Speaker 1: Of Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, what's up? This is Questlove and you're checking
Speaker 1: out QLs Classic. So some time back, way back, I
Speaker 1: think around twenty eighteen, there was a mythical unearthed with
Speaker 1: quotations project called Top Shelf nineteen eighty eight. It featured
Speaker 1: like a lot of the all stars of the what
Speaker 1: I call the Latin Quarter era of hip hop, the
Speaker 1: Latin Quarter era known as the classic hip hop era.
Speaker 1: A lot of those songs that are now staples and
Speaker 1: hip hop they basically got their debut when.
Speaker 2: DJ Red Alert was spinning at the Latin Quarter.
Speaker 1: Womonarias like Chubb Rot, also Grad Master Cast, Belly, Mal
Speaker 1: Smooth be Of Nice, Smooth Dress, A Black Sheet, Masta,
Speaker 1: A Grandpoopa, Jungle Brothers, Dougie Fresh, Special, Led, MC Light,
Speaker 1: Craig G, Big Daddy, Kane, Bis Marquis, and of course
Speaker 1: MC Search. What can I say, man, this is like
Speaker 1: one of those rare summit meetings that I've always dreamed
Speaker 1: about having a conversation with my uh, you know, my
Speaker 1: comrades and the gods that built hip hop culture as
Speaker 1: I knew and loved it. Ladies and gentlemen, let's go
Speaker 1: back back in time to a classic era and Quest
Speaker 1: Love Supreme history. This is the Top Shelf nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight episode Let's go.
Speaker 2: So Luke that man.
Speaker 1: Hatt's just let's just kick it off. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: do not attempt to adjust your your.
Speaker 2: Doing your dial.
Speaker 1: This is probably my my, my greatest dream manifesting right
Speaker 1: now in front of in front of my eyes, Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, I'm surround the ride, all my idols literally
Speaker 1: in front of This is Quest Love Supreme. Only on Pandora.
Speaker 1: We have the world's greatest right in front of me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna introduce you one by one. Starting up, we
Speaker 1: have sur Kane, Big Dady King, Hello, I will talk
Speaker 1: to you. Craig g Yeah, in the house.
Speaker 2: I want you, sir.
Speaker 1: This is amazing.
Speaker 3: MC light is in the house. Good evening, Hello, Special
Speaker 3: Ed is in the house. What it is like flat
Speaker 3: buy church as stand up for me? All MC search
Speaker 3: is in the house.
Speaker 4: White people stand up.
Speaker 1: We also have Vinji Greenberg from Roston Records, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: Did you bring me a Bromani brothers, I gotta go
Speaker 1: back and get you on about that. And brotherly, I
Speaker 1: el I'm gonna put your name bro.
Speaker 5: No, no, I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna say it one more time.
Speaker 5: I I led there.
Speaker 2: Get your jew right.
Speaker 1: I know I'm trying to one more time. Elkare Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did it.
Speaker 4: I mean, Louis Vats get it right.
Speaker 6: Word.
Speaker 1: We are here to I guess, kick off or celebrate
Speaker 1: the Top Shelf project. I can't stress enough to our
Speaker 1: listeners how crucial the year of nineteen eighty eight was
Speaker 1: for hip hop history. And you know to hear of
Speaker 1: this project. First of all, this came out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: at least for me. I never heard of this. The
Speaker 1: idea of can you give us who can who can
Speaker 1: best describe to me the history of the Top Shelf
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight project, the genesis of it.
Speaker 7: I'll take that.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 7: I had moved to New York in two thousand, was
Speaker 7: working at a record company as an assistant, and I
Speaker 7: was working on producing and writing music at nights and
Speaker 7: on the weekends. And so I started making beats and
Speaker 7: I was getting better at producing, and a mutual friend
Speaker 7: of me and Chris's introduced us, and Chris was big
Speaker 7: into digging for records and all that, and so he
Speaker 7: came over one day and we just made a track
Speaker 7: and it ended up being the track what was the
Speaker 7: first one we made Grand Poobas. So anyway, we made
Speaker 7: a track and we're like, oh, this is really dope,
Speaker 7: but it sounds like it's like nineteen eighty eight. This
Speaker 7: is in two thousand and three. And he kept coming
Speaker 7: over and we kept making beats, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: we had this group of beats that we loved, and
Speaker 7: we didn't know what to do with them, because you know,
Speaker 7: it wasn't like fifty cent, who was popping off in
Speaker 7: two thousand and three, was going to get on these
Speaker 7: beats that sounded like nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 4: So we came up with.
Speaker 7: This idea, like what if we got like our idols
Speaker 7: from nineteen eight eight to somehow get on these records.
Speaker 7: And we didn't I didn't know anybody, really, it was
Speaker 7: just like a dream. And then we came up with
Speaker 7: this whole backstory of top shelf Studios and all the
Speaker 7: tapes were lost in the Tompkin Square Park rides and
Speaker 7: we just sort of just we were just just dreaming
Speaker 7: in my bedroom. Literally just like coming up with this
Speaker 7: story to somehow give this project some context. And it
Speaker 7: wasn't even a project at the time, it was just
Speaker 7: a dream. And so a friend of mine introduced me
Speaker 7: to five to five Freddy and I went to it.
Speaker 7: We went to his house and we played him a
Speaker 7: bunch of beats and he really liked it. He loved
Speaker 7: the concept of it, which was basically there was the
Speaker 7: studio from nineteen eighty eight called Top Shelf. All the
Speaker 7: greatest artists came through there to record after shows, hanging
Speaker 7: out whatever, and during the Tonquin Square Park rides, all
Speaker 7: the tapes were lost.
Speaker 2: And now crazy by the way, thank you.
Speaker 7: And now now fifteen years later, in two thousand and three,
Speaker 7: we find these records, right, But now it's fifteen years
Speaker 7: after that. Because I didn't have I had, I was
Speaker 7: able to. We were able to make the record, but
Speaker 7: we like no one was interested in putting it out,
Speaker 7: and so it wasn't until we had success with Rostroum
Speaker 7: and we're able to do it properly that it's now
Speaker 7: properly coming out now thirty years after the fictional Top
Speaker 7: Shelf Studios was looted during the Tompkins Square Park rides.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think it's only apropos that you do
Speaker 1: it on an even number, which is thirty years into it,
Speaker 1: So it seems like it's all come full circle. How
Speaker 1: did you How did you pitch this idea to each
Speaker 1: to the artist, yes, to each member.
Speaker 7: Well, I thought that by having fat five Freddy on
Speaker 7: my side would help because if it's like two thousand
Speaker 7: and three and it's just like, hey, my name is
Speaker 7: Benji and I want to make this record, that's you know,
Speaker 7: So it was a lot more effective to be like, hey,
Speaker 7: me and fib five Freddy because he came on as
Speaker 7: an executive producer of it.
Speaker 2: Back then.
Speaker 7: You know, we're making this record and blah blah blah,
Speaker 7: and and people like the beats. I think that's what
Speaker 7: it came down to, is people were feeling the energy
Speaker 7: of the project. I mean, you'd have to ask them,
Speaker 7: but to me, it was like, you know, to me,
Speaker 7: it was a celebration of the music that we grew
Speaker 7: up with and that we loved and what got me
Speaker 7: into music in the first place. And so I think
Speaker 7: people felt that energy or I hope they did, which
Speaker 7: was just like it was a celebration and it was
Speaker 7: just like a cool concept idea and like, let's just
Speaker 7: all get together and make a record.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask, were the tracks initially made
Speaker 1: on n SB twelve hundred.
Speaker 4: Or no cheated a little bit. We cheated a little bit.
Speaker 7: We actually made them on an MPC two thousand XL.
Speaker 7: That's close and uh and yeah, yeah, so you know,
Speaker 7: but yeah, no, he didn't make them on sp.
Speaker 1: Well, definitely the spirit of idiot is in there. Like
Speaker 1: I've never thought i'd see the day where you know,
Speaker 1: someone's spitting over something that's one hundred and eight bp ms,
Speaker 1: which you.
Speaker 2: Know, for me, like.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm just a lover of of of
Speaker 1: fast wraps. So even with chub Rock's track, I was
Speaker 1: like whoa. Like the second I heard, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's no way he's gonna map and then he started
Speaker 1: like out the now. Yeah, absolutely, So I have to
Speaker 1: ask this room. There's there's one sort of common thread
Speaker 1: that's on almost every Quest Love Supreme show, which.
Speaker 2: I feel the.
Speaker 1: Common denominator of all of you, because of course the
Speaker 1: Latin quarter, of which no one salivates more over Latin
Speaker 1: quarter stories.
Speaker 2: Than I do.
Speaker 1: So yeah, without my corehorts here, who will make fun
Speaker 1: of me of doing this. I have to ask questions
Speaker 1: about the Latin Quarter. They literally, yeah, they made that
Speaker 1: jingle just for me because they know and I ask
Speaker 1: too many questions of it. But for me, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll be remiss to not let any stories of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight go by without without any Latin Quarter tells.
Speaker 1: First of all, was this room at all like socially?
Speaker 2: Because this is.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh tell y'all man, I'm too young to
Speaker 4: know what.
Speaker 1: You Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think you
Speaker 1: know right.
Speaker 5: I don't know what you're talking about. That spot really funny.
Speaker 1: You two are actually Juice Crew remembers stars I was
Speaker 1: gonna say. I was gonna say, was Juice crew members.
Speaker 5: To agree with ed? I was really young, but I
Speaker 5: have Yeah, I mean when the symphony was out, I
Speaker 5: was fifteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the shouting when I was twelve twelve.
Speaker 5: And but here's the thing about Latin Quarters. I met
Speaker 5: searching front of Latin Quarters when you had the Hate
Speaker 5: Girls song. And the way I wound up in Latin
Speaker 5: Quarters was I used to hey boy, my bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I used to answer the phones at the Rap Attack
Speaker 5: for mister Magic, and some nights I would wind up
Speaker 5: in Latin Quarters with mister Magic underage, scared to death,
Speaker 5: and I remember bumping into Search in front of there.
Speaker 5: I remember seeing a couple of shows there, but I
Speaker 5: didn't go off, but I would wind up there coming
Speaker 5: from the radio station. So it was kind of weird
Speaker 5: that New York didn't really care about your age. And
Speaker 5: because I had to have been at least fourteen years old.
Speaker 8: Well they made sure that you got a wristband for alcohol.
Speaker 8: So I was at Latin Quarters are fifteen, Yeah, and
Speaker 8: it was okay, And I didn't even want to be
Speaker 8: near a bar, like it was so much going on
Speaker 8: just on a music front, you seeing all the dancers
Speaker 8: and everything, that liquor was the last thing on my mind.
Speaker 9: I agree, I mean I wasn't even I think I
Speaker 9: maybe went to the bar. I can probably count on
Speaker 9: one hand. And it was all five times we're read
Speaker 9: alert to have poopoo juice because he would call us
Speaker 9: all to the bar, all the violators and have poopoo juice,
Speaker 9: which was myers rum pineapple, and I forgot the third thing,
Speaker 9: but yeah, so that was his drink. And I've never
Speaker 9: been anywhere in the world where they know how to
Speaker 9: make poopoo juice, access the Latin Quarter and one bartenders
Speaker 9: in Peace Chris Lighty, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 10: Well, first of all, Search is being modist because Search
Speaker 10: was the king of Latin Quarters. It's like, you know,
Speaker 10: when when you come in Latin Quarters, it's like just
Speaker 10: you know, it's Red Alert Paradise Gray.
Speaker 2: Mc Search. You know.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's how that's how it falls. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 10: if you come in there and you don't see Search,
Speaker 10: you gotta think something is wrong. You're for real. I mean,
Speaker 10: it was like he was the king of Latin Quarters.
Speaker 10: That's where I met him first, like really, like like
Speaker 10: when he the Hey Boy song, Like I remember the
Speaker 10: night when Search walked in and Read threw it on
Speaker 10: and gave him love and Search ran on the floor
Speaker 10: and started breaking it down dancing and everybody and everybody
Speaker 10: was screaming it for him. I was like, Okay, you see,
Speaker 10: that's what I need to be doing, you know.
Speaker 1: For real. Wait, now you mentioned something great, you said
Speaker 1: that when you would go with Magic. But I'm under
Speaker 1: the impression that Latin Quarter was more broad alt.
Speaker 5: Well, now, now the thing about it was is we're
Speaker 5: talking before the bridge was like, we're talking when I
Speaker 5: had like the song Transformer out. That was a couple
Speaker 5: of years before the whole conflict started.
Speaker 1: So what was the official first year of the Latin
Speaker 1: Quarter that we know is at eighty six?
Speaker 2: Celebrity Tuesdays? Eighty five Tuesdays and nineteen eighty five, Yeah.
Speaker 9: Celebrity Tuesdays with Paradise and Lamumbo Cars Awesome, too awesome,
Speaker 9: too awesome, too right, and Paradise was working, but it
Speaker 9: was special right, that's exactly right, special Teddy Ted had
Speaker 9: Celebrity Tuesdays.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 5: Eighty four it was before like the whole drama started.
Speaker 5: So I would go with Magic, and the funny thing
Speaker 5: is Magic would leave me. I'd hit Latin Quarters by myself,
Speaker 5: just like what the hell's going on here? And I
Speaker 5: never went to the bar because I had my little
Speaker 5: rope chain on in the corner, and you know who
Speaker 5: I would see. I would see Hawk and he would
Speaker 5: make me feel safe. That was my brother, because he
Speaker 5: would make me feel safe, and then I'd get a
Speaker 5: little confidence and hang out for a minute.
Speaker 10: But he's talking about the guy that I'm going against
Speaker 10: in the eight and a half step in video with
Speaker 10: the Braids.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Is this the Hawk that you gave a shout out
Speaker 1: to in Rapid Game?
Speaker 2: Yeah that Hawk.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm about to play out one second for half
Speaker 1: a second before he was a black thought Trek was
Speaker 1: Hawk Hawk Smooth and his acronym was Hype African Warrior,
Speaker 1: keep kicking this smooth.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry listening. I'm sorry to.
Speaker 4: African Warrior keeping it smooth. I'm sorry, good night.
Speaker 5: But it predated the South bronx Bridge beef, so you
Speaker 5: know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But that was kind of Brooklyn. Yo. Did you take
Speaker 2: the train from fall rockaway there?
Speaker 4: I just took the second street I would take.
Speaker 2: The Age was the Latin Quarter.
Speaker 1: The the was before the Latin Quarter was New York's
Speaker 1: regional then, Like, was this the first Manhattan?
Speaker 2: Remember to me? Like I was so for me?
Speaker 9: Eighty three was lynn Brook Hot Skates, Empire, Roller Rink,
Speaker 9: United States of America and Queens like the only place
Speaker 9: to really hear hip hop was split between hip hop
Speaker 9: and dance music and the Five.
Speaker 2: Boroughs Roxy and dance.
Speaker 9: But they were real strict about young boys going in there,
Speaker 9: like they were real like you it was it was
Speaker 9: tough to get.
Speaker 4: In there when you were young.
Speaker 1: And dance Tarrian.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you were getting your hip hop from the roller
Speaker 8: Rins without questions, questions, skates, skate.
Speaker 2: My first show at USA, I got boot what yeah, I.
Speaker 9: Think I got my first show at Empire Roller Rink.
Speaker 9: I got booted because I had a trash record called
Speaker 9: Melissa that was trash. But I could dance really good,
Speaker 9: so that would save me. But that record was trash
Speaker 9: because you got to remember, I went to high school
Speaker 9: with Dan to Dana slick Rick, so I thought if
Speaker 9: I came out with a British accent, I would be fly.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, and it was terrible.
Speaker 9: So I performed at Celebrity Tuesday because you got some
Speaker 9: towour playing the record, and I went there and I
Speaker 9: got on stage and people are looking at me like
Speaker 9: I'm alien.
Speaker 4: So I started dancing and they were.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, white boy, go white boy.
Speaker 9: So I was like, oh, okay, like this I'm saved.
Speaker 9: Like I figured it out, like I could be whack,
Speaker 9: but I could dance. And then Vanilla Ice came and
Speaker 9: just you know, took that whole steak. But I decided
Speaker 9: to kind of grow and have lyrics and you know,
Speaker 9: become something better than just a dancing I.
Speaker 1: See wait, you said you got how so well, I'll
Speaker 1: never forget it.
Speaker 2: It was again with Miss the Magic.
Speaker 5: Joe Sla was performing and I wasn't even supposed to perform,
Speaker 5: and something happened technically with Magic just threw me on
Speaker 5: the mic and no DJ knew what was going on
Speaker 5: or nothing, and I had to kick an a cappella
Speaker 5: and they weren't really friendly with a cappella's back then
Speaker 5: because it was dances. So you know, about eight bars in,
Speaker 5: I think I'm kicking some hard rhyns. This is again
Speaker 5: before I heard Kine and I threw all like seven
Speaker 5: rhyme books away.
Speaker 2: Yep, So my rhyme.
Speaker 5: Was mad basic and like I said, I mean, I
Speaker 5: just wasn't good and I was nervous as hell. Again
Speaker 5: I'm like fourteen years old. I don't know no better.
Speaker 5: But it didn't deter me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: But it was weird because when he mentioned USA, it
Speaker 5: was like one of the read like in queens everybody
Speaker 5: came through USA. But growing up in Queensbridge, the Recenter
Speaker 5: was almost like a celebrity spot, so you had mad
Speaker 5: people come through. I remember being ten watching Grand Master,
Speaker 5: I mean Graham Wizard did or cut with handcuffs on,
Speaker 5: and I'm like ten years old, like with my sepkin On,
Speaker 5: just amazed at it.
Speaker 2: So I've seen a lot of stuff. But my brother.
Speaker 5: My grandmother lived across the street from Harlem World and
Speaker 5: forced the projects and my brother would come home. The
Speaker 5: thing about New York back then is it wasn't as
Speaker 5: regional as you thought. There was somebody from any borough
Speaker 5: at any show. It didn't matter how far away it was.
Speaker 5: Brooklyn was always somewhere. So I would get first hand
Speaker 5: copies of like the Fantastic five cro Crush Battle. So
Speaker 5: I would say, like even before Latin Quarters, like Halem
Speaker 5: World was the spot, like you had to be nice
Speaker 5: to perform at Hall. I wanted to perform at Halem
Speaker 5: World when I didn't even write rhymes. I just was
Speaker 5: rhyming off the top of the head non stop, and
Speaker 5: I was like, Halem World's the spot until I wound
Speaker 5: up at Latin Quarters scared to death, or Union Square
Speaker 5: because I was always by myself, magic with I'd get
Speaker 5: in this car with him and then he'd break out.
Speaker 2: Just leave it.
Speaker 5: Union Square was my first spot outside of Brooklyn, really,
Speaker 5: my first hip hop spot outside of Brooklyn can matter
Speaker 5: of fact, Yeah, yeah, Rock Kim, I used to just
Speaker 5: go to Empire.
Speaker 2: I ain't going nowhere. I was a kid. I walked
Speaker 2: the Empire and walked back home. Okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we just was in the hood, local local spots,
Speaker 5: little parties in the hood and stuff like that, block parties.
Speaker 5: But yeah, Rock Kim was at Union Square. My brother
Speaker 5: won tickets on the radio. Yeah we went, Yeah, we went,
Speaker 5: and you know, we never stopped going.
Speaker 1: We was like, oh so even after youngest in charge
Speaker 1: came out and legal don't I don't know what the
Speaker 1: last official year of Latin Quarter was, but nineteen eighty eight, damn. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yep, that was it.
Speaker 9: And it's it's really a very sad story because it's
Speaker 9: I don't think I've ever told this story, but don't cry.
Speaker 9: Yeah nah, So me Fat Raoul, who was the original DJ.
Speaker 9: We came in there on a Thursday night just kind
Speaker 9: of was me Chris Light he may rest and peace,
Speaker 9: big diar.
Speaker 4: Read and we just strolled up in there on a
Speaker 4: Thursday night.
Speaker 9: And in fact, Raoul was DJINGHM and we were going
Speaker 9: to turn it into a hip hop night. We were
Speaker 9: just like, Yo're like, let Red get on the turntables.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a hip hop nightdays.
Speaker 4: This particular Thursday was not a hip hop night.
Speaker 2: And what gay cabaret night? And was doing it?
Speaker 9: You just decided no, no, no, you don't understand like we
Speaker 9: we were just we were just rolling around the City's no,
Speaker 9: I need to verify, like be clear.
Speaker 4: Like I'm like like Twitter right now verified.
Speaker 5: You ain't had to tell this story, you know, no,
Speaker 5: I think it's important, like we on we on, you know,
Speaker 5: we on Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 9: We need to get supreme. So so I spised out
Speaker 9: like I was. I think, you know, I've been smoking
Speaker 9: or whatever. And I spised and I told all the
Speaker 9: people that wasn't bee boys to get out, and I
Speaker 9: said something real derogatory about gay people. And I was like,
Speaker 9: if you ain't a bee boy, you need to get out.
Speaker 9: And Big Daryl he just got charged and he went
Speaker 9: downstairs and there was this cock diesel dude with his
Speaker 9: man and we went up to him and this dude
Speaker 9: knocked Darryl out, laid him out flat, and Baby Chris
Speaker 9: grabbed me put me in Mike Goldberg's office and he
Speaker 9: said you stay here, and then things started flying, things
Speaker 9: started flying. I was in there for like an hour,
Speaker 9: like an hour, just sitting there.
Speaker 4: I came out.
Speaker 9: Place was trashed, empty, Mike Goldberg was heated, told Red.
Speaker 4: Never come back, told us never come back.
Speaker 9: And I come outside and Chris and Daryl and Ali
Speaker 9: and Red are just sitting on Chris's Mac some more,
Speaker 9: just sitting there and on the corner of forty seven
Speaker 9: the Broadway, and they were like, search go home.
Speaker 4: I was like, Noah. They were like search go.
Speaker 2: Home, damn.
Speaker 4: And that was it, that last end of the last night.
Speaker 8: Wow, that's crazy to even hear, because you know, we
Speaker 8: just knew that it was closed.
Speaker 11: It was like, what the hell happened?
Speaker 8: And what did at that point Union Square, the Sheraton Hotel.
Speaker 8: We knew that I had kind of taken up, you know,
Speaker 8: a lot of the slack and it was younger and
Speaker 8: fresher and everything.
Speaker 11: But I didn't know that was the reason.
Speaker 4: Why Mike, Mike shut it down, shut it down.
Speaker 5: I just thought it was all the stuff that happened
Speaker 5: when you left that closed it.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 9: And you know, it's funny because you talk about Hawk
Speaker 9: and Dog Cainge like Hawk Dog a Rock the original.
Speaker 10: Fifty original fifty six killer Ben Hues.
Speaker 9: When I was in the Quarter and they were about
Speaker 9: to do their thing. The one thing I loved about
Speaker 9: those dudes is they would tell me.
Speaker 2: Search, Yeah, that's what would tell me, like always.
Speaker 4: Protected me, like I was a little puzzle, which leaves.
Speaker 1: Me to this question. You knowingly would I don't mean
Speaker 1: risk your life, but hip hop was so potent back
Speaker 1: then that even you're I mean, basically you're playing Russian roulette.
Speaker 1: You don't know what's gonna pop off, because.
Speaker 9: What would happen? No, no, no, what would happen? I'm sorry
Speaker 9: Paul and self. What would happen? Was the quarter got
Speaker 9: so big, right, the rep got so big that the
Speaker 9: tunnel kids would come from Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island. It
Speaker 9: became a feeding market for Brooklyn and for Uptown. And
Speaker 9: these girls from Hempstead would come in and they had
Speaker 9: the big errands and these they were showing out and
Speaker 9: it was like it was there was a shop a
Speaker 9: paradise man like Hogg Dog Deceptor cons like they just
Speaker 9: they went in and they would just give you the
Speaker 9: high sign. And there were certain records when they came
Speaker 9: on Ultramagnetic with either Ultramagnetic came on or rebeled.
Speaker 2: Out a pause, that was it. That was there was.
Speaker 8: Always something that was gonna happen. You just wanted to
Speaker 8: get enough dance time in before it did.
Speaker 1: Quest So when that drum roll comes in on Stetsa.
Speaker 2: In the house on top billing.
Speaker 4: Top me, tuck your stuff, it wasn't even you didn't
Speaker 4: have time to tuck it.
Speaker 9: Like iou would be in the middle of the floor,
Speaker 9: so it'd be Fatima and shake and stretch and all
Speaker 9: of them.
Speaker 6: Stretch right school school, school, Lage, Reggie nice and smooth, Swift, Swift, And.
Speaker 9: As soon as that record came on, I owe you
Speaker 9: was Jay's gone. And what would come in the middle
Speaker 9: of that crowd was every hood.
Speaker 4: Loom that we knew.
Speaker 2: And we were already.
Speaker 11: Back and somebody and was.
Speaker 9: Girls were running out screaming because they were bleeding from
Speaker 9: the ears because their bamboos got yanked yo, And I
Speaker 9: don't know.
Speaker 2: Who it was.
Speaker 9: I'm not even gonna point no fingers because I'm not
Speaker 9: getting thrown under the bus, but somebody from Decepticons. I
Speaker 9: remember when they went after jam Master Jay got to.
Speaker 2: Bring up yo rest inter j kept his kept his.
Speaker 6: They dragged across, they yelled his.
Speaker 9: Ye, he had the chain with the Adidas thing. He
Speaker 9: saw another day and Marv and Mark may he rest
Speaker 9: in peace. He was with him, Hollis who was with him,
Speaker 9: and whoever tetricane to hurricane and whoever tested them. And
Speaker 9: I mean that's one of the few times I remember
Speaker 9: bullets flying in the quarter like you would hear them
Speaker 9: like going past your ear, and you saw like and
Speaker 9: he's holding on and Hollis Crew and he's and they're
Speaker 9: trying to pull it off of his neck and they're
Speaker 9: dragging him across the dance floor.
Speaker 2: It's gone.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's nobody there except for Hollis Crew and
Speaker 4: those dudes.
Speaker 2: And he kept his.
Speaker 10: You remember when Jim Brown would run for a touchdown
Speaker 10: and you see like four or five dudes on his back.
Speaker 2: That's how it looks. Jesus Christ kept his.
Speaker 5: Though, Yes, every week, but it's crazy Tho quest like
Speaker 5: you you wasn't that after midnight and Philly like you
Speaker 5: never like, let me tell you something.
Speaker 4: I know, Yeah, I know, listens when they shut down
Speaker 4: New York, that's when we went.
Speaker 5: Cane at the anniversary show and he had Divine Sounds
Speaker 5: on it.
Speaker 2: Yep, right right.
Speaker 5: And I'll never forget this because I posted it the
Speaker 5: day after because I took a picture with them. I
Speaker 5: was having a conversation and I heard the intro Fi
Speaker 5: plus five and whoever was talking to me, I jetted
Speaker 5: off and ran in the stage because what I remember
Speaker 5: from that song was being at USA and they be
Speaker 5: Fats open for them.
Speaker 2: And they came on and did that song.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 5: And when they said we're Define Sounds and we're back again,
Speaker 5: somebody started shooting. And this is the crazy thing is
Speaker 5: this is not about being gangster, none of that. I
Speaker 5: loved hip hop so much. I wasn't mad at the gunshots.
Speaker 5: I was mad I did not get to hear the
Speaker 5: song finished being performed.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, or yeah, like we we.
Speaker 5: I was in a lot of dangerous places because of
Speaker 5: hip hop, yo like, and I was totally oblivious to
Speaker 5: it because I just wanted to hear the music.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. So that's exactly.
Speaker 9: I remember going to Zanzibar to see you performed. It
Speaker 9: was a Juice Crew night, it was Shante, it was you,
Speaker 9: it was Master Ace, it was Zanziball.
Speaker 4: Y'all didn't even make the stage.
Speaker 9: They played, they played Lean on Me, and that place
Speaker 9: got shot up before y'all even probably even got in
Speaker 9: the limit.
Speaker 2: How about sensations though a little.
Speaker 4: Small hallway, that one hallway.
Speaker 5: And all the way place symphony, Yes, the first Yes,
Speaker 5: that all hall way. Man Like, a lot of stuff
Speaker 5: happened from that dressing room to the stage.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, I remember all those places. I want to remember.
Speaker 2: I want to know how you remember all that stuff,
Speaker 2: man Like I don't.
Speaker 1: It's you can't forget it.
Speaker 2: Venes, I remember the names of the venues, but I can't.
Speaker 2: I actually that one little with the glass mirrorage so
Speaker 2: vividly remember.
Speaker 9: I remember you performing at Hinchcliffe Coliseum in Patterson, New
Speaker 9: Jersey with KRS Boogie Down Productions Audio two You Rock,
Speaker 9: sand I got thirty four seconds on stage to do
Speaker 9: a portion of something I mean, and it was the
Speaker 9: stage was on the fifty yard line and the crowd
Speaker 9: was like a thousand miles away, and it was like
Speaker 9: there was like two thousand people in this stadium of
Speaker 9: maybe ten thousand people, and it was the greatest show.
Speaker 9: I mean, I thought hip hop had reached its pinnacle,
Speaker 9: you know what I'm saying, Because it was like eighty
Speaker 9: seven or something, and there was actually like people in
Speaker 9: the middle of an outdoor stadium coming to a show
Speaker 9: because you know, we were doing like you know, but
Speaker 9: we also doing the spectrum, we were doing Masison Square
Speaker 9: Guard eighty seven was really starting, you know, to pop
Speaker 9: off like that, you know, run DMC and A B
Speaker 9: C Boys as they sold out the guarden, you know, right,
Speaker 9: all of that. But to see like people in an
Speaker 9: outdoor a like a stadium stadium, it was like mind blowing.
Speaker 2: For you.
Speaker 1: What were the like the most notable performances that occurred.
Speaker 1: I've heard the the Keras One versus Melley Mello thing, whatever,
Speaker 1: I've heard that story, But what were in your mind, like,
Speaker 1: what was the consummate, unbeatable performance at.
Speaker 5: I would honestly say, to be honest with you, it
Speaker 5: would be when I first saw a public enemy.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, I was getting ready to say public
Speaker 8: at Latin Quarters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the first time or the rebel without
Speaker 1: a parts time though.
Speaker 4: Was.
Speaker 2: It or was it public Enemy number one? That one?
Speaker 8: And he said, I remember he's remember I'm saying, I
Speaker 8: feel like I'm on I god damn shelf because.
Speaker 5: The stage was so shallow, it was very high and
Speaker 5: it wasn't that and the base from that beat was
Speaker 5: rattling the club.
Speaker 2: I never.
Speaker 9: But what you guys don't remember, but you guys two things.
Speaker 9: One thing was the first time they ever performed there
Speaker 9: was for their Yobum Rush to Show album. They got
Speaker 9: booed off stage like we were throwing batteries at them.
Speaker 2: They were terrible.
Speaker 4: Yeah no, no, no, that was no no.
Speaker 9: And then literally a year later that's when I was raped.
Speaker 9: But I remember, like for me, like to me. The
Speaker 9: shows that I remember were the transformation shows. I remember
Speaker 9: the Audio two doing I.
Speaker 4: Like Cherries, I like Days Better and Grapes sau.
Speaker 12: That they did that at Latin Court, yes, the first
Speaker 12: time Audio two ever performed, and four Top Build a
Speaker 12: year before, a year before they came out of the box.
Speaker 1: I like cherries, yes, oh no.
Speaker 11: Yes, I like cherries before I met them.
Speaker 9: Okay, and I'll and I'll accept it. I'll accept that, Sierr.
Speaker 9: That's fine, and that's fine. But those transformations are the
Speaker 9: things that I remember the best, because that was eighty
Speaker 9: seven and then they went to Top villain and the
Speaker 9: place went bonkers.
Speaker 4: But you know what, the box top Billain was just
Speaker 4: and the second top.
Speaker 2: Villain was immediate, immediatemediate. That was because the top building
Speaker 2: that was immediate. But let me correct myself.
Speaker 5: Honestly, it wasn't the Public Enemy show, and I'll keep
Speaker 5: it a hundred the goddamn Juice Crew show at the Apollo.
Speaker 2: When Biz came out of those quarters.
Speaker 5: Quarters, it was public and I thought you met period
Speaker 5: like it might have been the Juice Crew Show at
Speaker 5: the Apollo.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, I mean came.
Speaker 5: Out of a giant nose caane came swinging down from
Speaker 5: a damn ivory bench.
Speaker 2: I don't know remember when.
Speaker 5: This was the first time I seen a production like
Speaker 5: and I'm down with these dudes, and I remember them
Speaker 5: not wanting me to perform driving a giants start dropping out.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you.
Speaker 9: I'll tell you another great show that I remember. It
Speaker 9: was winter, it was cold, it was cold, and this
Speaker 9: was when Emerald City and Red Parrot were doing hip
Speaker 9: hop nights and they had a really interesting way to
Speaker 9: get to the club because the stairs and that was
Speaker 9: really like a Juice Crew spot, like that was Magic's home.
Speaker 9: That was like that was a Juice Crew house, like
Speaker 9: they were there every week. But Roxanne and Biz did
Speaker 9: their record. I'm shantem right. So they're at the Red
Speaker 9: Parrot and I'm looking at the watch and I'm like,
Speaker 9: I gotta get to the Q. I run to the
Speaker 9: o Q, you know, having a good time, blah blah
Speaker 9: blah blah. And then everything goes dark and we think, oh,
Speaker 9: powering out or something, and then all you hear is
Speaker 9: Vic and then Biz walked out and then Shauntey walked
Speaker 9: out in a full length fur and.
Speaker 2: It was a rap. It was a rap. It was
Speaker 2: a rap.
Speaker 9: I There are very few shows that I remember where
Speaker 9: people went that crazy that was a rap.
Speaker 1: Were these shows in which people would just perform their
Speaker 1: single and that was it or was it a full.
Speaker 9: People would just show up and perform and leave. You
Speaker 9: would just come in and get busy max and.
Speaker 4: Relieve inside, and you were happy. You were so happy,
Speaker 4: you were so happy.
Speaker 9: I mean, and I hate to parlay it into this
Speaker 9: and I'm not trying to, but like, what makes eighty
Speaker 9: eight the Golden Era is because of this. It's because
Speaker 9: like everything kind of accumulated up, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 9: like eighty five and eighty six with Rock Kim and
Speaker 9: Kine and the Canaan Rock Kim battles, you know, not
Speaker 9: battles like beef, but battle who is the better MC
Speaker 9: and g rap with I'm fly rolling up my tentsive window,
Speaker 9: raised my antenna because I'm not only fly, but I'm
Speaker 9: a big bread winner.
Speaker 4: Like oh my god, queens.
Speaker 9: Represent you know, And it was like all of this movement,
Speaker 9: movement movement in eighty eight, like Thomas set it straight.
Speaker 9: You know what I'm saying, ain't no half stepping word.
Speaker 9: I'm ready, like when he said that, when Kate said that,
Speaker 9: like it was it. We were ready, Like it wasn't
Speaker 9: just him ready, we were ready.
Speaker 4: We were ready to be greater than the sum of
Speaker 4: what we were in the streets of our boroughs.
Speaker 10: I think eighty eight was like you know, transformation, you
Speaker 10: know period, you know, like during like the mid eighties.
Speaker 10: What was going on was like during the time of
Speaker 10: the show, and a lot of that it was like
Speaker 10: really like the hip hop party era where you know,
Speaker 10: a lot of the hip hop dancers played a major
Speaker 10: part and the whole crowd participation, that interaction thing you know,
Speaker 10: it was that that party feel that like cats like
Speaker 10: your Busy Bee DJ, Hollywood Buck Starsky were doing it
Speaker 10: regular parties back in the days. Now it's like on
Speaker 10: Wax that way. But then incomes you know, on Brothers.
Speaker 10: I think rock Kim was first, and then Kars and
Speaker 10: then myself and it started turning into a lyrical thing,
Speaker 10: you know. And I think at that point, you know
Speaker 10: a lot of people were, you know, like really like
Speaker 10: stepping their game up lyrically, and the MC his presence
Speaker 10: was really really being felt, you know, because I mean,
Speaker 10: if you think about it, you know, back then, any
Speaker 10: artist that came out with his DJ the DJ name
Speaker 10: came first, you know, Jasey, Jeffer Fresh, Prince, Eric b
Speaker 10: and Rakim Grand that's the Flagh in the Furious Five.
Speaker 2: It was like the artist was making their presence felt.
Speaker 1: Okay, So from each of you, what song during that
Speaker 1: period did you hear that just made you, that just
Speaker 1: transformed your whole artistic approach, Like you hearing something like
Speaker 1: Jay will always till this day talk about him hearing
Speaker 1: who Shot You for the first time in his car
Speaker 1: and that totally transforming his life and his whole approach
Speaker 1: to how he was going to be as as an
Speaker 1: MC And I mean I've heard this countless of times
Speaker 1: with different songs. But for you guys, which is the
Speaker 1: class of eighty eight eighty nine, because me, as a consumer,
Speaker 1: I cannot think of another year in which, week after
Speaker 1: week after week was just some life changing shit coming
Speaker 1: out every week. Literally, Like I mean at least twenty
Speaker 1: four to twenty five classic albums, like career defining albums
Speaker 1: that year alone. So for you guys that are actually
Speaker 1: participating in it, was it a thing of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of it, or were you like did
Speaker 1: you feel a certain way when you heard lyrics and
Speaker 1: fury or like damn, like all right, I gotta come
Speaker 1: with it, and like what song from a peer of
Speaker 1: yours that made you feel a certain way?
Speaker 2: Like damn, Like I gotta come this damn guy right here?
Speaker 11: Man, Like I.
Speaker 5: Being having access to Mally, you hear stuff early and
Speaker 5: I think he had that little silver cougar and I
Speaker 5: get in the call and he puts his tape in
Speaker 5: and I hear set it off, and I was just like, okay, man,
Speaker 5: I gotta go home. Just put burn all my rhyme books.
Speaker 5: The old one, two, rhyme, rhyme, step and it's ova,
Speaker 5: It's done, It's done. And then I remember this dude,
Speaker 5: I used to go out, Like I said, I used
Speaker 5: to answer the phones at BLS and I would come
Speaker 5: in early and listen to all the new records. I've
Speaker 5: never heard a special Ed in my entire life. Then
Speaker 5: and I put his album on, and the same way
Speaker 5: he was doing it with bars, but it was like effortless,
Speaker 5: like he was talking to you. I was like, holy shit, man,
Speaker 5: see now that I can't be Kane. I can't be Ed,
Speaker 5: but I could be myself because Ed is being itself.
Speaker 5: He's dropping ill bars, but it sounds like he's making
Speaker 5: a sweat exactly exactly. So there was a lot of
Speaker 5: moments in those times, not just eighty eight, but in
Speaker 5: those few that little corner of years eighty eight, eighty
Speaker 5: nine and all like MC's went from you know, just
Speaker 5: the basic pattern of a regular bar in the cadences,
Speaker 5: rapping three words in one sentence. And it was like, okay, wait,
Speaker 5: you know I started with shot, Well listen, everybody, my
Speaker 5: name is Craigg.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, well that style is done.
Speaker 1: I can't do that.
Speaker 2: When I heard said. When I heard said it off, I.
Speaker 5: Was like, okay, man, and not even and even before
Speaker 5: I said it off, I can't hold it back that one.
Speaker 2: I was like, Yo, these dudes is rhyming like. And
Speaker 2: the funny story I always tell this story.
Speaker 5: You know, I was at the studio when Rock Kim
Speaker 5: did Eric be his president Shan mixed that song and
Speaker 5: we were laughing at him because he was punching in
Speaker 5: each line. And I'm not saying that's anything against him
Speaker 5: as a rapper. Maybe he didn't know how to record
Speaker 5: in the studio then and we were like, this is terrible,
Speaker 5: like I didn't know. And then when I heard it
Speaker 5: like a week later, mall he was turning records around
Speaker 5: in like a week. The next week on the radio
Speaker 5: I heard it, I was like, that is not the
Speaker 5: goddamn same song. I was sitting in the studio listeners.
Speaker 9: And I'll tell you that that moment. I used to
Speaker 9: hang out with Eric a lot in the quarter and
Speaker 9: I used to drive him out to Wine Dance. He
Speaker 9: had old little shorty that he had in wine dancing
Speaker 9: because he thought I lived in the Five Towns.
Speaker 4: I lived near Wine Dance, Long Island.
Speaker 9: Which was like two hours out of my way, but
Speaker 9: I was just, you know, I just wanted to hang
Speaker 9: out with Eric Bright. He gave me a white label
Speaker 9: of Eric B for President on Zakia Records, and I
Speaker 9: listened to it.
Speaker 4: And when I heard.
Speaker 9: Sitting on the couch with my feet up, you think
Speaker 9: I'm lazy? You must be crazy. You thought I was
Speaker 9: a donut. You tried to glaze me. I threw every
Speaker 9: round book I had in the trash and I'll never forget.
Speaker 9: The next day, I went to see some homeboys that
Speaker 9: I just graduated high school with and I said to him.
Speaker 9: I said, to my man, g Man Holt Man, he
Speaker 9: rests in peace. I was like, yo, you heard that
Speaker 9: ERICB for President? And we both said thought I was
Speaker 9: a donut. You tried to glaze me. It was the
Speaker 9: craziest shit I ever heard. And then a month two
Speaker 9: months later, this knuckle head comes out and changes the
Speaker 9: whole game. Brannan, Now, I mean Wrath of Cain was
Speaker 9: another point in my career where I just for a
Speaker 9: minute there I was like, yeah, I can't do this.
Speaker 9: I can't I just me personally, I can't do this.
Speaker 1: I see him do this. I've seen Ratha Kane change
Speaker 1: Tarik's life. One of Lady Bee's apprentice was in high
Speaker 1: school with me, so he used to answer phones to
Speaker 1: Para ninety nine in Philly, so he'd off to bring
Speaker 1: in like promotional twelve inches and all that stuff, so
Speaker 1: we heard like stuff ahead of time.
Speaker 2: But man, we were in fifth period and.
Speaker 1: He was at the door of school and he held
Speaker 1: up we saw the cold Chilling Them logo, and he
Speaker 1: was like, somehow we excused ourselves from English class, went
Speaker 1: to the rooftop and he says, you gotta hear this ship,
Speaker 1: and he like, I'll never forget the collective jaw drop
Speaker 1: of twelve of us cutting various classes or whatever. Like
Speaker 1: lunch period was different for something like eleventh grader had
Speaker 1: a little blue school record place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had like a little the preschool Crosbysby.
Speaker 1: And we were just staring at We did not know
Speaker 1: what that ship.
Speaker 9: We just I'll tell lights something that you don't even
Speaker 9: know when you did. I'm not having it with pas K.
Speaker 9: I cut off K Love for like the rest of
Speaker 9: my life because yeah, because when Hay Love, when I
Speaker 9: did Hey Boy with K Love, like I wanted to
Speaker 9: do a record like that with her, and she was
Speaker 9: fronting like she was like, yeah, I'm not you know,
Speaker 9: nobody's trying to hear all that.
Speaker 4: And then y'all came out with that and I was like, yo,
Speaker 4: cheek guy, you, I can't fuck with you.
Speaker 1: I can't fuck with you.
Speaker 4: Like see that we could have done that, Like we
Speaker 4: could have done that.
Speaker 2: That to me was the.
Speaker 9: Greatest duet top five that are alive. That duet is
Speaker 9: just still to this day incredible.
Speaker 2: What was the B side the cram to understand you?
Speaker 11: What was it called a take it Light?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 5: I had the ill bounce beat to it. I used
Speaker 5: to call awesome too and request it. I used to
Speaker 5: call it awesome too. I used to call records in
Speaker 5: the morning.
Speaker 2: He came on Tuesday.
Speaker 11: B side to cram to understand you was take it light?
Speaker 1: Was it take it light?
Speaker 2: With the ill jo I used to call.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I used to call and I used to call
Speaker 5: awesome too at four thirty in the morning on a
Speaker 5: Tuesday morning. When if your mom's caught you on the phone,
Speaker 5: she would whoop that I would be calling and I'd
Speaker 5: be whispering into the phone.
Speaker 2: Yo. Molly Mall lives in my building. Fresh by the
Speaker 2: Fresh three mcs.
Speaker 5: Like hip hop, you know you're drawn to it, man,
Speaker 5: Like with the violence, all of that was like secondary.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to hear hip hop.
Speaker 5: I wanted to hear dudes rhyming and to make me
Speaker 5: feel like I wasn't crazy for doing it.
Speaker 9: Is there a record like and I always wanted to
Speaker 9: ask you this, but is there a record that you
Speaker 9: wrote that you even stepped back and you were like yourself,
Speaker 9: h yo, that you were like, man, the most gave
Speaker 9: me this.
Speaker 4: Right here, because this is crazy.
Speaker 11: No, I think he was too in it. You probably
Speaker 11: was too in it to know right.
Speaker 2: Probably Mortal Kombat on my second.
Speaker 10: Mortal Kombat really yeah, because it was just that, just
Speaker 10: one line that just had me like, okay, yeah, I'm
Speaker 10: in a special place right now.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Like I remember being in the zone when I
Speaker 9: wrote gas Face. I was in the zone when I
Speaker 9: wrote black Hat as bad luck bad guys, where black
Speaker 9: must have been a white guy that started all that.
Speaker 9: I literally stopped for a minute and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 9: I'm never going to write a better rhym like the I.
Speaker 10: Was the none of in front of because every one
Speaker 10: of my adversaries lack your little son of obituary columns
Speaker 10: of reach your name add out question.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question, though, Yes, what is
Speaker 2: your favorite m Sea light song?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 11: I can answer that.
Speaker 1: No, do you know listen, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 1: See as a drummer, I've.
Speaker 2: Never heard.
Speaker 1: I mean paper then's the first song with the rim
Speaker 1: shot was used. Everything was snare drum hard snare drums
Speaker 1: and again it was I mean for me to to
Speaker 1: to get a what I call a War of the
Speaker 1: World's movement, which is orson Welles's War of the World's
Speaker 1: where people thought it was a real Aliens attack and
Speaker 1: people staring at the radio like what the fuck is
Speaker 1: going on? When I heard that song, Yo I I
Speaker 1: that was one of the for me, even as a drummer,
Speaker 1: I was just like, yo, I, I didn't know you
Speaker 1: were allowed to do that.
Speaker 4: You can rhyme over a rim shot.
Speaker 10: You don't have to play drummer. You could play rim
Speaker 10: shots this shit and it's crazy. Literally the rim was
Speaker 10: hitting hard though, I mean yeah, the drums, and for.
Speaker 1: Me, the way the way that Tarik and I bonded,
Speaker 1: like Tarik thought it was such a novelty for a
Speaker 1: human being to like recreate it so to like get girls.
Speaker 1: Tarik would be calling, like Tarik would call my crib
Speaker 1: at like eleven o'clock, which is like way past high
Speaker 1: school hours for your parents. Like my dad was like
Speaker 1: Joe Jackson, drill sergeant. Don't nobody call this house after
Speaker 1: nine pm, like that sort of thing. Tarik would call
Speaker 1: like eleven, like yo, like on three way, have a
Speaker 1: joiner on the On the other line, he'd be like, Yo,
Speaker 1: run the basement real quick and play on place it he.
Speaker 2: Off real quick.
Speaker 4: But you you don't know, plase it off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he can place it off, like yo, man, my
Speaker 2: dad like might start riffing.
Speaker 1: Just play us off it just like literally that was
Speaker 1: his thing, like I bet you can't play. And he
Speaker 1: would call and be like, yo, play play play paper
Speaker 1: thin real quick, like just call girls up like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get.
Speaker 2: A mirror to play.
Speaker 1: Even in school where we were he would battle MC's
Speaker 1: uh in the cafeteria on the sixth floor and all
Speaker 1: the instrumental majors were in the basement and we weren't
Speaker 1: using the elevator and I had this little cassio sk
Speaker 1: one thing. So the way that my duib as was
Speaker 1: allowed to sit with the cool kids. Was I provided
Speaker 1: the break beats and not and not the punching line.
Speaker 1: They would they would take an order. They'd be like,
Speaker 1: all right, run downstairs and play play funky drummer real
Speaker 1: quick aside to run downstairs. That was I was the apprentice, Like,
Speaker 1: that's how I earned my way into That's how Turikono
Speaker 1: became a group. And literally like you have like one
Speaker 1: point seven seconds to get a good four bar out
Speaker 1: of it, so you would have to pay twice as fast. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's good, run upstairs, and then he'd be like, now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do top billing, real quick run down set.
Speaker 1: That was me every day at Performing Arts High school.
Speaker 1: Like boys and men were in the bathroom harmonizing, but
Speaker 1: me and Tarik were literally Now now.
Speaker 5: As as an actual drummer, did you have simsonic drums?
Speaker 1: Did you have those the Mattels? Yes, yes, I got that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was doing playing rock on that night, day and
Speaker 1: night night.
Speaker 2: And then you know what, you know? You know my
Speaker 2: favorite song from your catalog?
Speaker 11: Right, no.
Speaker 2: Tempt said this? Oh thank you?
Speaker 6: And yo?
Speaker 1: Where is intro? Though? Who was that? Matt Robinson's inn,
Speaker 1: who's being really okay? Can you explain the genesis of
Speaker 1: being Pezza the president and Answeringette and how this thing started?
Speaker 5: Cannot answer that quickly, Duck Alert. I always accused her
Speaker 5: of being a beat bier because when Kane did raw,
Speaker 5: I felt like kidd and play did do this my way?
Speaker 2: And we used to talk about it on the radio.
Speaker 10: I know you did, yeah really and defense though they
Speaker 10: picked up that record I think the same day I
Speaker 10: picked up the Okay yeah see, but I said it
Speaker 10: in dougle Lo, I was like herbs a beat biter.
Speaker 5: So we always made fun of it, and maybe that's
Speaker 5: what you got magic saying that's where we got it.
Speaker 1: So you guys must really be perplexed now in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: where it would be who the artist that actually mirror
Speaker 1: a track that sounds similar to what came out before?
Speaker 2: I would welcome it now actually because it all sounds
Speaker 2: like one record to me. Yeah, I mean, you know the.
Speaker 9: One thing that I love about this top show record
Speaker 9: when I when I heard it, when I heard lights
Speaker 9: record on this record listen up Everybody of Night the
Speaker 9: MC five foot and you know I started crying like
Speaker 9: I started literally crying because it was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 9: she took me to eighty eight. And like there's very
Speaker 9: few times this year I got like emotional over records,
Speaker 9: and one of them was watching nas do Ellmatic with
Speaker 9: the Kennedy you know, Philharmonic. Like I lost my shit
Speaker 9: when I watched Dealmatic and a three hundred piece orchestra.
Speaker 9: But that simple little record, like her rhymeing like she
Speaker 9: was seventeen again on a record that just came out
Speaker 9: like five days ago. I was like, like the Indian
Speaker 9: man in the garbage commercial.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 10: First of all, still to this day, you know. I
Speaker 10: mean I mean people, can you say still sounds that
Speaker 10: hungry on the mic?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know, but only yeah.
Speaker 9: But I mean, with all due respect, your record on
Speaker 9: Yo be you went in, man, you went in, you
Speaker 9: went in, Edwin in Dress went in. Doug's records incredible
Speaker 9: and they were dancing and saying it and move into
Speaker 9: I mean every record sounds like this celebration of eighty
Speaker 9: eight and that, and it's why I went so hard,
Speaker 9: you know what I mean, Like just from a marketing
Speaker 9: and promotion.
Speaker 4: Perspective, it's like, yo, this it just sparked.
Speaker 9: Something in me and like put a battery in my
Speaker 9: back that I'm like, Yo, there's there's a there's a
Speaker 9: wealth of opportunity here for these brothers, for these icons
Speaker 9: and these legends to get back out.
Speaker 1: Then, So what's the plan now that the album is out?
Speaker 1: What's the the ongoing future plan for this project? Is
Speaker 1: this just well good morning?
Speaker 9: I mean, you know I told like this, and I
Speaker 9: told I didn't tell you this. Well, I told you
Speaker 9: over the phone a little bit you heard yeah, but no, no, no.
Speaker 9: But my concept for the performance on Good Morning America
Speaker 9: is a small sample of what I want the tour
Speaker 9: to be because how we listened and absorbed hip hop
Speaker 9: is way different than rock guys did. Because rock guys
Speaker 9: had radio twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 4: The Beatles could you could hear the Beatles.
Speaker 9: Six hundred times a week on fifty two stations between
Speaker 9: New York and Philly. So the music was absorbed by
Speaker 9: that boomer generation in a way that was very traditional.
Speaker 9: So when they continued to kind of repitulate that music,
Speaker 9: it was it was easy.
Speaker 4: It's not easy for us.
Speaker 9: There was nothing easy about eighty five to ninety two,
Speaker 9: ninety three. It was three hour spurts and the only
Speaker 9: time you really heard music was how it was blended together.
Speaker 9: You'd go from Cain to Audio two to rob bas
Speaker 9: and easy rock to MC light to a promo to
Speaker 9: Da Da Da Da Da. So I feel like it's
Speaker 9: time to engage that essence if I can't, like and
Speaker 9: bring that out on on the road.
Speaker 4: And that's kind of the top shelf tour and how
Speaker 4: I see it, you know, in the spring, and and
Speaker 4: and again.
Speaker 9: Not to blow these two knuckleheads up there that are
Speaker 9: right here, but but Benji like he's spending money like
Speaker 9: it's a whiz Khalifer record. I mean, would all do respect?
Speaker 9: And I'm not trying to dig in his pockets, I'm
Speaker 9: really not, but like the patience and the presence of
Speaker 9: mind to do what he's doing on the level that
Speaker 9: he's doing it.
Speaker 4: No one's done it for these icons, no one, like never,
Speaker 4: It's never happened.
Speaker 5: I got a question for Benji, and yes, being from Pittsburgh, right,
Speaker 5: how did what was y'all y'all inspiration behind the beats?
Speaker 2: Like did y'all get tapes from New.
Speaker 5: York or like, because a lot of the beats are
Speaker 5: in the pocket in that eighty eight sound like you
Speaker 5: know what I mean? So, what was your inspiration behind
Speaker 5: the beats?
Speaker 2: Like I was from New York and I grew up
Speaker 2: in Jersey and Okay, so you had heavy access to it. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I used to watch Video Music Box every day after school,
Speaker 5: so I mean it was part of my childhood.
Speaker 7: So and you know, for me from from Pittsburgh, we
Speaker 7: didn't have a video music box, but we had sandwiches.
Speaker 9: Sorry, I know you had a local video show. I
Speaker 9: forgot Homeboy's name, but you had a local video show.
Speaker 9: The kid that was on buzz Zzy had like a
Speaker 9: video show.
Speaker 4: Reggie Read the DJ that was on naz Ak, that's Cleveland.
Speaker 4: There's a dude, Man, there's a dude in Pittsburgh. I
Speaker 4: don't know if you remember him came.
Speaker 2: But he had a video show. This guy's a wealth
Speaker 2: of knowledge. Yeah, like remember all the search write You
Speaker 2: write it down.
Speaker 4: For me, like like a sky I got this ghetto.
Speaker 9: Pass that these black men and women allowed me to
Speaker 9: make this music. Like if I don't remember everything, it
Speaker 9: would be a disrespect to the people that allowed me
Speaker 9: to go into the quarter, that allowed me to go
Speaker 9: into Union Square. I mean, turn it like turn it
Speaker 9: just a one eighty like Hawk could have just snuffed
Speaker 9: me the second I walked in there, fuck out of here,
Speaker 9: white boy.
Speaker 4: It would have been simple.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But you know what in the beginning of.
Speaker 5: Hip hop, man hip hop was for the not black
Speaker 5: or white or Puerto Rican. It was for everybody. We
Speaker 5: was all involved in it because it was music, It
Speaker 5: was a rhythm. It was something that that brought together
Speaker 5: all the people from the hood that ain't have no
Speaker 5: wheels to go or something to have in common.
Speaker 2: It was a way to communicate and a way to
Speaker 2: party together.
Speaker 5: Y'all had your different crews coming together, partying together without beef.
Speaker 2: And I respect that.
Speaker 9: But b I ain't seen nine white boy in any
Speaker 9: park gym that I ever went to from nineteen eighty
Speaker 9: to nineteen eighty six, except for Vanilla b aka Blake
Speaker 9: Latham aka Lord Scotch aka KEYWAYK, like I saw nine
Speaker 9: white people anywhere.
Speaker 1: Even in you were literally the one white person as the.
Speaker 4: Only white person.
Speaker 9: There was a joke understanding in mathematics who used to
Speaker 9: do the big parties in Prospect Park when the five
Speaker 9: percenters used to get together. You remember that understand that
Speaker 9: had this Big Book of Life and he'd come on in.
Speaker 9: I used to sneak in the Prospect Park and watch
Speaker 9: the five percenter's break.
Speaker 2: Yo.
Speaker 4: He would say that.
Speaker 9: Search is the only white person except police at the
Speaker 9: park game. Okay, I mean, yo, there were nine white people.
Speaker 9: And that's why I got so mad, like I would.
Speaker 9: I mean I got mad like eighty six. Like a
Speaker 9: group came out on Select Records called B M O. C.
Speaker 9: And was a guy named Shecky Green and this other dude,
Speaker 9: and I'm.
Speaker 1: Like they were Capital Actually no, no, no, no they weren't.
Speaker 2: They weren't Select.
Speaker 10: Prospect or for Green Park. I'm sorry, Prospect. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 10: I think they.
Speaker 2: Was on Capitol.
Speaker 4: No, there wasn't.
Speaker 2: The b C Boys were on Capital first before men
Speaker 2: on campus.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, they were before the white boys.
Speaker 4: He was on the same time.
Speaker 9: I'm a white boys on and then the white boys.
Speaker 9: And I'm like all this corny ship, like yo, funk
Speaker 9: out of here, excuse my lad. But I was like,
Speaker 9: you know what I'm saying, like, yo, it was it
Speaker 9: was shut up. No, I know you did, but I
Speaker 9: just you know, it's disrespectful. And my daughter me is here,
Speaker 9: like I don't you know, but it's like, you know,
Speaker 9: like I just don't want I was mad, like I
Speaker 9: was mad, like you can't come in here, like you
Speaker 9: don't know what I went through, Like I was battling
Speaker 9: in Vandermere projects.
Speaker 4: I was van I was pink houses, like I was
Speaker 4: tearing dudes.
Speaker 9: Down for money and like getting shot at, Like don't
Speaker 9: come in here with some Connecticut nonsense and call yourself
Speaker 9: BMOC like I'm not seeing you.
Speaker 1: So when did you When did you guys feel that
Speaker 1: the spirit of hip hop, at least the transformation of it,
Speaker 1: was slowly eroding? Like what was your first uh oh moment?
Speaker 1: And I don't mean like when this guy rose to
Speaker 1: prominence or whatever, but.
Speaker 11: When when When I heard.
Speaker 8: Women referred to as bitches by NWA, I was like something,
Speaker 8: something's about to happen, Something's different because I had never
Speaker 8: heard Caine, KRS One, Slick Rick Heavy d Fresh Prince.
Speaker 8: I never heard any of them refer to a woman
Speaker 8: as a bitch.
Speaker 9: Even go see the doctor was like respectful, right, The
Speaker 9: word was skeezer, yeah, and that was really shady, Like
Speaker 9: my mom would not let me say skeezer in the house.
Speaker 9: You know what I'm saying like, but but I will
Speaker 9: tell you. For me, I went to I'll never forget this.
Speaker 9: I went to Roanoke, Virginia on tour with Kine. We
Speaker 9: went back to back and the first year we went
Speaker 9: it was Caine, Queen, Latifa, Digital Underground, third Base, nice
Speaker 9: and smooth, eighty nine. Ronoke, black crowd, college crowd, felt good,
Speaker 9: you know, it felt like any other place. We went
Speaker 9: back a year later. Carol Lewis booked us a year
Speaker 9: later in Ronoke. It was all white people all and
Speaker 9: screaming for Caine and screaming for Digital under around and
Speaker 9: screaming foret totally, totally and for me, like I was
Speaker 9: through when we did Pop Goes the Weasel and we
Speaker 9: went out on tour, you know, and we took Cypress
Speaker 9: and Naughty and Tim Dog and all that, and we
Speaker 9: would get to Pop Goes the Weasel and these drunk
Speaker 9: frat white boys would come on our stage and try
Speaker 9: to do stage diving, and our dances were from Long Beach.
Speaker 4: We weren't having that.
Speaker 9: We would body slam these dudes like they were rushing
Speaker 9: the stage, like we were snuffing them, like we didn't
Speaker 9: know what they were doing.
Speaker 4: Like I was I was done. Like for me, I
Speaker 4: was done, Like I was like, this is just not
Speaker 4: this is not what I expected.
Speaker 2: Shout out to eighty eight for you saying snuff.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 11: Another moment, another moment that was different for me was.
Speaker 4: I could have said duff too right now, all of.
Speaker 8: Those women in the hot tub with Puffy and Biggie.
Speaker 8: I was like, wait a second, what's happening here? It
Speaker 8: was a lot, you know, as a woman looking at
Speaker 8: these visuals, it was like I was really confused as
Speaker 8: to where we were headed.
Speaker 4: But you trying to flip it on, trying to flip
Speaker 4: it on.
Speaker 9: You try to flip the sexuality, try to take your sexuality.
Speaker 4: And you were saying what kind of guy you liked?
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, that's time. But they wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I was wasn't it a hot tubfo I'm.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't.
Speaker 5: Just for me, it wasn't the music. It was when
Speaker 5: they started first week sales. Huh, all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: All of a sudden, they stopped developing artists, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, it just jumped into who could say
Speaker 5: the craziest thing and get the most like pre social
Speaker 5: media pre going viral. It was what you could say
Speaker 5: on record to get the most attention. And the first
Speaker 5: week sales kind of like took away from artists me
Speaker 5: and developed where you had to go open up for somebody,
Speaker 5: You had to follow the tour bus in the van,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. It turned into something else where.
Speaker 5: If your album then pop in like three weeks, it
Speaker 5: was over, you know what I mean, Like not even
Speaker 5: in hip hop. There was other genres of music where
Speaker 5: the album been out for a year and didn't catch on,
Speaker 5: and then it caught on.
Speaker 2: So to me, the first week sales kind of ruined.
Speaker 11: The chance of growth. I remember.
Speaker 9: I remember me and Pete and Clark Kemp were doing
Speaker 9: a party at Irving Plaza when Palladium was open and
Speaker 9: a young group got on stage in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 9: Nobody knew of them, a group called rob Based and
Speaker 9: Easy Rock.
Speaker 2: They were on profile.
Speaker 9: My man Steve plot Nikki, who was head of retail,
Speaker 9: said hey, can you get these guys a slot on
Speaker 9: your on your Night? They came on, they did a
Speaker 9: song called It Takes two. Didn't move nobody? What didn't
Speaker 9: move nobody didn't? Clark Camp played it easy rock got
Speaker 9: on the turntables, he was rhyming. No one could care less.
Speaker 2: A year later, was it the sound system?
Speaker 4: Nope, sound system was bumping.
Speaker 2: Was unfamiliar right now based on.
Speaker 4: Internationally known nobody was trying to check for them lyrics.
Speaker 2: A year later it was a rap popularity.
Speaker 9: But no, no, no, But I'm talking about the timeline,
Speaker 9: you know what I mean. Actually that record came out
Speaker 9: now and it didn't.
Speaker 4: Pop in eight weeks. It'd be a rap, be a rap.
Speaker 4: This record developed over a year.
Speaker 10: You know, a long time. You know when I noticed
Speaker 10: a difference. I noticed a difference listening to radio and
Speaker 10: seeing what was in heavy rotation, because like you know,
Speaker 10: I remember, like when we came out n W A
Speaker 10: easy E. They was popping and they were selling a
Speaker 10: lot of records. Didn't get no radio play. Radio was
Speaker 10: Scott Walker. Same thing was New York.
Speaker 1: I don't know. In Philly we had uh sort of
Speaker 1: no wrap work day. Like suddenly in ninety ninety one,
Speaker 1: suddenly there was no rap work day. Like they took
Speaker 1: away Lady B Street Beat for like a good two years.
Speaker 1: It was like hard as hell. Then we had to
Speaker 1: depend on college radio.
Speaker 10: But I'm saying. What I'm trying to say is like
Speaker 10: that at all, I'm not I don't think so. You
Speaker 10: didn't hear No NW on the radio. You didn't hear
Speaker 10: Luke Skywalker on the radio. You didn't hear the Ghetto
Speaker 10: Boys on the radio. We didn't sell, but they were
Speaker 10: selling a lot of records and they were popping millions
Speaker 10: of kind of hammer. But when you started hearing all
Speaker 10: the Volga lyrics and the gangster rap being the main
Speaker 10: thing becoming mainstream on radio, That's when I felt like, okay,
Speaker 10: something something.
Speaker 2: That's how it's not ours gender?
Speaker 1: How easy or how hard was it to rock different
Speaker 1: marketplaces that weren't New York based. So if saturd Off
Speaker 1: could move you in nineteen eighty eight in New York,
Speaker 1: when you guys would go to Phoenix or something or like.
Speaker 10: You had to understand your catalog. You had to understand
Speaker 10: your catalog and knew what work with certain crowds. You
Speaker 10: know certain places I knew that you know, I could
Speaker 10: end with raw, I could end with warm it Up and.
Speaker 8: Usually the video because by then, Yo MTV raps was
Speaker 8: rocking all over the nation, and you knew that the
Speaker 8: song you had with your video you could do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a hot joint.
Speaker 5: I would cheat because I knew how to freestyle. Like
Speaker 5: I remember doing a show in like Houston and they
Speaker 5: had no clue I was, but I freestyled off of
Speaker 5: a ghetto a ghetto boys beat and.
Speaker 2: Won them over. That's because my songs were really regional.
Speaker 1: So you know what, I'm so glad you said that
Speaker 1: shit before anything. We were living in London at the time,
Speaker 1: so we had to go on ninth hand information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened at night of the freestyle between you and Supernat?
Speaker 5: Oh, that was just that was a situation where you know,
Speaker 5: I was known for freestyle and you know, on the
Speaker 5: radio and all of that, and a lot of people
Speaker 5: knew that I could freestyle, and I was cool with
Speaker 5: Organized Confusion, and they were working with Supernat and he
Speaker 5: was in the studio talking about how he was the
Speaker 5: greatest freestyler and they were like, well, yo, Craig g
Speaker 5: could probably take you. So we were supposed to battle
Speaker 5: on Bobido okay live on the radio, and I think
Speaker 5: Buck While and a few other people were going to
Speaker 5: bring their drum machines and that didn't show up. So
Speaker 5: I'm at the New Music seminar and I'm just chilling.
Speaker 5: I'm with like Diamond D and them, and he was
Speaker 5: on stage and they just asked him. They were like, yo,
Speaker 5: what's up with the battle with you and Craig g
Speaker 5: And if you ever see the video? He kind of
Speaker 5: looks out and it's on video. Yeah, they have like
Speaker 5: clips of.
Speaker 2: It on video. Yeah. Is it on YouTube? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Oh god, yeah, it's like clips of it. It's probably
Speaker 5: from the freestyle All the Rap movie. But he called
Speaker 5: me out and I remound you out. Yeah, Craig, where
Speaker 5: you at?
Speaker 2: What is that? That's a call out? Right yes?
Speaker 5: And then imagine him saying that and you turn around
Speaker 5: and grand Master the Kaz is standing next to you,
Speaker 5: who's like part of some of the most legendary battles.
Speaker 5: I walked on stage with a forty ounce in my hand.
Speaker 5: I wasn't prepared to battle him, but I did know,
Speaker 5: and I knew I was the underdog, and I used
Speaker 5: it against him. Basically, that's pretty much what happened. Like
Speaker 5: I baited him, I said a regular rhyme. I knew
Speaker 5: some information. Nobody told me. I researched everybody. I knew
Speaker 5: he was some Indiana and it was perfect time. And
Speaker 5: like I said, when you go back home to Indiana,
Speaker 5: get Mike Tyson out the slammer and he couldn't.
Speaker 2: Recover, basically is what it was.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 5: I talked to him a lot, like you know, he
Speaker 5: lives in Calli and we might work on some music
Speaker 5: at some point. We don't have the scheduling like that.
Speaker 5: But you know, to me, it kind of helped me
Speaker 5: because it took me from being this old school rapper
Speaker 5: to being able to work my way into the underground
Speaker 5: and have like a slightly second career from it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the ripples that that caused.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I forget. I think Tim Westwood was
Speaker 1: talking about like yeah, and this before the internet, so
Speaker 1: there was such a viral moment that it just became
Speaker 1: something on its own.
Speaker 2: But sometimes I could be an asshole.
Speaker 5: And I remember at the end of the battle, I
Speaker 5: had a stack of cards from record labels and I
Speaker 5: threw them all in the trash.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, all the trash because I was like, nobody
Speaker 2: was checking for me.
Speaker 5: So if it ain't genuine, I don't I don't want
Speaker 5: to be the flavor of the month, right so you know,
Speaker 5: I threw them all in the trash. I had rowdy records,
Speaker 5: I had a stack of cards from labels. I threw
Speaker 5: them all in the garbage.
Speaker 1: King, did you ever have any battles of note on?
Speaker 1: I mean during that the period of where you're coming up,
Speaker 1: like any MC's ever try try to challenge you.
Speaker 10: Like I mean, that's I started as a battle rapper.
Speaker 10: That's all I did. Really, Yeah, That's all I did
Speaker 10: until I met Biz. And that's how I met Biz.
Speaker 10: I met Biz battling. I basked him for a battle.
Speaker 2: You never saw him with Keith Murray was rapping for him. No,
Speaker 2: cut it out, man, I don't know what are we
Speaker 2: talking about. Yeah that Keith?
Speaker 10: Yeah, now what Keith was fifteen man, you know he
Speaker 10: was fifteen, just really getting started.
Speaker 2: Man, cut it out, man, nah man, you got it
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 5: Man, you say rhyme in front of Cane and kine
Speaker 5: to just say a rhyme at the top of your
Speaker 5: rhyme by ninety five decibels of a bar and you
Speaker 5: just you're like, okay, let me just go back home
Speaker 5: and those other rhyme books.
Speaker 2: Keith was like.
Speaker 10: His name wasn't even Keith Murray. His rap name was
Speaker 10: do Damage at the time. Oh, I don't know, eighty
Speaker 10: eight maybe, But you.
Speaker 5: Know, coming up during that time, like if you lived
Speaker 5: in a certain neighborhood and they knew you rhyme, you
Speaker 5: couldn't leave a.
Speaker 2: House without battle with somebody. I mean, I remember Jazz
Speaker 2: the whole Jazz Rush.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear of it in Philly, but I don't
Speaker 1: what was Did you and Jazz Frush know each other
Speaker 1: from Philly or just no?
Speaker 10: You know, I just found out, maybe like uh, two
Speaker 10: years ago, that we had battled prior to after Midnight.
Speaker 10: I didn't even know that, yeah, because I remember battling
Speaker 10: someone at the rooftop that had dissed Bismarcky and I
Speaker 10: stepped up and battled them there. I didn't know that
Speaker 10: that was the same dude from after Midnight. Okay, I
Speaker 10: remember the after Midnight thing, and I know it was
Speaker 10: a time issue. I don't know whether I got there
Speaker 10: late or what was going. I can't really remember. And
Speaker 10: then we got we got on and I guess Dode
Speaker 10: asked for the battle. We came up and we went
Speaker 10: and we I don't know where we went, well, maybe
Speaker 10: two rounds maybe, and dude didn't want to stop. Dude
Speaker 10: didn't want to stop, and then Lady B told him, listen,
Speaker 10: you need to stop. You need to stop, because sure
Speaker 10: at first she said it to me like, yo, we
Speaker 10: need to finish the show. And the dude didn't want
Speaker 10: to stop.
Speaker 1: Just minchell.
Speaker 2: He was like, I'll battle you. Yeah, this was Durman,
Speaker 2: the show god, okay.
Speaker 10: And then the first Lady BE told me, you know,
Speaker 10: so I was ready to go on with the show,
Speaker 10: you know, because I knew that because I already at
Speaker 10: the rooftop. I already gave it to him and it
Speaker 10: was happening again. But dude, you know this dude, you know,
Speaker 10: he didn't want to stop. And then Lady B told him, like,
Speaker 10: you really need to stop. Like I'm like, give him
Speaker 10: that look like you know, I'm doing you a favor.
Speaker 10: But dude, dude was relentless with it, you know. And
Speaker 10: then I threw I think one hundred dollars at him.
Speaker 10: I was like, I was like, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 10: here you go, man, he goes something for your troubles man,
Speaker 10: something like being arrogant, you know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, I'm just finding out that it
Speaker 2: was the same dude.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: I tried to ask Charlie Me and Charlie Mack was
Speaker 2: talking about him performed but Ultra Magnetic Fie and Philly Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Juice for joint we did though for Charlie Mack.
Speaker 10: Yeah, because I was telling Charlie Mack to bring up
Speaker 10: because he said the dude still talks about I was, yo, dude,
Speaker 10: I'm like, I'd love to see this guy.
Speaker 1: The legend of Caine versus Jash Fresh is like bigger
Speaker 1: than what actually happened.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you told me what actually had a lot
Speaker 2: of this monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah here. I don't know if it's on tape
Speaker 1: or video or anything.
Speaker 10: No, Like Charlie Max said that he's like still today,
Speaker 10: he'd be like, y'all know, I want y'all know, I
Speaker 10: want I mean.
Speaker 1: That I can attest dude.
Speaker 2: That's like the garbage man. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 2: know I ran for one hundred and fifty y'alls in
Speaker 2: high school.
Speaker 1: Oh Pocai.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, I mean, I I'll give Duke credit. He
Speaker 10: didn't back down, you know what I'm saying, and he
Speaker 10: wanted to keep it going. But what it was, it
Speaker 10: was like we was in the middle of a show,
Speaker 10: and I mean it was like you not winning, right,
Speaker 10: there was a professional yeah you know.
Speaker 2: You know, but I mean, but you know, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what that was.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, ladies and gentlemen, I can go on forever.
Speaker 1: It's about to be like zero o'clock of the morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will say. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, please please support
Speaker 1: Top Shelf nineteen eighty eight. Can we expect any other
Speaker 1: offspring videos?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 7: Yeah, definitely, definitely want to have some visuals in the future.
Speaker 7: We're going to have some crazy vinyl next year and yeah.
Speaker 1: We would be available on hard that's yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: most important.
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, super yeah, absolutely. Can I just say
Speaker 7: one thing, yes, absolutely so. In nineteen eighty eight, I
Speaker 7: was ten years old in Pittsburgh. I was a paper boy,
Speaker 7: like a real paper like I delivered newspapers and I
Speaker 7: use that money to go to the record store.
Speaker 4: To buy tapes.
Speaker 7: And they were tapes of everyone that's in this room.
Speaker 7: And and then I flashed forward to nineteen ninety at
Speaker 7: the Syria Mosque when Third Base and Big Daddy Kane
Speaker 7: Digital Underground were performing and I was there with my
Speaker 7: brother and one of his friends.
Speaker 4: Cane.
Speaker 7: You came out in a hot tub. They pushed you
Speaker 7: out in a hot tub.
Speaker 9: Ladies, you'll forgive me, ladies, lady, forgive me old time story.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting here like you have the bike and shorts.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sexual chocolate, sexual chocolate actually work back. Oh
Speaker 2: my goodness, it worked.
Speaker 7: But let me tell you how much of an honor
Speaker 7: it is to just be here with you guys. It's
Speaker 7: it's like really sort of a surreal experience for me.
Speaker 7: So it's an honor to be here and to have
Speaker 7: worked with you in some capacity and to you know,
Speaker 7: bring this project to light. And you know, one of
Speaker 7: my main things with this project is not just like, yeah,
Speaker 7: go listen to Top Shelf nineteen eighty eight, like definitely
Speaker 7: do because it's super dope, but also listen to everything else.
Speaker 7: Listen to Long Leave of the Cane, listen to Lighters
Speaker 7: of Rock, listen to all the different records that came
Speaker 7: out then, and it's like a celebration of that time,
Speaker 7: and it's a reminder of like, Yo, she was dope, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And that's like what I came up listening to, Like
Speaker 7: that's like basically all I listened to and so to me,
Speaker 7: it's important to always shine a light on it.
Speaker 1: We have to invest in our art and our artists. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're you're right, ladies and gentlemen. I thank you very
Speaker 1: much for coming to Normally I tell my crew to
Speaker 1: give it up, but I'm the only person here.
Speaker 2: Give it up to.
Speaker 1: So on behalf of the top shelf like a crew
Speaker 1: and the QLs crew. This is quest Love. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us. This was a special edition
Speaker 1: of Course Love Supreme. I'll see you on the next program.
Speaker 2: Peace Couest.
Speaker 1: Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode
Speaker 1: was produced by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts
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