: Grandmaster Caz picked both of the belts up, when I had my back turned, and started walking off!”

MC Chill: Then gave it to Mel and they both walked out through the crowd like, “Somebody take it from me!”

Johnny Juice: Mikey didn’t try to stop ‘em, and that pissed me off. I’m thinking, “Don’t let that motherfucker walk off the stage with your belt!” and he walked the fuck out! Mikey’s just standing there. I think he’s in shock.

Mikey D: Everybody that said they was ready to do something to Melle Mel. I said, “No, don’t do it, ’cause it’s gonna look bad on my part.” Big Daddy Kane was tryin’ to stop Melle Mel. He pushed Kane right down the stairs! He mushed Jackie Paul in her face! Jackie Paul, a main baller in the New Music Seminar! It was ridiculous, man. Grandmaster Flash came to me two days later, apologising for Melle Mel’s actions. And what did Tom Silverman and them do? They made me a bigger and better belt. [laughs]

Percee-P: We was with Steve D when he won his championship in New Music Seminar. As a matter of fact, the 1990 New Music Seminar – I was actually one of the MC’s that was in the battle. I won, actually to be in the battle. I didn’t win the championship, but I actually won placement, ‘cos you know to be in the New Music Seminar you had to send in tapes – like three verse or four – on a cassette tape. Ekim sent in a tape and I sent one in too, and I got picked. And Ekim got in it too. He didn’t win, and I didn’t win either – but we got in! That’s where I met Maestro Fresh Wes. I didn’t win, but a lotta people came out to see me. Lord Finesse was telling Ice-T about me and all of them.

Uptown: I battled for World Supremacy – that was the year that Freshco and Miz won. At the Battle for World Supremacy, you get two turns to rap. One of my gimmicks was, “Alright, I’m gonna give everybody they turn turns, and I’m only gonna rap once!” When I started taking people out with the one rap, it was like, “Oh shit! He’s not playing!” That same year Masta Ace was in there, Lord Finesse was in there. I beat one of the guys from the Dismasters [in the early rounds]. I made it to the semi-finals – it was me, Serge from Ohio and Freshco. When we get into the final round, one of the associates of Tommy Boy comes up to me and says, “Freshco’s ’4 At A Time’ is doing great right now, it would be real good if he won this contest.” I’m like, “What? What are you asking me to do?” While I’m talking to them, my time was running out. So I had to run on stage – if anyone has video tape of that final, you’ll see I run on stage and tried to come-up with something real quick – and then Freshco kinda capitalised on it, “Why was you takin’ so long, are you scared of me/I don’t think you was prepared for me!” He said some real slick shit and he won that title. I was like, “How in the world…?” The New Music Seminar wrote a long article about it, ‘cos while everybody was doing those battle raps, I was actually doing speed raps, I was rhymin’ backwards – it was a big thing. That was the same year where Miz won, but DJ Aladdin also got kinda jibbed.

Freshco: DJ Clark Kent said, “Fresh, you need to join the New Music Seminar”, and that sent chills down my spine. Everyone that knew me knew how good I was, but the world didn’t know. I think Clark Kent was trying to say, “There’s a way to do this. Go into the Seminar and show everybody”. And that’s what I did. In July, 1989 I won the New Music Seminar, and people were like, “Oh my god, we didn’t know!”. Everybody was there, it was the perfect platform. Diddy, Just-Ice, Ice-T. It ended up being a really nice thing for me. I think it was 8 rounds, 16 verses, so you went two verses against each person. That contest started somewhere around 9am and it wasn’t over until late that evening, so I was battling all day long. People would say this is a contest that rapper’s who have records out on the radio were afraid of. If one of the big rappers entered the New Music Seminar and lost? It would be a problem for them. You don’t enter this thing if you are already out there, because it’s just too dangerous.

MC Chill: The next year I got Serge in, they were like, “OK Chill, you had a good pick last year, let’s see how you do this year with your person”. That year the Juice Crew had done their big thing, and Master Ace was their guy that I guess was supposed to win. Him and Serge went first, that was Serge’s first battle, was against Master Ace. So I told Serge, “We better get in first while they don’t even know who you are. Ace probably think he got a kid from Cleveland and it’s gonna be a walk through”. Little does he know, he got a battle coming! Master Ace kicked rhymes about who he was down with and he was part of the Juice Crew and this and that, and Serge came and hit him in the head with, “If Run was your father and D was your mother, if somebody was your sister and so-and-so was your brother, if you went to school and KRS taught the class, I would still say a rhyme that would wax your ass!” The crowd went nuts and Ace never recovered from that. There was a little break before the quarter finals, and Craig G – upset that his boy got eliminated – got on the mic during halftime and started going after Serge. So one of the coolest things during Serge’s battle is that when he got back for his next battle he started rapping against the guy was rapping [against] and then he said, “OK but I gotta straighten out something first”, then he dissed Craig G with a couple of verses in response while he was in the crowd, then went back to the guy who he was actually battling and beat him! He made it to the finals against Freshco, and again I suggest that the Cleveland correspondent won that round. If you look at the tape – I hate to say that the fix was in, but in an MC battle, whoever gets to go last will probably win. MC Serch was the MC for the battle, and he did the coin flip. Serge actually won the coin toss, and then Serch said, “OK Serge, you go first!” I’m like, “What kinda shit is that!? He won the coin toss! Why did y’all make him go first?” Freshco was nice, and I’m sure that I’m biased, but most of the people there thought that Serge won.

Freshco: No one was ready for what I was going to do! These guys went into the contest with maybe a good rhyme here and maybe a punchline on bar eight and a punchline on bar fourteen. I went into that contest with a punchline every two bars. It was like if somebody takes a razor blade and starts slashing at your face. There was nothing anybody can do! I went up against Mikey D. I went against him, and I beat him. Kool Moe Dee dissed Busy Bee back in the day, and every bar was a death blow. So when I went into the New Music Seminar I tried to do the exact same thing as Kool Moe Dee, from which there’s no coming back from! All these guys looking at the wall, and make-up a rhyme about the wall? I ate them all up! Mikey D was supposed to be “the guy,” like no one could beat him. Before he went against me, he was thinking he was gonna eat me up, and I’m thinking, “You are not going to be able to survive this! Not with these little raps about ‘garbage cans’ and all this stuff. That’s not gonna work against me!” The guy that I battled in the finals was MC Serge, and he was from Cleveland. I think I did my best stuff against Serge. I was a fan of Serge, after the contest. When I watched the footage, his style and performance were the smoothest thing ever. I still believe I rightfully won, because every other bar I was coming strong, and Serge kinda did that thing – every few bars you would hear something cute – but I was going for heads.

MF Grimm: I was there for just about all of those battles. If you were an up and coming MC, there was no way you could not be in the Battle For World Supremacy and talk about you’ve got an album coming out. People would not take you seriously! You had to be in that. There was one cat that went against Masta Ace, his name was Bango. Masta Ace was the favorite, but he gave it Masta Ace that year! Bango was a problem back then. Ice [T] used to be there, I know Ice through Sun. Bango and Finesse both went to Rhyme Syndicate then. Lord Finesse battled Mikey D and Lord Finesse won. I used to be with DJ Aladdin all the time too, we were really tight.

Mikey D: I came back the next year and they put me up against Lord Finesse. They had judges this time and they said Lord Finesse won. Unfortunately they said his rhymes were better than mine, it wasn’t the crowd’s decision.

MC Chill: At that point, I’d brought Bango and I’d brought Serge, so now they like, “Chill, you got the golden ticket brother! Whoever you callin’ out from now on, you got an automatic in!” So I got this kid Dale – Chilly-D – this white kid. And they’re like, “Oh damn, Chill. Now you got a white kid? I guess he can freestyle too?” Serge, in my opinion, took the competition a little too lightly that year and he got eliminated in the first round, being a little too casual. He went to the first round thinking that he had a pass to the finals, and he was a little too lackadaisical, a little too relaxed. I’m like, “Dude, you in a battle and you’re on stage drinking martinis like you’re in concert in Vegas! Dude, this is a frickin’ rap battle!” So he lost, fooling around, walking across the stage like he Bing Crosby or somebody. But Dale is still in, and I knew it was gonna be a trip ‘cos he was a white cat and I don’t think they was ready for that. So he took out this girl easily, and then he had to go against Treach from Naughty By Nature. The most famous line of that whole battle, which is probably the only line that anybody ever heard, because after that they just went nuts, was actually a rhyme that me and Smooth hooked-up in the back. I said, “We need to say something about his hair thing”, because he always wore the du-rag on his hair. The line was, “Fetch this Treach!”, then he grabbed his nuts, “’cos I don’t care who brag/I’ll snatch that shit of your head and blow my nose on your durag!” he went out and said that and the crowd went nuts. There was no recovery for Treach.

Freshco: The year after I won, Treach from Naughty By Nature lost to a guy from Celeverland. This white guy… I can’t remember what his name was. This guy out-rhymed Treach! That’s one of those stories that people don’t know about. This white guy, who was a friend of Serge, he was so comfortable – he talked about Treach’s du-rag. He was just funny! If some guy gets the crowd, that can be it for you. Treach did not lose because he wasn’t good enough. He lost because that guy was just comfortable at being able to roll with whatever the hell was happening. The crowd was like, “Oh my god, this guy has no fear!”

MF Grimm: I only lost one battle, and that was against Supernatural in the Battle for World Supremacy, 1993. Puffy was the judge, so what does that really tell you? You might as well have got someone from a bakery to be the judge. Clark Kent changed the rules – it was supposed to be two rounds of 90 seconds. but it was switched to one round of 60 seconds. “Grimm Reaper, you go first”. I was like, “Woah!’ It was a no-win situation to a degree, ‘cos it left me no room to respond to what he had to say. So he won. Clark Kent was his A&R over at East/West. When you’re battling against someone that’s funny, there’s no way you can win. no matter how dope your lyrics are. It’s like a politician debating against a comedian. Laughter will always win. I learned that too with Supernatural. From the moment I lost that battle with Supernatural, I dedicated myself to being a writer. No more battling. I’mma learn to be like Edgar Allen Poe.

Prince Paul: I did that, ‘LL – Cool – J – Is – Hard – As Hell’, like breaking up stuff. I did that when I battled Easy G in the [New] Music Seminar in 85/86, and I used that cut to beat him. He was down with Original Concept. They were from Westbury in Long Island. Me and Easy G would turn out to be really good friends. He was the World Champion the year before, and I battled him to get into the semi-finals. That was my crowning moment. I was like, “I beat the guy who was the World Champion.” That cut was the icing on the cake – that’s the one that made it like, “Winner!” And I was like, “Ah! I got him!” After I did that cut, I’ve heard it replicated a billion times, even on LL Cool J’s records! I’m like, [whiny voice] “I made that up! I invented that!” Then I heard Jazzy Jeff do it , but he did it way cleaner and way better. After that I just put my hands down, like “Meh.” I gave up deejaying, and production was the natural progression.

AG: I met Salt ‘N Pepa, I met Ice-T, I met Just-Ice, I met MC Lyte. I never knew I’d meet these people from television, and now here I am. Lord Finesse did real well in that Seminar – actually, he got jerked, he shoulda won – and the people were coming up to him, “Yo, you did so good yesterday.” And I’m like, “Finesse – you know Salt ‘N Pepa?” He was like, “Yeah, they was there yesterday!” I’ve got pictures with all of ‘em. King Sun was the first guy in the industry to show me some real love, and I’ll never forget that. We ran around the New Music Seminar together and he had “On The Club Tip” out and he had a hit song, so all attention was on him. We related from the Five Percent anyway, so he would pass the attention on to me and Lord Finesse. It used to be a real big thing and I used to look forward to it for real, and then after a while it started getting watered down. It started getting really corny – the guys who were winning weren’t really supposed to be winning and the guys who lost went on to make hit records, so it was like, “OK, I’m concerned with that anymore.” I was thinking about getting in it, because that’s my sport, but all the dope dudes who made the hit songs didn’t win, so I was like, “I’ll just stick to that.”

Ikey C. Vs. Busy Bee [1985]

Roxanne Shante vs. Fruikwan [1985]

Roxanne Shante vs. Busy Bee [1985]

Grandmaster Caz vs. Bango [1987]

Grandmaster Caz vs. Melle Mel [1987]

Melle Mel vs. Grandmaster Caz vs. King Sun [1987]

DJ Jazzy Jef vs. Barry B [1987]

Having returned to the music game five years ago after an extended hiatus, DJ King Shameek is back rocking clubs on a regular basis in New Jersey and beyond, but you most likely first saw him do his thing with Twin Hype for their dance floor classic “Do It To The Crowd.” Shameek took some time out of his schedule to talk about his roots as a DJ and early production techniques, King Sun vs. Ice Cube and his involvement with the mysterious diss record “The Truth” in 1999, which may have inspired 50 Cent‘s “How To Rob.”

Robbie: What made you want to take deejaying seriously?

DJ King Shameek: I was living in California at the time – I’m originally from New Jersey – but my uncle was at a legendary club in Newark, NJ called The Zanibar, so every time he used to come to California he would always bring a couple of records and give me some stuff, and I would see photographs of him deejaying. That’s when I really started trying to persue it a little more, get turntables and stuff like that. This is when they didn’t even have a mixer with a cross-fader yet. I was getting these microphone mixers that just had the faders up and down, so I would just sit there with a left and a right, putting one up and then putting the other one down! It was hilarious if you think about it now. I was always collecting records and I inherited records from my parents – they brought me up on a lotta Motown stuff and some Spanish stuff here and there. I was preparing myself in my adolescent years, toying around with my father’s record player, trying to scratch on them! [laughs] I would try to do that when he wasn’t watching. I ended up leaving California in ’87. Before that I was just doing a few gigs by being featured here and there, it wasn’t until I came here that I started producing and deejaying professionally.

What was the first record that you worked on?

The first record was released in ’88, it was an artist that was signed to Jazzy Jay‘s production company, that was on Cutting/N.V. I was just doing some beats here and there and he heard some of the stuff that I did. We didn’t really have a budget or anything, we ended up recording it on a four-track cassette player that I ended up bringing with me from Cali. We gave them the master and they ended up pressing it and putting it out. Marley Marl was playing it, Red Alert was playing it, we were getting some love.

What was the name of the MC?

The artist is Kid Seville featuring Jazzy Jay and Shameek. The 12″ had a few songs on it but the main song was “Make It Funky.”

How were you putting your beats together at that stage?

It was done live as far as the samples – I was scratching in certain parts. I didn’t have a sampling drum machine like an SP-1200 or anything, the drum machine I may have had might have been a Roland Dr. Rhythm or an Alesis drum machine that had very small, thin, stock sounds. There was a foot pedal sampler that I had, a D.O.D. or something like that, and I was just triggering that along with the track. I would just bounce and bounce and bounce [to the tracks on the 4-track], so it may have sounded like it might have been a semi-big production, but it was only on 4-track.

That must have been exciting to hear your first record on the radio.

That was cool. I got a lot more work off of that, when they were playing it. That’s when I started recording with Twin Hype. Funny thing is, that’s the same way we recorded “Do It To The Crowd.” This was in a larger studio with 24 tracks, so I didn’t have to bounce anything, but that whole song was just two bars looped on a 16-bit sampling mixer – one of those Numark mixers that first came out with the 16-bit sampler. Everything else was just scratched in.

How did you meet the Twins?

There was a producer named Hollywood [Impact], a Spanish cat from Newark. I was doing a lot of scratching on club records – an artist by the name of Deniz, I did scratching for Sweet Sensation, Lizette Melendez, Tony Terry – with a producer who I had met through Hollywood. Hollywood saw me building a name and he tells me he’s hooked-up with the Twins and wanted me to be their DJ. I just added the finishing touches of the cutting and the scratching, and the last song that we recorded was “Do It To The Crowd.” You remember how back in the days artists would dedicate one song to their DJ? To find out it ended up being the first single? Wow, I was amazed. I wanted it to be different than the DJ just scratching, I wanted for them to write a verse and for to answer with a cut, so it was actually going back and forth.

That was the same time that hip-house was jumping off, right?

We fit in nicely with my experience with club music, and Jersey is really into house music. A lot of the elements that I used in “For Those Who Like To Groove” and “Do It To The Crowd” as well as the scratching that I did on an earlier record before that with King Sun. He did a song called “On The Club Tip” so we were riding that wave. That was the only song that he touched the whole dance scsne, he was more of a lyrical, straight hip-hop cat.

You also went on to work with him on the Righteous But Ruthless album?

Yeah, that was King Sun’s second album. I had already done the first album with the Twins and we came off tour when King Sun told me he was working on his next album. That was when I got into the producer’s chair and started doing more production professionally, when everything else was just co-production or doing scratching. King Sun picked a lot of tracks, which I was surprised, because I thought he had other producers. I did six songs and Tony D from Poor Righteous Teachers fame did the other half of the album.

King Sun had a reputation as a guy that didn’t take any crap.

[laughs] That may be the reason why he’s pretty much been black-balled from the business, I believe. He’s called out a lot of people, and I don’t know if any of them were bridges that he burned or might’ve said something to the wrong person. He was likable by a few, but hated and envied by a lot.

What led to you both working together?

He was our labelmate – we were both on Profile Records. Hollywood Impact was going to produce a song for him, and that’s when they contacted me to do scratching. I was good friends with Kutmasta Kurt, and Kurt would get a lot of these drops for his radio show in California, so I remember playing a lot of King Sun stuff and hearing drops from him, so to be able to work with him? I thought it was dope. I was pretty much star-struck.

You also produced some songs on Select such as Romeo Black?

There was a group called Style that was also in the whole camp of Hollywood Impact – Tony Tone, which was T La Rock and Special K‘s brother – I might’ve done a little bit of scratching on that project. They ended up getting signed to Select Records, and that’s where they connected us to Romeo Black, who was an artist for DJ Cheese who was producting them at the time. They wanted a track beefed-up so I stepped in and started doing production for some of the songs and arranged it a little differently. Another artist that DJ Cheese had was a girl by the name of Nefatini, and I ended up producing a song for her which ended up landing on a soundtrack called Talking Dirty After Dark, which was Martin Lawrence‘s first film.

How had you developed your scratching technique?

In California there was a real big DJ movement, a lot of us would practice cutting. That’s where the DJ crews came out of – the Skratch Pikelz, DJ Q-Bert, DJ Rectangle and so forth – a lot of those Bay Area cats, as well as those cats from LA – Bobcat and Joe Cooley. We were really trying to get our own sound. There was a lot of times that I was just locked in the house cutting it up when my boys wanted to go and play.

Why do you think the scratching was more advanced out there than the rapping at that point?

That’s a good question, I’m not really sure. I’ve never been asked that question to give you the right answer! [laughs]

Was it perhaps because there were more DJ shows than live rapping?

I remember going to a lot of events and even being in DJ battles, even before I came to the east coast and found out about the battle of the DJ’s that they had at the New Music Seminar. We would have our own set-up – it would be a really big hall and then a DJ would come in with their own speakers and try to overpower somebody. I would prevail a lot of the time, even though my sound system wasn’t major. I was always doing the cutting and fast with my hands, I’d play a lotta songs back and forth to wow the crowd. I’ve always been that type of DJ that wante dto hit people with the shock and awe. One of the first songs that I may have done something with was “Renegades of Funk” by Afrika Bambatta, and he did that little chant, “Ee ah dah yah oh ohh/Ee ah dah, ee ah dah.” That record I grew up on, which was originally a salsa record from Willie Cologne, and he says that chant in the song. I had that record, cos my father had it, so I would throw in that record and the crowd would flip! I would play the original and go back and forth, so I was always that cat to challenge my crowd, I wasn’t one to just do something that was safe. If they didn’t like it I would find out right away – of course I didn’t use it in my next gig but for the most part that’s what made me stand out. Just being able to listen to so much other music, I kinda had a head start before a lot of other DJ’s started buying records and wanting to scratch.

Plus your actual record collection played such a large part in that era, being able to play records no one else had was a big drawcard.

Right. If my father said, “Oh yeah, that part of that record came from a so-and-so song.” “Oh shit! I gotta have it! Take me around to any store, we’ve gotta look for it!” We’d drive to San Francisco to look for it. If I came to visit family that I had on the east coast I’d be in the record stores, so I’ve always been into digging and shopping.

Did you tour extensively during your time with Twin Hype?

We toured for a good two and a half years. ’89 we jumped on our first tour. We went as far as Europe, probably could’ve went further if the deal situation was still intact, but that crumbled with the second album that Profile Records didn’t want to put out. So we agreed to put out an EP which contained five songs and they did a video which didn’t do as well as the first project. The twins had a situation where they didn’t really have their mind right and got a release from the label after asking for it. They weren’t able to shop another deal, and they didn;t have my support because I was busy doing other things.

Why didn’t they have your support anymore?

There was a lot of drinking and stuff. I don’t know if any drugs were being used, but there was definitely a lot of drinking! As you get older, you start to treat this as a business and you see other situations that are better for you so you grow and you make that move. As I got older I didn’t want to be hanging out, I didn’t want to drink, I didn’t want to look for chicks – I had responsibilities. I hadn’t heard from them in a while and I found out that they were locked up in prison like everyone else did, through The Source magazine.

They were accused of robbing a gas station?

Something like that, they were claiming that they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was funny cos they had a song on the second EP called “Wrong Place, Wrong Time.” It’s funny how life imitates art, pretty much the same thing that happened to Slick Rick.

You also mentioned that you were at the NMS when King Sun got into something?

I remember Ice Cube at the time having beef with Above The Law, they were opposite teams with them being down with Eazy-E and Ruthless and Ice Cube leaving and creating his own force. The Lench Mob were there and they had an exchange of words and started fighting. That might have been the first fight in New Music Seminar history! King Sun was cool with Ice Cube and he ended up fighting with them, and pretty soon Ice Cube was saying that they were down with him and they were giving him shout-outs on a couple of songs on his album or EP or whatever he had out at the time. I remember King Sun sending Cube some demos and saying he was trying to get a deal now because he was already off of Profile Records. I was recording with Sun at the time, but I didn’t record this song with Sun – it was “Wicked.” It had the same deal where it had the Jamaican accent of the cat saying, “King Sun get wicked!” So Ice Cube ends up sitting on this demo, and Sun is calling him, “Yo, have you heard it? Have you heard it?” He can’t get in touch with Cube, so he ends up hollaring at J-Dee from Da Lench Mob, cos he was the coolest one out the crew. He was like, “Yeah, yeah! Ice Cube got it, he plays it all the time in his car!” Apparently it grew on him to want to want to record it and put it out! So he did that song and Sun was like, “Yo! What the hell is going on?” He ends up approaching him during Ice Cube’s performance at The Palladium in New York. He got on the house mic – I think Flex might’ve been deejaying – and he ran into the both and was like, “Yo Cube! Yo, it’s your boy King Sun! WHat’s up, man?” They had an exchange of words and then he was saying he wanted to battle him. So Sun went to rush the stage and Cube had security stop him!

Cube invited him onto the stage?

I wasn’t there during this event, but Sun told me that Cube was on the mic saying, “So what? I stole ‘Wicked’!” He just proved right there he pretty much jacked it. So Sun said, “Let’s battle!” and he said, “Yeah, let’s battle!” Sun went to approach the stage and that’s when the security ended up escorting him off. This was in the paper, and it was hilarious, cos the paper didn’t know who the other rapper was. It ended up coming out later on when he jacked Cypress Hill with “Throw Ya Sets In The Air.” That’s how Cypress Hill ended up shouting out King Sun in one of the songs that they dissed Ice Cube at. There was another song that we actually did that was dissing the whoe Westside Connection, I believe. That was something that never got pressed-up or released, but it got played here and there just on the strength of who King Sun was. I’m still sitting on all that stuff so I may release that stuff at another time. I’ve got a lot of stuff that I did with Sun, with the twins, T La Rock…

T La Rock?

T La Rock came around a lot to our sessions cos we would be there with his brother, Tony Tone. We ended up doing a song together thta I did some scratching on, and the song was called “On A Warpath.” I believe it was only released in the UK with Sleeping Bag.

King Sun also did that record about Tupac, didn’t he?

It was called “Caliphony.” [laughs] That was a demo of some sort but he didn’t release it. When he linked up to do a mixtape with Doo Wop he ended up re-producing it and did a regular kinda track. They ended up pressing it and it made a little noise. That was Sun for you! Sun would always talk about whatever was the center of attention, to get some of the light too.

Have you kept in touch?

I did get him a deal with some of the stuff that we recorded after the whole Profle situation was over and done with. I was shopping his stuff, and when I took it to a label they liked it, they signed him, they gave him money. They weren’t really a hip-hop label so having Sun signed to their label was a little too real for them so they deaded the situation. After that it got a little difficult to work with him. For some reason, everyone I kinda worked with were in some way difficult to work with eventually so I would stop the communication. Then he moved to California and he was trying to get at Ice-T‘s camp, but I’m not sure what materialized of that. Apparently he’s back here in the east coast.

You also did a record called “The Truth” around 1999?

Wow, you really dug deep, baby! That was an artist by the name of LP. I’ve never really been asked who he was, only because of the nature of that record, but he is the cousin of somebody that’s in the Diggin’ In The Crates crew. It was an artist that I stumbled apon by meeting his mother. She knew who I was and said, “You’ve gotta hear my son.” I geard a demo and I was like, “Wow, this kid is dope!” He sounded like that whole Diggin’ In The Crates camp and he was from The Bronx, so I ended up doing some recording with him and ended up finding out later on who he was related to, and he also has a rapper that’s a pretty well-known underground rap artist. I had gotten him a deal and for things beyond my control it didn’t work out because he wanted to do songs that were compatible to what was being played on the radio, but I kept trying to beat into his head that we don’t have that kind of money for that kind of promotion. Don’t expect your stuff to get played on the radio unless you know people that are going to do you favors! I wanted to stay on the underground level and we recorded that song. The song did fairly well and created a lot of underground buzz, and I took a trip to England and let them hear it. They were like, “Oh well, the track is cool but this is what’s going on right here now.” So on the flip side I did a different mix that didn’t sound too jiggyish. That was that era when people weren’t feling that jiggy sound.

He went at so many big names on that record.

He had another name before, but we just used his initials because we never really knew what would come out of it. He was going at a lot of people, and right after that is when 50 Cent came out with “How To Rob.” LP was playing his stuff, before we pressed it up, at one of Diddy‘s studios, and The Madd Rapper – Deric Angelettie – was there and he kept telling him to play it and keep playing it. I’m not sure if that’s how the idea came about for “How To Rob,” but 50 got a lot of flack for that from other rappers and got stabbed and got shot. That’s why we kept that artist on the hush. The album ended up getting turned down by the distributor that was going to release it because the artist wanted to make more stuff that was commercial. It’s funny. cos someone put out a YouTube video of the song with pictures of each artist he would talk about, but on the listing it said that Papoose did the song! I thought that was hilarious.

Illa Ghee was known as a Mobb Deep affiliate in the early days of his career, having appeared on Hell On Earth as General G, but his latest LP, Social Graffiti, has allowed him to free himself of any constraints and push his rhymes beyond well-worn street themes. While he was riding the subway the other night, we chopped it up about his early days and how Super Lover Cee inadvertently ended his cousin’s rap career.

What were you doing before you worked with Mobb Deep and Alchemist?

I was still rhyming, but I was more into the street life at the time. I went to school with Prodigy, they got cool with Alchemist and by the time I came home from jail Alchemist was hanging with them all the time so I started linking up with Alchemist too. My first actual CD I put together was called Body Music and most of the production on that was done by me. That was 2003.

Were you taking rhyming seriously at that stage?

I just wanted to rhyme on the radio! There was a show – Pete Rock and Marley Marl – at the time that was on the radio. That’s where most of the things I wrote were pretty much aimed at, just getting on the radio and lose my mind.

Was there a particular song that made you want to rap when you were a kid?

It was my cousin and my brother, they got me into hip-hop. My cousin used to wanna battle anybody, everybody. He had the turntables and everything, and that’s what made me really wanna get into hip-hop.

What was your cousin calling himself?

Skyski!

What was the first party they ever snuck you into?

It was a block party, and of course my brother had to watch me, cousin had to watch me, so they wanted to go real bad to the block party so they snuck me. I remember dudes would rhyme, my cousin would be like, “What’s up with a battle?” That used to be like a big fight back then! I used to be so nervous, cos I didn’t want my cousin to lose. He won a lot of battles! He used to get busy.

Did he continue making music?

He stayed with music for a long time. They came close to a record deal, but they lost a contest to Super Lover Cee and Cassanova Rudd. It was a talent show and they lost to them, and Super Lover Cee and them got signed because of that show. My cousin was kinda discouraged a little bit, they pretty much chilled. That was about it.

What was your first MC name?

Back then I was like Master G or something like that. I was like eight years old. [laughs] Then I went to Greg G, and then Craig G came out and I had to change that. I didn’t have a name for a while, then when I used to rhyme in my neighborhood people would say, “Yo man, your rhymes are real ill!” So I would just say Illa. Illa Ghee – and there you have it!

Was there a lot of lunchtime battling at school?

You had a lotta people, 4th, 5th and 6th period. I went to the School of Art and Design, used to see Kwame battling people, used to see Prince Po from Organized Konfusion. Pharoahe Monch used to come up here sometimes. The group I hung with – we used to come with a new rhyme every day! We would sit there, maybe cut class two periods – maybe rhyme in 5th period and in 6th period we would just chill and talk – but you had to have a new rhyme every day. Nobody read it off the paper, you had to learn the rhyme and everything. It was a good time.

Was Kwame nice with his?

My first image of Kwame, my first day of school I seen him and he had a colorful propeller hat on. I’m like, “Who in the hell is this?” I never really sat there and watched him, I maybe seen him [rhyme] once or twice. We pretty much stayed in our own little section, doing us.

What was Bed-Stuy like back then?

It was super outta control back then. When crack came out, it seemed like everything was more intense back then. Wild things happened, but still had more control and more sense than what these dudes have now. These young dudes now? I don’t know what they is…

You feel like there was more community or more respect?

Yeah, it was more respect. You had to really earn your stripes back then. You just couldn’t say you was this or that and nobody didn’t test you out and see if you was really capable of doing that.

How did you connect with Large Professor for ’90′?

I seen him when I was talking to Premier, and Premier was like, “You know Illa Ghee, right?” He was like, “Yo! You got a song that is so ill!” I think he meant “Morning Rain”. I started seeing him at different spots and next thing you know he was like, “I’ve got this cool beat I’m gonna bless you with.”

Did any doors open for you after appearing on Alchemist’s “Hold You Down” single?

I didn’t know what to do. I figured Mobb Deep would guide me in a direction of what to do, but it didn’t happen like that. I just had to learn on my own. I got good reviews for Murder and Truth, that made it to MTV’s ‘Mixtape Monday.’

How is the Social Graffiti different from your past work?

I call this my ‘lyrical revenge’ album, because for a long time I didn’t rhyme how I wanted to rhyme. The why I put words together – it was not how I normally do it. I pretty much dumbed myself down, but now I don’t care. I feel so much better, I feel free to rhyme the way I wanna rhyme – match words in different ways, say crazy, off-the-wall things that people are not saying.

Why had you felt boxed into something you weren’t happy with in the past though?

Just because I’ve been to jail, people wanna hear more of the gutter, street-talk things. I really don’t talk with the music about that. Sometimes, of course, you might let it come out, but that’s not the focal point. My focal point in lyricism – just good, solid lyrics.

If you could remake Marley Marl’s “The Symphony,” who would be the three MC’s to join you?

I would say Sean Price, Jay Electroncia and a young Nas.

What is it about Brooklyn that set you guys apart?

Our delivery. Most MC’s have arrogance, but it’s our delivery. You could check the files, from Whodini, Biggie, Big Daddy Kane. You know the whole Nas and Biggie thing, right? Nas was more lyrical, but Biggie had the delivery. Just like people would say Rakim was maybe a little more lyrical than Kane, but Kane delivery and lyrics at the same time.

Thanks to Will and Aaron from Tuff City records, I had the chance to speak to pioneering Harlem rapper Spoonie Gee last week, who set the standard for street tales and slick talk on his earlier work for Enjoy and Sugarhill before he enjoyed a late 80′s comeback with Marley Marl and Teddy Riley providing the cutting edge beats. After enduring some rocky times for most of the 90′s, he’s currently in the process of recording one last project before he retires from music for good.

Robbie: Being from Harlem, in the early days before records, did you have to travel to see shows?

Spoonie Gee: I went to The Bronx, that’s the first place I saw Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. First time I seen him, I think it was P.A.L on Webster Avenue. I used to go see the Funky 4 + 1, Fantastic Five.

How had you heard about them?

I heard a tape of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Four MC’s at the time, this was before Raheim joined them.

What the atmosphere like?

We had fun! It wasn’t no shoot-outs or nothing like that. Once in a while, a fight broke out. Back in the days we did it for the love of hip-hop, we didn’t do it for the money.

At what stage did you start rhyming yourself?

Once I heard Hollywood. I was what you called a poet, I used to write poetry. Once this rap thing came along…I always wanted to sing – I couldn’t sing – so that was the closest thing I’d come to singing.

Once you started rapping, were you making tapes or just performing?

The original Treacherous Three is me, Kool Moe Dee and LA Sunshine. LA and Moe was rapping already, and then I started rapping so we formed the Treacherous Three.

How did you meet them?

I met them through DJ Easy Lee, who was my girlfriends brother.

This is before Special K was involved?

What happened was I broke off and made a solo record, and then Special K, I put him in my spot. Then it became Spoonie Gee and the Treacherous Three.

Did you ever used to battle other crews when you were in the Treacherous Three?

No, no, no, no. I wasn’t into battling. That wasn’t my thing. I was just into making money, that was it. Nobody wanted to battle me and I ain’t ask to battle nobody. I was too busy having fun. I was not to make no enemies.

How did you get the deal with Sound of New York for “Spoonin’ Rap”?

Peter Brown came into my uncle’s record shop, my brother was working there at the time., and he told my brother, “I need a rapper.” He said, “Yeah, my brother’s a rapper!” So he called me downstairs to say something for him, so I rhymed for him and then he said, “You want to go to the studio?” Went in the studio the next day and the rest is history.

How do you feel about the “Love Rap” beat becoming a classic breakbeat now?

That was the second record I made. That was on my uncle Bobby Robinson’s label, Enjoy. Bobby Robinson my uncle by marriage, he’s married to my mother’s sister. I actually lived with him after my mother died.

How did things change once you put records out?

I was very popular – a lotta women, a lotta money. Partying. It was nice, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the popularity and I enjoyed the money. The ‘fortune and fame’ as you call it.

How did “The New Rap Language” come together?

That was Kool Moe Dee’s idea. I just wrote the rhyme. Kool Moe Dee invented fast rapping.

Why did you leave Enjoy?

It was time to move on. We had no contract, it was a one record deal.

You must have gotten a lot of shows once the records came out?

I started doing a lotta shows and I got to meet a lotta MC’s. I actually was on tour with Heavy D in Europe one time.

Around the time you started working with Teddy Riley?

Yeah, ‘87. I also was on tour with the Juice Crew – Marley Marl, MC Shan. That was in the early 80’s.

What was your best memory from those tours?

The European tour I liked, cos I was coming from one part of Europe and Heavy D was coming from another part, and we met in London or Amsterdam, one of the two. We met in the middle. Anyway, we had fun. I wanna go back to Europe and do another tour. That was my first time, I haven’t been back since. It was very new to me, I love the European language, I love the way they talk. The women from London and England – I love the way they talk.

You’ve been with a lot of record label over the years. How was Sugarhill records?

Sugarhill? I can’t really say they treated me bad, they just didn’t have time for me. They were very busy, that’s why I left the company. When I came along they were too busy for me, so I signed the release. I did a deal with them, I did a song called “Survival,” which is the flip side of “The Message,” so they let me go.

Then you went to Tuff City.

I made a lotta records on Tuff City. That’s where I made “Take It Off,” “The Godfather,” “Big Beat,” “That’s My Style,” “I’m All Shook Up.” I made the Godfather of Rap album on Tuff City!

What was the story behind “Street Girl”?

“Street Girl” was actually about a girl that I knew, and I used to see her every day of the week. I knew her personally and I would talk to her. I would ask her about how she got like that, and she would tell me. I would go to different clubs and see her. She liked hangin’ in the streets, she liked going to clubs, she liked sniffing cocaine. That just was her thing. That’s why I called her Street Girl and I wrote a record about her.

Was that a similar situation with “Hitman”?

Hitman was another person who I knew, he was a friend of mine and he actually did hits for a living. I thought he was drug seller when I first met him, cos of the money that he had. I used to see him on the avenue and he also had a club. He actually went out of town – he did hits. He killed people for a living. He was friend of mine, and one day I was with him and somebody told me, “Do you know what he does for a living?” I said, “Yeah, he owns a club.” “No, he’s a hitman! He kills people for a living, Spoonie! That’s what he does.” [laughs] I kinda shyed off from him. He’s dead now, but he was a good friend of mine. He was OK with me.

What about “You Ain’t Just A Fool, You’re An Old Fool?”

That was about an old man I knew that liked young girls, and I wrote about him, that’s all.

You also had that record “That’s My Style” on Tuff City.

Schoolly-D. I was talkin’ to Schoolly-D. As far as I’m concerned, his style was my style. There wouldn’t have been no Schoolly-D if it wasn’t for Spoonie Gee. A lotta people thought he was me, it was crazy.

Did you ever meet him?

We did a show together. He was OK, after we met each other, things alright. We didn’t have a fight or anything like that.

Did he admit to being a fan?

Yeah, he admit he was a fan of mine. It was OK.

How did you meet Teddy Riley?

I’m from Harlem! Teddy Reiley was working with Moe Dee at the time and we knew each other. Aaron asked him, “Would you work with Spoonie?” He said, “Yeah.” He lived in Apt. 1F in the St. Nicholas projects, I would go over and we’d make tracks. The rest is history.

Same deal for Marley Marl?

Aaron went to Marley and asked him to work with me, kinda the same thing.

How was it working with Aaron Fuchs?

We always had a good relationship.

A lot of people have sampled your voice over the years…

I get paid for that, thank god. My uncle Bobby Robinson, god bless the dead, he’s the one who taught me about the music business.

What’s your routine for writing rhymes?

Sometimes I write every day, sometimes every other day. Depending on how I feel.

You last released an EP in 2003. Can you tell me a bit about that?

The Boss Is Back? That was some old stuff that I made on my own. I just had it lying around so I thought I might as well put it out. It didn’t sell much, but I just put it out there.

A lot of Harlem MC’s are known to be sharp dressers. Did you always make sure you were looking sharp when you performed?

Yeah, I was a good dresser. I’ve always been a sharp dresser. I like to look nice.

Do you feel that other Harlem MC’s such as Cam’Ron have kept up the legacy?

I’ve never met Cam’Ron. I have a lotta respect for him, and I like him. I’ve never met him before though. I like Jim Jones. I’m still waiting to meet these guys.

Do you listen to much new rap?

I like Jay-Z, I like Eminem. Nas. A few of ‘em I like.

What was it working with Sequence?

Angie Stone, she’s my buddy! I’m trying to get her to sing on one of my records also.

“Monster Jam” was a great record.

That was another nice time, but like I said Sugarhill was too busy for me. They didn’t have time for me.

What happened after your last album?

I’ll be honest with you – I had personal problems and I did some prison time. I got locked up a few times. Most of the nineties, I was in prison. From ‘94-’98 I was in prison, so most of the 90’s the reason you didn’t see me was I was in prison.

Were you still writing?

I was writing, but I wasn’t really doing anything. I went back to prison in 2003 and I stayed until 2006 on a gun possession. I haven’t been back since. I’m out now and ain’t never going back.

What three songs would you play to someone who didn’t know your music?

“Spoonin’ Rap,” “Love Rap,” “Take It Off” and “The Godfather.” I’d play them four songs. And I also would tell them if you have a goal, don’t let nobody deter you from your goal. Stay focused and just go forward, and don’t never let your dream die. Just keep at it. You’ve gotta be persistent and keep at your dream. Every day when you get up in the morning you’ve gotta do something towards your goal, and I guarantee that you’ll reach it sooner or later.

What would you consider the highlight of your career?

Once I made “The Godfather” and “Take It Off” that was really it. I hadn’t done nothing for years, but once I did “Take It Off” and “The Godfather” my career just shot off. All the shows I did off of “The Godfather” and “Take It Off,” that was really my time. Whether it was overseas or in the United States, I really enjoyed that time. I’m actually in the studio right now.

You’re recording new stuff?

New material, yeah. One more time, give it one more shot.

Do you have a name for the album?

I can’t reveal that, it’s a secret!

Who are you working with on that?

I’m working with Rich Nice’s brother, Big Frenchie. Rich Nice is one of the Trackmasterz. Marley Marl is supposed to do a track with me as well. I’m even trying to get Easy Moe Bee to work with me, so it’s gonna be some nice stuff.

Have you heard about that guy in Florida who is claiming to be you?

I know all about him. I hate him. I’m trying to get a show in Miami so I can really expose him and bring him on stage. I’m working on that now. I’m going down there to meet this guy and expose him and ask him, ‘Why are you telling people that you’re Gabriel Jackson? That you’re actually Spoonie Gee? Why are you doing that?’ I’ve gotta ask him why he’s doing that.

Domingo‘s latest album, Same Game, New Rules dropped this week, featuring a mixture of veteran MC’s (AZ, Kool G Rap, KRS-One) and new jacks (Chris Rivers, Kon Boogie, Joey Fattz), so I took some time out to discuss some of the highs and lows of his long career in the music game, and found out some amusing trivia about some LL Cool J and G Rap songs in the process.

Robbie: What sparked you off to start making beats?

Domingo: My uncle used to go to radio personality college and he started deejaying for a radio station in Chicago as an intern and then became a radio personality there. He would send me cassettes back of him deejaying and I was always fascinated. When he finally came back home to Brooklyn, he threw his equipment in the basement of my grandma’s house where I was living and he would DJ down there and play the drums. My uncle was very multi-talented, I would just sit there and watch him. I always remember him playing “King Tim” and then he played “Rapper’s Delight” and Kurtis Blow. When “Rapper’s Delight” came out, that’s when I was hooked. One day I started deejaying and then it transcended into me wanting to do demos and write my little raps and do battles in the street. I did my demos with two tape decks, back and forth how it used to get done, then I went on to four tracks.

What was it like growing up in East New York back then?

East New York was homicide central, like Jeru said. I grew up with Jeru, Lil’ Dap – childhood friends. A good friend of mine, his nickname is Froggy, and he’s like family to me. We always say that we “graduated.” We were lucky to live to 21. I could take you to the cemetery and show you a row of all my friends who are dead. East New York was a very rough neighborhood, man. Early childhood memories is gunshots, trains running past my house – the L train, cos my house is right near the corner on Sheppard Avenue. Growing up with my friends – my friends are still my friends to this day! And the fact that one of my good friends named Edison, who I grew up with, if it wasn’t for him putting me in his father’s Chevy Caprice Classic and telling me, “Domingo – this is you all the way! Let’s go see Marley at ‘BLS, he’s looking for people.” If he didn’t drag me there, I would’ve never met Marley.

So you showed up at the radio station with a demo tape?

Marley was looking for new artists for his In Control, Vol. 2 album, and he announced it on the radio and me and my friend Edison happened to be sitting on my block, drinking a 40 oz. and just talking. He was like, “Yo, you hear that? Marley is looking for new artists! That’s you! We gotta go!” He went and got his father’s keys and we drove up there and I passed Marley my tape. About three days later I got a phone call that Marley wanted to sign me.

And that changed your life.

Abso-friggin-lutely it changed my life. I respect anybody that’s got a nine to five job, cos you gotta feed your family, but since that day in 1987 I haven’t had a nine to five job since then. It’s been all music. There are times that I just want to walk away from the game, cos there’s too much politics in it, but when I look back – when you work a job for 28 years, how do you transition to a nine to five from that?

You haven’t been shy about talking about your ups and downs in the music industry in the past. Do you feel like things have improved?

[laughs] I’ve been doing it 28 years now, it is what it is. In any business you do you’re gonna have ups and downs, I decided to take control of my stuff cos I didn’t feel like splitting 50/50 with a record label.

The first record you produced was by a young rapper named Fonz. How did that come about?

Radio personality Star is a good friend of mine – Troi Torrain is his real name. He approached me about doing a record with his nephew. Fonz is actually a little kid. He put it out himself – Star’s been around for many, many years.

Sweet Tee is his cousin as well, which is pretty ill. What that your first thing on vinyl?

That was probably the first independent record I did, but it wasn’t the first record. I was working on Rakim at the same time. I got signed to Marley Marl in 1987 – ironically, for rapping! I would always show Marley my demos, and Marley would say, “Yo, those beats are hot.” But never mentioned the rapping, so I kinda got the hint and just went on to produce. I worked on Craig G’s whole second album with Marley, I’ve done a few things. Marley Marl – I’ll always hold high in my life, cos he didn’t have to do what he did. I was 16, 17 – signing me to his production team and all that – so I’ll always be grateful to him. If it wasn’t for Marley Marl, none of y’all would know who I am.

Was J-Force rolling with Marley at that same time?

J-Force is my dude! I got so much love for that pisan. He’s always shown me love and he’s very talented. He was around back then, he was that SP-1200 dude.

You’ve worked with some big names over the years. How was G Rap?

Me and G Rap bonded like brothers. I’ve been in sessions with G Rap where I always wonder what he’s gonna say on this record, because he just says shit that nobody says. He’s just witty like that. It was a blessing I did ‘Dream Shatterer’ for Big Pun, it was a blessing all the stuff I did with KRS. If I had to walk away from my career for any known reason, I could look back and say, “I had a great career.” I got to work with every legend you can think of except Jay-Z. Biggie I was supposed to work with on the second album, and then unfortunately he got killed. Tupac – I would have loved to work with – but he got killed. I worked with Big Daddy Kane, KRS, Rakim and Kool G Rap – the top four.

And Slick Rick.

You’re absolutely right! Then you add in the movies and the commercials that I’ve scored, I can’t complain, man.

What’s been your worst experience in the music game?

The worst situation is dealing with record companies that you’ve gotta chase to get paid, or that don’t give you your royalty statements when you ask for them, or just don’t give you your royalties – period. So in that case – all the record labels! [laughs] If you ain’t askin’, you ain’t getting – that’s the way it goes in the music industry. If you aren’t asking for your statement? You’re not getting it. If you don’t enquire about your sales? You’re not gonna know, unless you have Soundscan. And Soundscan is expensive like a motherfucker! It’s like $100,000 a year.

What was your best experience?

Big Pun, because I got to be on a classic album, went triple platinum, got my platinum plaque which I’ve always wanted, I was blessed to work with him. One of the most fun artists was Shaquelle O’Neil, because I got to hang at his house for two months, got to know him on a personal level. It wasn’t like working with someone who doesn’t know how to be an artist, because he does. That was interesting.

What can tell em about the God Sunz on Tru Criminal?

It was great working with them. Bacardi 151, the last record I did with him was called ‘Burn You,’ and that was probably my favorite thing I did with Tru Criminal cos it was so hard hard grimy.

You also did that compilation LP, Behind the 13th Door.

I was the only person, ever in hip-hop – to this day – to get KRS and MC Shan back-to-back on one record. Nobody’s ever done it. That’s that song on that album called ‘Line of Fire.’ How that went down was KRS laid his verse and I was in the studio and Shan was in the other room – KRS wasn’t there, KRS was living in California already – and Shan walked in and goes, “Yo! Let me get on there after Kris!” Eminem came to Queens to record that verse for ‘Hustlers and Hardcore’ and I didn’t know who Eminem was at that point. He was brought by Paul Rosenberg to the studio because of the man that gave me the deal, Steve Salem, who unfortunately passed away right before my album came out. I’d heard of Eminem as a battle rapper, but I’d never heard him on songs.

What was the story with you remaking ‘The Dream Shatterer’?

Buckwild – who’s my brother, I got a tremendous amount of love for him – did a version using a Barry White sample, but Black Rob had a record out with the same Barry White sample and Puffy paid Barry White not to clear it for nobody else. Pun had that beat – my beat – for about three years before he got a deal, and he always asked me, “Yo, please don’t sell this beat, I’m tellin’ you I’m gonna make something smashing out of it. Domingo, promise me you won’t sell it.” I was like, “I got you,” but I totally forgot about it and then he called me from Access Studios and was like, “Yo, you still got the beat? Come up here.” He played me ‘Dream Shatter’ and gave me the DAT of the master vocals and said, “See if it goes together.” The tempo matched and we went in the cutting room and Pun re-tracked his vocals and did it in one take.

What was the story with you connecting with Rakim?

When I got the call that Rakim wanted to work with me? That alone, I was like, “Get outta here!” When Rakim came into Power Play, he sat down, pulled out the spiral notebook and the rhymes were written in graffiti! He really does that! I recorded two songs with him, the third one never got finished. I did ‘Original Style’ and I did a song called ‘Bring It On’ which there’s a producer on the internet claiming he did it. I’m like, “Nah man,” cos I was the first person to work with Rakim on that album. Someone leaked two of the songs and Rakim just scrapped the whole album, but a lot of those songs have surfaced over the years.

You also worked on the second Fat Joe LP. which was my favorite record from him.

We were in Jazzy Jay’s studio in Queens, and Joe wanted to sound like Nas, the way Nas is flowing on records. Joe would go in the booth and Pun would tell him, “Nah man, you don’t sound right. You should say it like this.” Pun would tell him and Joe would do it. Joe gave me advice about the music industry, “Use your street mentality to do these deals, and watch how you win.” I listened to him and I started winning, as far as getting other deals. Joe gave me a little bit of a boost into the game too, “You’re gonna piggyback off of me and I’mma get you into the music industry and then you’re gonna run around and make all this money.” Sure as shit, it happened. He didn’t bullshit me.

What was it like working with KRS-One?

I worked on Sneak Attack with him. I did the majority of the album and I also executive produce that album, even though my name doesn’t appear on those credits. I witnessed an artist for a whole album in five hours, and that was Sneak Attack. KRS came into the studio with a stack of spiral books with rhymes written in ‘em, had all the beats ready to go and loaded up, and he was just laying one song after the other, non-stop. We finished that whole album that day – mixed and everything.

How was your experience working on the Kool G Rap album at Rawkus?

They definitely was tryin’ to make G something he wasn’t. Rawkus tried to boost themselves to the point where they could be with the in-crowd, and it just didn’t work out. The song ‘My Life,’ I did the original, Rawkus “claimed” they couldn’t clear the sample and then Mike Heron’s version was put on there. I love the song, and Mike Heron’s a good friend of mine. G was spitting fire on that album, and the sessions I was in were all New York shit, but they envisioned G Rap to be something that they wanted and G wasn’t having that shit. They tried their best to make G do shit outside of his comfort zone.

I’m assuming the original version of “Rising Up” was changed because of sample clearance?

Yeah. G loves that version the best out of all of ‘em, but of course we couldn’t use it.

What was the story with Hilary Duff’s sister being credited with doing the hook on that other single from that EP?

Premier did that one. Hilary Duff’s sister [Haylie] knew nothing about that, it was a cut! It wasn’t her live! The dude who put that out – Half A Klip – he’s just a con artist. He’s fulla shit. A couple of days ago there was a story in TMZ about Michael Lohan – Lindsay Lohan’s father – threatening a music executive, to beat his ass. Lo and behold, it’s the dude that put out Half A Klip! How ironic is that? This is the same dude, when Big Pun The Legacy DVD came out – I did that song ‘Bronx Niggas’ that’s in the DVD – and my lawyer approached the company that put it out with a cease and desist, cos I own the copyright to that. Some paperwork pops up, “You signed a licensing deal for this for $950.” This dude from Chinga Chang forged my signature on the paperwork and got the money!

What are some memorable sessions you sat in at with Marley Marl?

I was around for Mama Said Knock You Out. He would go the Tunnel nightclub with me and Marley, he would zone out to the music and go back to the studio. We recorded in Marley’s house in Spring Valley, New York. I was in Chung King with Marley when he did the ‘Jingling Baby’ remix. A lotta people don’t know this, but when it gets to the part with ‘Walking On Sunshine,’ if you pay close attention, Marley Marl left the metronome in on the record. You can hear the metronome blipping throughout the sample! This year I brought it up to Marley, cos I was in the studio when he mixed it. I said, “You did something on that record that I bet nobody knows you did.” He said, “Yeah I know, I did that on purpose to fuck with people, and you’re the only one who ever noticed.”

What was your involvement with Blahzay Blahzay’s “Danger”?

PF Cuttin’ came up to RUSH Management and he played a cassette of it. The minute he played it, I was like, “Yo! Who you putting this through?” And he said, “It’s just a demo.” I called up my friend Kenyatta Bell up at Mercury, played it for them and Blahzay had a record deal within the next few hours.

Was sample clearance the reason you have all those alternative versions of songs you’ve done?

The ‘Dream Shatterer’ remix, I actually did for Pun, cos he asked me, “What else can you do with this?” I did “1st of the Month” remix for Bone Thugs-N-Harmony that only came out in Europe. I’ve done remixes for Kid Frost, Dru Down.

Why do you think the art of the album has been lost to an extent?

You’ve got kids putting out ‘mixtapes’ everyday when they’re really albums. Mixtapes consist of songs from the artist, whether they’re jacked or original beats, a DJ would host it and cut it up. That’s a mixtape. A mixtape is not, ‘Here’s ten songs, that’s a mixtape!’ No DJ, no nothin.’ I hope that the hip-hop that I grew-up with and I’ve done can get up off it’s feet and rock again, but I highly doubt that’ll ever happen, because it’s such a lost artform. It’s sad, because it’s going the route of disco music. Disco was pumping, it was in every club – now where’s disco? It’s been dead for years. When Nas said, ‘Hip-hop Is Dead,’ that was a bold statement, but it was damn near correct.

Is there anything that can be done to revive it?

[laughs] It’s past that point, I don’t know if it can be revived 100% back to what it was. Fans need to be fans and let the rappers be the rappers, let the producers be the producers. Support your local artists and it can help hip-hop get back some it’s integrity.

You’re dropping a new album so you can’t have given up completely.

The album is the last album I’m ever doing for me, producer album. I did this because people hitting me on Facebook, ‘You should do an album, I’ll support it.’ My point of doing an album was, ‘OK, I’ll put out an album.’ At the end of the day it goes back the fans. Even if you don’t like my music, go and support Cormega. Cormega’s new album is album of the year in my book.

Fonz - “Cruisin’ In The Benz”

Rakim - “Original Style”

Fat Joe - “Success”

Kool G Rap - “Risin’ Up”

Big Punisher - “Dream Shatterer”

Masta Ace - “Dear Diary”

Slick Rick - “Trouble On The Westside Highway”