Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Supremo Supremo role called Supremo Shut, Supremo role called Supremo
Speaker 2: Supremo role called Supremo Sun Supremo Role.
Speaker 1: I'm an owner, not a GM. Yeah, joints creeping to
Speaker 1: my d ms. Yeah, I represent freedom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hey, Steve, what rhymes with the last corner?
Speaker 2: Supremo role called Supremo Supremo role.
Speaker 4: My name is Fante.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got my moisturizer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what time is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, grand Verbaiza.
Speaker 2: Supremo Supremo role called Supremo Supremo role.
Speaker 4: Call.
Speaker 1: My name is Sugar. Yeah, where's my per diem?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Self sabotage. You're an asshole, hit Bill?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you Number one is the border. Yeah, it's time
Speaker 1: for tails.
Speaker 2: Quarter Supremo roll Suprema.
Speaker 1: So Supremo roll.
Speaker 4: It's like em. Yeah, it's so nice. I've been talking
Speaker 4: about the Latin quarter. Yeah, finally we got Paaradise.
Speaker 7: Supremo roll Suprema So sure.
Speaker 8: My name is Paradise. Yeah, I'm twice as nice. Yeah,
Speaker 8: Lece skating on ice. Yeah, I can't say it twice.
Speaker 7: Supremo Suprema So Supremo Roll Suprema, So supremo, Ro Supremo supremo.
Speaker 9: Roll Wait there, man, that's what I mean, Malory.
Speaker 1: Let's go chill. This is what they called the when
Speaker 1: when you have like a special episode.
Speaker 3: Well, no, no, but the this is the longest stretch
Speaker 3: of finally getting to the tail ends of what the
Speaker 3: show has been about for the last what seven seven years?
Speaker 4: Seven years? Good luck?
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, there we go.
Speaker 3: You know, we've been talking about or joking about the
Speaker 3: Latin Quarter with every hip hop luminary that has made
Speaker 3: their mark in this culture in the late eighties early nineties,
Speaker 3: and we've heard many a tale of the Latin Quarter.
Speaker 1: But as a walking Smithsonian pack.
Speaker 3: Ratter pop culture hoarder, of course, you know that I
Speaker 3: easily got excited about doing this particular episode of course,
Speaker 3: Love Supreme, because you can't have any tales of the
Speaker 3: Latin Quarter without our guest today. And you know, for
Speaker 3: damn near five decades, our guest has been preserving, building,
Speaker 3: shape shifting many a career in hip hop. But more
Speaker 3: than that, he's embarking on what I would deem probably
Speaker 3: his most important project, which is a proprietor of the
Speaker 3: Universal Hip Hop Museum, yeah, and you know not to
Speaker 3: mention he's an author. Currently your your show about your
Speaker 3: collections in hip hop. Yes, hip Hop Treasures, which I
Speaker 3: the fact that you just had to wherewithal to know
Speaker 3: that this stuff was going to be value speaks of
Speaker 3: your characters.
Speaker 1: So and also, welcome to Team Supreme with us.
Speaker 4: Yes people, what y Bill?
Speaker 1: I'm back? Yeah, you're back where you been? Sorry to cigarettes.
Speaker 3: Okay, no, for real, Welcome Paradise Gray to Claude, Paradise Gray,
Speaker 3: the man that holds our history in his hands, to
Speaker 3: request love Supreme.
Speaker 1: So, uh, sir, have you ever heard of the Latin Quarter?
Speaker 1: How are you did that?
Speaker 8: I'm a absolutely fantabulous Okay, well real, this is a great,
Speaker 8: great pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: You look amazing. Well, I thank you.
Speaker 1: Look, let's just beginning.
Speaker 3: Where where does your hip hop journey start? Your very
Speaker 3: first moment in which you're meeting the elements.
Speaker 1: Of what hip hop is. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: hearing a patchy for the first.
Speaker 8: Time, or my journey in hip hop started in my
Speaker 8: mother's living room. You know, my mom was a supermom.
Speaker 8: You know, she was the curator of all culture in
Speaker 8: our household. You didn't touch the TV knob unless she
Speaker 8: did it. You didn't listen to the radio unless she
Speaker 8: programmed it. She was my program director, and every Friday
Speaker 8: she would come home from work and go to the
Speaker 8: record store around the corner from my house and come
Speaker 8: in the house with a fistful of brand new forty fives.
Speaker 8: And she introduced me to James Brown, George Clinton, sline
Speaker 8: of Family Stuff, the Last Poets, Gil Scott, Heron, Marvin
Speaker 8: Gaye A and goes on.
Speaker 4: And on and on.
Speaker 8: And then she used to play those records and cook
Speaker 8: and clean the house while meet my brother and sister
Speaker 8: sang and danced with her. And then every Saturday morning
Speaker 8: we would watch Soul Train, and after it went off,
Speaker 8: we would do our own Soul Train line in the
Speaker 8: house because we had all the records that they just
Speaker 8: had on TV already in the living room. So she
Speaker 8: prepared me to be a DJ and a selector. And
Speaker 8: the first two crates of records that I had when
Speaker 8: I started DJing in the streets, I took it from
Speaker 8: my mother's record collection, you know, really yes records, well two.
Speaker 1: Crates the records.
Speaker 4: I mean, I had a lot of the breakbeats right
Speaker 4: from the door. You know what I mean?
Speaker 8: Because my mom she listened to every genre of music,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, So she prepared me well.
Speaker 8: So one day, growing up in the Bronxdale Projects, I
Speaker 8: was going to the store and I heard this music
Speaker 8: coming from beyond this door. There used to be a
Speaker 8: laundry room, but a DJ that lived in my building.
Speaker 8: His name was disco King Mario. Oh yes, okay, so
Speaker 8: this was another address that should be remembered with fifteen
Speaker 8: twenty sent a consider seventeen fifteen Bruckner Boulevard in the
Speaker 8: Bronxdale Projects, and I heard the music coming from the door.
Speaker 8: I cracked the door open and there he was disco
Speaker 8: King Mario with two turntables and a Bozac mixer with
Speaker 8: a knob, and he was playing a song I think
Speaker 8: called Gotta Get a Nut, oh by a.
Speaker 3: New Birth and then then yep, the infamous Yeah I
Speaker 3: sold Can You Keep a Secret?
Speaker 1: Drum breaking?
Speaker 8: And then right I was standing there with my jaw like,
Speaker 8: oh wow, what does he do to those records? Like
Speaker 8: you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: And he was like, man, come in and close the door.
Speaker 8: I came in and I sat down and I was
Speaker 8: surrounded by stacks and crates and equipment and speakers and records.
Speaker 8: And you know, he uh had a bad habit of
Speaker 8: when he DJ, he didn't put the record back in
Speaker 8: the cover.
Speaker 4: So his records was all over the place. They were dusty.
Speaker 1: And because.
Speaker 8: So, because my mother had conditioned me to wipe the
Speaker 8: records and put them back in the sleeve, I systematically
Speaker 8: started organizing Mario's records.
Speaker 4: I was seven years old and I wiped them records.
Speaker 8: You better not touch my record the floor okay, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, in horrible condition, And I said,
Speaker 8: I came in with the kit you know they had
Speaker 8: the alcohol in it, remember that with the velvet, and
Speaker 8: wiped the record.
Speaker 4: He loved it. I organized his crates and that began
Speaker 4: my journey as a real DJ.
Speaker 3: I want to do a slight sidebar because okay, so
Speaker 3: as a family, we've been together for seven years, but
Speaker 3: I don't even know your actual journeys. If we can
Speaker 3: keep it under three minutes, like what was your first
Speaker 3: hip hop moment?
Speaker 10: I would say my first hip hop moment was my
Speaker 10: uncle taking me to the Fresh Vest at the Greensboro
Speaker 10: Coliseum in like eighty this was eighty five A six.
Speaker 1: I was like six years old. Did you not hear
Speaker 1: rap music before that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I heard rap more did Okay?
Speaker 3: So what was the most impact, like your first impactful?
Speaker 3: Like me hearing rappers delight was like what is this?
Speaker 3: I think probably the first we're talking just hearing the music.
Speaker 3: It really wasn't rap. I mean it was like records
Speaker 3: like you know, Nucleus, Jam on It and Rat.
Speaker 1: It was those kinds of records.
Speaker 10: Because my mother would take me with her to the
Speaker 10: park and DJ's will be out playing those records.
Speaker 5: You know he should have win last, but seeing it
Speaker 5: and some bullshit, but not.
Speaker 10: Seeing it, that was like that was It was eighty
Speaker 10: five run, DMC, Fat Boys and Houdini and that was
Speaker 10: just that was it for me.
Speaker 1: It was done.
Speaker 4: I knew what I want to be, all right? So
Speaker 4: like you next?
Speaker 1: Now, first of all, we're in d C. Or were
Speaker 1: you in Philly?
Speaker 4: In Atlanta, d C.
Speaker 5: That's where I worked for fifteen years of my life.
Speaker 5: But I mean, I feel like mine is more disconnected
Speaker 5: through TV because I was babysat by the TV, so
Speaker 5: it was through movies. It was Beach Street, it was
Speaker 5: breaking one, breaking two, Breaking Book. I'm gonna tell my truth.
Speaker 5: Breaking Boogloo was my ship man to Judge.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, I saw the movie three times when I
Speaker 1: went to the theater. All right, Steve, Yeah?
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: Besides, you know smoking with Snoop Dogg at the studio. Well, now,
Speaker 3: did you want to tell.
Speaker 1: Me you stole we from Snoop?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, but he's so smoking right now.
Speaker 11: I think I told that story when we interviewed Snoop.
Speaker 11: But it was a Fat Boys and that first run
Speaker 11: DMC album rock Box. And but the thing was, I
Speaker 11: heard all this stuff at my Jewish summer camp where
Speaker 11: there were no black people.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what was going on or what.
Speaker 11: I was listening to necessarily, but then you know, everything
Speaker 11: happened in I guess high school breakdancing. I mean, you
Speaker 11: can tell me what year was that was that first
Speaker 11: run DMC album eighty three.
Speaker 1: Wait, this is weird.
Speaker 3: I'm noticing now, And you know, we should probably try
Speaker 3: to get cool rock Ski on the show. That the
Speaker 3: Fat Boys is actually a lot of people's first introduction
Speaker 3: to hip hop, which is kind of crazy to me.
Speaker 3: But even jay Z said the very first hip hop
Speaker 3: tape he ever brought was the Fat Boys. So it's
Speaker 3: almost like because hip hop was kind of contributing, you know. Again,
Speaker 3: my parents went to that ye Christian Berry, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you ain't listen to that whatever, But they had no
Speaker 3: problems with me having the Fat Boys because they were
Speaker 3: too funny.
Speaker 1: It was funny. They were too funny to be threatening,
Speaker 1: you know, whereas all right on paid Bill. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the Fat Boys, I think Heavy D in the
Speaker 1: early days, and.
Speaker 3: Then like I came up in like the Vanilla Ice,
Speaker 3: Teenage Munan.
Speaker 1: Nina Turtles era, but then Ninja I did. But then
Speaker 1: I know it's hard to say out loud.
Speaker 3: I don't want I don't want to dismiss that because
Speaker 3: only because LLLL and I were talking about this on tour. Well,
Speaker 3: concerning Hammer and Vanilla Ice both selling ten million units,
Speaker 3: like between Licensed to Ill, Hammer's second album and Vanilla Ice,
Speaker 3: like those three records were the first three albums to
Speaker 3: sell more than ten million units, and for a lot
Speaker 3: of people that are in the hip hop now, like
Speaker 3: that was their fat which then led them to everything else.
Speaker 1: So I can't even be dismissive. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: like the mag goodness of.
Speaker 4: X clan's first tour was with the Ghetto Boys and
Speaker 4: Vanilla Ice. What what was that like? Man? One day
Speaker 4: I was in my room.
Speaker 8: We would go on stage, rock and bounce, you know,
Speaker 8: so we didn't know what was going on with the
Speaker 8: other we know, you know, Scarface and the Ghetto Boys
Speaker 8: was one of our favorites. But the first time I
Speaker 8: even heard the name, this beautiful girl was knocking on
Speaker 8: my hotel room after the show opened the door. I
Speaker 8: was like, wow, She was like, where's Vanilla Ice? I
Speaker 8: was like, I don't know what chocolate is?
Speaker 4: Right here? Babies, now we use it.
Speaker 3: Because I know this is actually a subjective fact. If
Speaker 3: that's such a thing in your opinion, When did hip
Speaker 3: hop start? Because I keep hearing from many a person that, no, no,
Speaker 3: it wasn't August nineteen seventy three. It was Da da
Speaker 3: Da Da da da.
Speaker 1: Honestly, who's gonna win this tug of war?
Speaker 4: I have no idea, okay, but I will be honest.
Speaker 8: August eleventh, nineteen seventy three is an arbitrary date, okay,
Speaker 8: but we had to say it started somewhere. But I
Speaker 8: believe that hip hop started when the first man walked.
Speaker 8: Hip hop started when the first person rapped. Hip hop started,
Speaker 8: when all the elements were developed hundreds, maybe even thousands
Speaker 8: of years ago by our ancestors. For us to say
Speaker 8: that we created hip hop from nothing in the Bronx
Speaker 8: in nineteen seventy three is totally disrespectful to James Brown,
Speaker 8: George Clinton, sline of family, Stone, pig Meat Malcolm, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. It's disrespectful to at Hotel Malik
Speaker 8: el Shabaz, to Muhammad Ali, to the Black Arts movement,
Speaker 8: a Mary Baraka, Sonya Sanchez, you know, to watch prophets,
Speaker 8: the Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, you know, the jubile Ayers,
Speaker 8: Pigmy Malcolm.
Speaker 1: You know, can I ask you so?
Speaker 3: When I was a kid and I was eight years
Speaker 3: old when Rappers Delight came out, and you know, for
Speaker 3: a line's share of America, Rappers Delight was for a
Speaker 3: lot of us our first hip hop experience.
Speaker 1: We never heard of anything beforehand.
Speaker 3: Even though I lived next door to a DJ, so
Speaker 3: you know, I would hear like, let's dance to the
Speaker 3: drummers beat and he had like two turns in, but
Speaker 3: I thought he was a disco DJ, right, although he
Speaker 3: wasn't scratching.
Speaker 4: Before nineteen eighty three, every DJ was a disco dj.
Speaker 8: Okay, if you was not a disco DJ in New York,
Speaker 8: you wasn't making no money. And hip hop is the
Speaker 8: bastard child of disco, funk, R and B, gospel, jazz
Speaker 8: and everything that came before it, But it's closest related
Speaker 8: to disco.
Speaker 4: Think about it.
Speaker 8: First rap record you said was important was What Delight.
Speaker 8: It was a san but it was a disco record,
Speaker 8: Good Times, you know what I'm saying. As matter of fact,
Speaker 8: every record that came out in nineteen seventy nine was
Speaker 8: a disco record that people was rapping over, with the
Speaker 8: exception of Grand Master Flash and the Serious five Freedom,
Speaker 8: but rapping and wait right, even Super Dune that all
Speaker 8: of those are disco beats. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Rapping and rocking the House that was a disco beat,
Speaker 8: or you know King Tim the Third that was a
Speaker 8: straight disco record.
Speaker 4: If you look at the.
Speaker 8: Video to the sugar Hill Gang and you turned the
Speaker 8: volume down, you would not believe they was rapping.
Speaker 4: They got silk shirts on with big old collars. You
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: They wearing dress, slacks and slippery bottom shoes. It wasn't
Speaker 8: no Adidas, it wasn't no Pumas. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 8: no Nikes, no Gazelli's, no Kingos, none of that. If
Speaker 8: you went in the club, our elders was in the
Speaker 8: club with slippery bottom shoes, gators, jackets, and hats on.
Speaker 4: That was it.
Speaker 3: The question I'm asking you is that I'm under the
Speaker 3: impression that this culture got its name only because it's
Speaker 3: the very first two words that Wonder Mike says on
Speaker 3: the very first hip hop record that anyone ever heard.
Speaker 3: I would agree with that, yeah, because my parents used
Speaker 3: to always be like, you better hip hop, your hands
Speaker 3: in bed, you better hip hop, and this is hippity
Speaker 3: hoppy and hip hip hop.
Speaker 4: And then dad, you should do exactly the same thing, right.
Speaker 1: So I was asking you, was were you guys even
Speaker 1: calling it hip hop?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, I get it, no more than like the first
Speaker 1: two words. And that's the thing.
Speaker 3: Even I didn't know the song was called Rappers the Light.
Speaker 3: The first day I brought it, I went to the store, like,
Speaker 3: you got hip hop?
Speaker 1: He's like, and he hands me a you know record.
Speaker 11: What were they calling it?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 8: Well, we was calling it jamming. We was you know,
Speaker 8: we're gonna jam today, you know we're gonna go out.
Speaker 1: We even call it rap music, the rap music. Well
Speaker 1: because they called the song Rappers the Light.
Speaker 3: Then it's like, oh my god, yeah, like Rappers of
Speaker 3: Light contains a lot of the elements that we still
Speaker 3: use now, like.
Speaker 12: Writing, biting the label, label, ribbon off, the artists, the foundations.
Speaker 8: But you know what those Sylvia Robinson does not get
Speaker 8: as much credit as she deserves. You know, she was
Speaker 8: the one that saw Hollywood and loved Bug Starsky in
Speaker 8: Harlem and say, yo, this is important.
Speaker 4: You know, do you know that little note?
Speaker 8: First of all, Sylvia was the first hip hop mobile, yes, period,
Speaker 8: you know. And second of all, she engineered this song
Speaker 8: and mixed it.
Speaker 1: I heard she played bass on it.
Speaker 4: She probably did. I heard she got so much skills
Speaker 4: and talents.
Speaker 5: And are we to assume that her business acumen came
Speaker 5: from like the men and the people that came before her.
Speaker 8: The most to the business acumen came because she owned
Speaker 8: seven labels.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking she ran with Mars Levy.
Speaker 3: If you know about Mars, like Mars Levy was the
Speaker 3: Jewish night the word first YouTube was like, huh what
Speaker 3: I heard?
Speaker 1: Levy?
Speaker 5: And I was like, Bill too young?
Speaker 3: Mars Levy owned, uh, you know Roulette Records, read the
Speaker 3: book Hitman for real.
Speaker 1: Gangs that stuff. Can you just describe as visually as
Speaker 1: you can.
Speaker 3: What an average jam was like in the Bronx, like
Speaker 3: sound wise, because you know we'll see you know, sort
Speaker 3: of like not revisioned or you know, like people will
Speaker 3: give their stories or tells of it.
Speaker 1: But I want to know.
Speaker 8: I have watched sue footage from nineteen eighty three really
Speaker 8: of me and my crew DJ Playboy Paradise and the
Speaker 8: Brothers three and my other rap group to throw Down
Speaker 8: four in nineteen eighty three, and we're dancing, we're doing graffiti,
Speaker 8: and we're DJing and rapping organically without Beach Street, you know,
Speaker 8: without Hollywood. And one of these days I'm gonna screen
Speaker 8: the footage that we found and then interview. Almost every
Speaker 8: single one of my homies in video is still alive.
Speaker 8: It's a miracle, yes, sir, but guess what the miracles
Speaker 8: called hip hop? Every single one of my homies that
Speaker 8: rap danced dig graffiti, except a few, very few.
Speaker 4: Of us perished by natural causes or by murder.
Speaker 8: But the friends of mine from Highbridge who didn't rat
Speaker 8: and wasn't in hip hop man decimated.
Speaker 3: Is what you witnessed in terms of any park gyms
Speaker 3: you went to, was that the only existence of that
Speaker 3: culture in that particular thing.
Speaker 1: Or on a Sunday, could there be nine block parties happening?
Speaker 4: You just good?
Speaker 8: Well, the first block parties were live bands. We had
Speaker 8: a lot of live bands in Highbridge, which is where
Speaker 8: I moved after I moved from the Bronxdale projects. I
Speaker 8: lived less than a mile from fifteen to twenty Sedject
Speaker 8: considered okay and quite honestly, in their early years, there
Speaker 8: was a lot of other teachers that were rocking simultaneously
Speaker 8: with Cool Hurt, and before Cool Hurt, in my neighborhood,
Speaker 8: we had a DJ named Pete DJ Jones.
Speaker 1: So can you explain who DJ Jones is for our audience.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Pete DJ Jones was a mobile DJ. He was
Speaker 8: one of the top two mobile DJs in New York
Speaker 8: City period. The other one was Grandmaster Flowers from Brooklyn,
Speaker 8: hip hop's first grand Master. And a lot of people
Speaker 8: may say, well I never heard of him, Yeah right,
Speaker 8: I got one hundred fliers with him on the same
Speaker 8: flyers with Hurricane Flash and Bam and all of them,
Speaker 8: you know. And he opened for James Brown as a
Speaker 8: DJ at Yankee Stadium in nineteen sixty eight. Oh wow,
Speaker 8: So you know, hip hop just crushed August eleventh in
Speaker 8: the Yankee Stadium. But Yankee Stadium has deeper history in
Speaker 8: the Bronx, you know. And there's a lot like a
Speaker 8: lot of people's say, well, Pete DJ Jones, he was
Speaker 8: a disco DJ. Once again, we can't do that. He
Speaker 8: mentored Hollywood Loved Buck Starsky, Curtis Blow, and grand Master Flash.
Speaker 8: Get that, man, it's hip hop credentials.
Speaker 1: Today or no.
Speaker 8: He passed away a few years ago, but there's some
Speaker 8: footage on it on YouTube with him stealing it speaking
Speaker 8: with his own words. He was amazing dj. He was
Speaker 8: great at mixing. He did not cut, he did not scratch,
Speaker 8: he didn't do any of that. But he played breakbeats
Speaker 8: two and he ushered in Hollywood Loved Buck Starsky Curtis Blow,
Speaker 8: and grand Master Flash.
Speaker 10: I wanted to ask, of Paradise, how does the DJ
Speaker 10: somebody like Larry Levan, How did they someone like him
Speaker 10: that played the Paradise Garage.
Speaker 1: Was that in y'all's kind of radar at all time?
Speaker 8: It well, it definitely was because we we loved disco
Speaker 8: music and dance music and actually, you know, disco to us,
Speaker 8: that word is what stops a lot of people from
Speaker 8: understanding what we're talking about, because when we say disco,
Speaker 8: it wasn't a genre of music. It was a place
Speaker 8: to be tech. It was a disco tech. It was
Speaker 8: the place where they played music at and when we
Speaker 8: went to the clubs, the disco techts, they are a
Speaker 8: shout to DC. We played Go Go too in the
Speaker 8: beginning of hip hop, and a lot of Chuck Brown
Speaker 8: and the Soul Searchers and a lot of those EU
Speaker 8: and all of those guys. They contributed to the to
Speaker 8: the creation of hip hop too. You know, a lot
Speaker 8: of people from Philly contributed greatly to the creation of
Speaker 8: hip hop and they don't get the credit for it.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: The Juice Crew and Cold Chilling records that came out
Speaker 8: with Rock, Sanne Chante, Bismarck, Big Daddy came in.
Speaker 4: The Juice Crew that we know that started as pop
Speaker 4: art in Philly, you understand, So exactly.
Speaker 8: There's so you know, we migrated from the South and
Speaker 8: we brought a lot of these things with us. There's
Speaker 8: a rap group that was a gospel group in the
Speaker 8: twenties and thirties named the Jubile Airs, who rapped with
Speaker 8: the same cadence as the Sugarhill Gang.
Speaker 4: Yep, you know. So if we.
Speaker 8: Ignore our elders and ancestors and don't speak of their contributions,
Speaker 8: they taught us hip hop. We learned hip hop from
Speaker 8: our elders and ancestors, and if we eliminate them, then
Speaker 8: we got to write for young people today to not
Speaker 8: remember us or attribute our accomplishments to us. Because we
Speaker 8: disrespect our ancestors, we deserve to be disrespected too.
Speaker 11: So I'm trying to think of the proper way to
Speaker 11: ask this question though. But is it because disco was
Speaker 11: the current music of the time? Is that why it
Speaker 11: became you know, let's say beginning of hip hop, it
Speaker 11: was because disco is funky and disco is that shit?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 8: Come on, one of the biggest greatest breakbeats in the world,
Speaker 8: Frisco Disco.
Speaker 4: Come on? Come on, you know Brown, Yes, you know
Speaker 4: what I'm saying. Come on, where would hip hop be
Speaker 4: without the Isley Brothers. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: We where would we be without Motown stacks votes, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. Mcfatten and white Head, all of
Speaker 8: these guys were geniuses. We learned hip hop from them
Speaker 8: and we remixed it, we sampled it. Hip Hop is
Speaker 8: a sample of Afro indigenous culture worldwide. It's the best
Speaker 8: of everything that ever existed. If you make a beat
Speaker 8: that we like, we don't care if you're corny white
Speaker 8: rock group.
Speaker 4: With long hair. We didn't let it go that far,
Speaker 4: but we love give me that. It's hip hop now.
Speaker 8: Hip hop is a cultural and musical version of Star
Speaker 8: Trek's Borg resistance is futile.
Speaker 4: You will be assimilated new generation and after you, Yeah,
Speaker 4: the things.
Speaker 1: I learned about you? When do you say that?
Speaker 3: Hip hop started making its uh sort of its trek
Speaker 3: into nightclub culture where it starts as block party culture.
Speaker 8: That's where Cool Hurt, the Zulu Nation, Grand Master Flash,
Speaker 8: the l Brothers, Graham with the Theodore, That's where the
Speaker 8: Disco Twins come in.
Speaker 4: These guys took it to those places, you know what
Speaker 4: I'm saying, And we.
Speaker 8: Use disco records as break beats, come on, what would
Speaker 8: hip hop be without?
Speaker 4: I want to thank you having for all the you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I mean just there was just some amazing music being
Speaker 8: made by some of the greatest cultural geniuses who ever lived,
Speaker 8: and we got to call them out and give them
Speaker 8: credit for what they created. Bob James, are you kidding meet?
Speaker 8: You know, we had amazing the meters. You know, we
Speaker 8: had amazing teachers who taught us to beat and thank
Speaker 8: god Jane Brown put it on the one baby.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about any historic first that you've seen
Speaker 3: in the first fave, pre pre Latin quarter of your
Speaker 3: hip hop experiences as far as like shows are concerned
Speaker 3: or not clubs you've been to or any of those things.
Speaker 8: We hung out at the Fever, the Disco Fever, Halem World,
Speaker 8: the Renni which was called the Renaissance Harlem World, I
Speaker 8: mean the Disco Fever. The Fever was in the Bronx
Speaker 8: right down the stairs, down the Joker stairs from my
Speaker 8: community high Bridge. It was at around one hundred and
Speaker 8: sixty seventh Street, not far from Yankee Stadium, right by
Speaker 8: River Avenue.
Speaker 1: So that's where you had to go to hear those
Speaker 1: particular non main street.
Speaker 8: So if you was open enough to go there, we
Speaker 8: got everything we needed right in the street for free.
Speaker 1: You know, we speak on it.
Speaker 4: There was the pa L, the Police Athletic League.
Speaker 1: Denzel always talks about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a lot of venues.
Speaker 8: We even had a disco called burger King, which basically
Speaker 8: was a Burger King restaurant.
Speaker 4: At night, one of the brothers that worked there would
Speaker 4: move the tables.
Speaker 8: And chairs and we would charge twenty five cents and
Speaker 8: we would do hip hop parties in Burger.
Speaker 1: King and nobody would be the wiser.
Speaker 4: Nah, they cleaned it up and and you know, nobody
Speaker 4: knew anything about it. You know, we did.
Speaker 8: We used school yards, we used talent shows. We was
Speaker 8: in the streets. You know, we did see the park.
Speaker 8: You know, there was hundreds of parks all over the city,
Speaker 8: from Brooklyn to Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx where
Speaker 8: you know, DJs would just come bring their equipment out,
Speaker 8: set up and get it cracking.
Speaker 4: And it was illegal.
Speaker 8: Everything about hip hop was illegal. We stole most of
Speaker 8: our equipment in the first place. We were stealing ship
Speaker 8: way before that. But that gave a lot of They
Speaker 8: gave a lot of people who wasn't as bold or
Speaker 8: as good thieves like we was an opportunity, but uh,
Speaker 8: you know, we we brought our equipment out in the
Speaker 8: park and we partied without a permit.
Speaker 1: When you say we are you speaking? Were you associated
Speaker 1: with Black Spades or like.
Speaker 4: I was a Baby Spade when I lived in the.
Speaker 8: The crew culture, the Black Spades, A lot of people
Speaker 8: say they were a Black Spade, But the Black Spades
Speaker 8: is from the sixties. Have you ever seen the movie
Speaker 8: A Bronx Tail That was a story of the Black
Speaker 8: Spades and the Bronxdale projects. They organized very similarly to
Speaker 8: the US group on the West Coast, and very similarly
Speaker 8: to the Black Panthers. It was out of necessity. The
Speaker 8: white kids used to live right above where we was
Speaker 8: in the suburbs. There was a couple of blocks that
Speaker 8: separated the projects from the suburbs. And the white kids
Speaker 8: were sons and nephews of Italian mobsters. And they wore
Speaker 8: thelether coats like Phronsie with the collars, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying. They had the grease hair bag, and they
Speaker 8: had revolvers, chains, bats and switch blades, and they would
Speaker 8: come down into our community and pray on us, beat
Speaker 8: us up, and rob us and do whatever they wanted.
Speaker 5: So the Black Spades, my dad is from New York
Speaker 5: and he's about ten fifteen years your senior, and it
Speaker 5: was different for them because they used to throw bottles
Speaker 5: off the top of the of the buildings and hitting
Speaker 5: the kids on the ground in Manhattan. So it was,
Speaker 5: you know, it's interesting to hear the Bronx verst of
Speaker 5: what was going on in.
Speaker 9: The other boroughs.
Speaker 8: So the Black Spades fought back against these white gangs
Speaker 8: and pushed there but way up off us and the
Speaker 8: crew got so big that it became the biggest black
Speaker 8: gang in the Bronx. In Brooklyn, they had the Jolly
Speaker 8: Stompers and the Tomahawks, and they were represented by the
Speaker 8: Black gang in the movie The Warriors.
Speaker 4: Okay, the group at the end that was.
Speaker 8: The Tomahawks and Jolly Stumpers, which later were organized into
Speaker 8: a black movement by my elder Sonny Carson in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: To your knowledge, because to my ears, when I'm listening
Speaker 3: to Justice Doing Going Way Back or listening to Karaswan,
Speaker 3: do the roll call.
Speaker 8: Of like what the South Bronx like, all the names
Speaker 8: and mc shann who did the roll call from Queens.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why you get the bridge. You know what,
Speaker 1: do the other girls have their own tails?
Speaker 3: Hell to the year that just didn't have good marketers,
Speaker 3: yeas the Bronx did exactly.
Speaker 4: So who was first like Chicken on the egg.
Speaker 3: Or I'm asking, like, you know, because I hear of
Speaker 3: Queen's having a history that we don't hear about. I
Speaker 3: don't know much about Brooklyn's history. I know about Grand
Speaker 3: Master Flowers.
Speaker 4: But my boya and there was a bunch of them.
Speaker 8: And there's a DJ that moved from Brooklyn who used
Speaker 8: to DJ Whip Flowers to the Bronxdale Projects who actually
Speaker 8: predated Mario even but he wasn't a cutter or scratcher either.
Speaker 8: But they they played break beats and they blended and
Speaker 8: they did the things that were the predecessor. The DJ
Speaker 8: culture is the foundation and the predecessor of hip hop
Speaker 8: and rap music, and we really have to really do
Speaker 8: a better job of shouting these people out and researching.
Speaker 8: Me and my partner, Prime Minister Pete Knights from Third
Speaker 8: Base mar Cole curator at the Hip Hop Museum, we
Speaker 8: found the earliest flyer that we could find with the
Speaker 8: words hip hop on the fly and the flyer was
Speaker 8: from nineteen seventy nine and it was from Brooklyn.
Speaker 4: So you see what I'm saying. So another battery exactly.
Speaker 8: So there was many DJs, and include Eli Tubo, the
Speaker 8: great legendary hip hop producer that produced Eric B and
Speaker 8: Rock Kim you know, and engineered those sessions. He was
Speaker 8: a popular DJ in Queens. Russell Simmons was a popular
Speaker 8: DJ in Queens.
Speaker 1: He actually knew how to DJ.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he wasn't cutting and scratching, but they would dat.
Speaker 8: Ralph McDaniel's from Video Music Box, very popular DJ.
Speaker 3: Was Hollywood's Terrain in a nightclub only or was he
Speaker 3: also a street DJ?
Speaker 1: And is there a difference between.
Speaker 3: Street block party culture versus nightclub cultures?
Speaker 4: There Most of the time street DJs didn't make no money.
Speaker 4: We did it for the popularity, for the culture, for
Speaker 4: the love, you know.
Speaker 8: But we spent way more money than we made, you know,
Speaker 8: buying big speakers and records and turntables that was crazy
Speaker 8: expensive on young people. That's why I was telling you
Speaker 8: it was illegal, you know. Those that didn't steal. We
Speaker 8: pieced our sound system together. I had one turntable. He
Speaker 8: got one turntable, he got a mixer, he got some records.
Speaker 8: This guy got a speaker. Somebody else had the power amp,
Speaker 8: so we would form Voltron to even create hip hop.
Speaker 3: How are those speakers being built? Do you have any
Speaker 3: knowledge of is it as loud or Queen?
Speaker 8: Yes, Herk had some monster speakers and he was running
Speaker 8: through people in the Bronx until he ran into Breakout
Speaker 8: and Barren with the Mighty Sasquatch sound system. So Herk
Speaker 8: was killing him with the Herkalrre sound system. And then
Speaker 8: he ran into the Mighty Sasquatch, so.
Speaker 1: The loudier system, the louderier base that like you would win.
Speaker 4: I tell you why.
Speaker 8: There was a DJ by the name of DJ smoke
Speaker 8: or DJ Smoky in the Bronx not far from where
Speaker 8: Herk was.
Speaker 4: Who was DJing and popular at the same time HRK was.
Speaker 8: He played break beats and he had his version of
Speaker 8: bee Boys, which were called Smoka Trons. Had Dj Smokey
Speaker 8: been able to defeat Herk, we would be calling the
Speaker 8: bee Boys and break dancers Smoka Trons today because it
Speaker 8: was the same thing, right, Smokey battle hirk On numerous occasions.
Speaker 8: He lost every time because every time he'd set up
Speaker 8: his equipment, Herk would turn the knobs on him and
Speaker 8: blow them out.
Speaker 4: You couldn't even hear them.
Speaker 1: So what constitutes a battle?
Speaker 3: Like do you guys choose a ground and then this
Speaker 3: guy sets up his speakers over there?
Speaker 1: This guy says, speakers over there is Jamaica styles in
Speaker 1: like five minutes you and five hours.
Speaker 4: It depends. It just depends. Like hirking them. They ain't
Speaker 4: have no rules. You'd be in the park jamming and
Speaker 4: they come and they set up they shit right across
Speaker 4: from you.
Speaker 1: Oh, disrespect you.
Speaker 8: They just turned the knobs up and you can't even
Speaker 8: hear your headphones. And you got to pack your ship
Speaker 8: and leave with your tail between your legs.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's what you mean.
Speaker 8: When when Hirk started battling Grand Master Flash, Flash had
Speaker 8: a great sound system too, plus he was a way
Speaker 8: better DJ, So Hurt had to recruit one of my
Speaker 8: favorite mentors and DJs of all time, the Grand Imperial
Speaker 8: dj JC, which most people never heard of because he
Speaker 8: left the Bronx and moved to Yonkers at an early age,
Speaker 8: but him and Grand Mix of d x T were
Speaker 8: the two best DJs back in the day period, hands down,
Speaker 8: no question.
Speaker 1: That was literally, what'll going to be my next questions?
Speaker 4: Like, you know why what?
Speaker 8: Because they related to you, they were both drummersids.
Speaker 1: Off the books.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about your relationship with I'm about to
Speaker 3: say Lou Adler h Lou Waters, the owner of the
Speaker 3: infamous Latin Quarter nightclub by that point, how did you
Speaker 3: bring your vision admission to the Latin Quarter Nightclub?
Speaker 4: First of all, I never met Lou Walters, Barbara Walter's.
Speaker 1: Father, right, I know he owned the spot, so I
Speaker 1: didn't know.
Speaker 4: Right, But the guy that bought it off of the
Speaker 4: people that brought it off of them is my people.
Speaker 8: I first went to Latin Quarters with the Awesome Two
Speaker 8: DJ Teddy Ted and Special K. Yeah, and actually Donald B.
Speaker 8: The Awesome two was Special K and Donald B with
Speaker 8: DJ Teddy Ted Okay, So they were on WHBIM, the
Speaker 8: same radio station made popular by the Supreme Team UH
Speaker 8: and UH surch Use missed the Magic and they would
Speaker 8: have a show that they played rap music Saturday nights,
Speaker 8: four o'clock in the morning and they would play anything, demos, mixtapes.
Speaker 8: They didn't care if you send it to 'em they
Speaker 8: would play it. So I went down. I was promoting
Speaker 8: records at the time. I was working with Russell Simmons
Speaker 8: and Rush Productions and Early Death Jam, and I would
Speaker 8: promote records and I would listen to their radio show
Speaker 8: and they wasn't playing the stuff that I was promoting.
Speaker 8: So I was called a request line over and over
Speaker 8: trying to get them to answer, and they never answered
Speaker 8: the request line. So me being me, I got on
Speaker 8: the train and went up there, knocked on the door,
Speaker 8: introduced myself and I said, why don't try to answer
Speaker 8: the request line. They said, oh, well, cause we ain't
Speaker 8: got nobody to do it. I rolled my SLA, was up,
Speaker 8: went and sat down and then.
Speaker 1: You do now it is organize their records off the floor.
Speaker 4: Know what that organized? Organized the call to people who
Speaker 4: were calling in.
Speaker 8: And what we did was we were able to filter
Speaker 8: out all the horrible stuff that they was playing and
Speaker 8: started playing the most requested stuff. But anyway, they got
Speaker 8: a gig working at the Latin Quarters on Tuesday nights
Speaker 8: and they called it Celebrity Tuesdays, and they invited me
Speaker 8: to come to the club to be a judge. It
Speaker 8: was like showtime at the Apollo for Rappers. You know,
Speaker 8: you get stuff thrown at you, you get booed right
Speaker 8: on stage, you get a bottle like he ever was
Speaker 8: one second.
Speaker 3: So, but the thing is is like how open is
Speaker 3: the establishment to this culture coming into to play?
Speaker 8: Because well, a very interesting and wonderful Jewish man bought
Speaker 8: the Latin Quarter.
Speaker 4: Okay, his name was Mike Goldberg, and he was a hustler.
Speaker 13: You know what I'm saying, say Steve, Mike, sorry everybody,
Speaker 13: But the Lant Quarter was Mike Goldberg's train set.
Speaker 4: It was his play thing, his playground.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 8: He was a multi millionaire that managed the magician David Copperfield,
Speaker 8: who would making twenty million a year on Vegas a loon.
Speaker 8: So this is just a side thing. Yeah, okay, this
Speaker 8: is a side thing. And Mike would just be all
Speaker 8: up in it. He would go stand in front of
Speaker 8: the box office and collect the money himself.
Speaker 4: Don't even let you put it in there to the lady.
Speaker 4: He's standing there, and give me.
Speaker 8: You know, he'd got a fistful of money.
Speaker 1: Sorry everybody.
Speaker 4: Hey, he just had so much fun doing it, you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So one night I decided, like the celebrity tuesdays that
Speaker 8: the Awesome Too was doing was cool, but it wasn't
Speaker 8: packing the club, you know what I mean. And it
Speaker 8: was nothing like what was going on at the club
Speaker 8: on Fridays and Saturdays. So we used to go to
Speaker 8: forty second Street to the kung Fu house called Sinny
Speaker 8: forty second and we used to get three Kung Fu
Speaker 8: movies for five dollars, you know, and you get like
Speaker 8: three movies, popcorn, hot dog, and.
Speaker 4: A drink ten bucks, you know.
Speaker 8: So we all hung out down there watching Bruce Lee,
Speaker 8: Jackie Chan, you know, the Shaw Brothers movies. And that's
Speaker 8: why hip hop became so synonymous with Kung Ko movies
Speaker 8: in those early days, because it was all concentrated right there.
Speaker 8: So I come out to Kung Fu movie and I said,
Speaker 8: let me see what's going on at the club, because
Speaker 8: I've never been there on.
Speaker 4: A Friday or Saturday.
Speaker 8: So I go to the club. There's a Jamaican after
Speaker 8: work dance party and it's so packed that you can't
Speaker 8: even walk around in the club, and the floor was
Speaker 8: undulating with sex and bass. The bass was turned up
Speaker 8: so much sex that if you stood on the dance floor,
Speaker 8: you would probably be dancing without moving.
Speaker 4: It was just undulating.
Speaker 8: It was like watching the matrix, you know, that singing
Speaker 8: and zion at the end. That's what it looked like
Speaker 8: to me. I was like, there's no place in hip
Speaker 8: hop that you can go and have this experience where
Speaker 8: every party's on the dance floor and all the dudes
Speaker 8: are dancing with women.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: So it gave me the idea of epiphany that this
Speaker 8: could be an actual hip hop dance club.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 8: We were going to those clubs and my man was
Speaker 8: talking about Larry Levon and those DJs and stuff. There
Speaker 8: was another movement of freestyle dancing that was going on
Speaker 8: in New York at the time, around eighty five eighty six.
Speaker 8: People wasn't break dancing in New York no more. All
Speaker 8: the rock STEADI Crew, the Dynamic Breakers, all those dudes
Speaker 8: was on tour in Europe, China and Japan. They was
Speaker 8: rocking over there, but nobody was in the club b
Speaker 8: Boy no more in nineteen eighty five eighty six. So
Speaker 8: the new style was the style that they was doing,
Speaker 8: dancing to disco and dancing to club music. They went
Speaker 8: back in time to win the Latin quarter was the
Speaker 8: Cotton Club, and they borrowed the old dancers from Sammy
Speaker 8: Davis Jr. The Nicholas Brothers and Cab Callaway and they
Speaker 8: modernized those dances and danced hip hop with it.
Speaker 4: If you look at.
Speaker 8: The way Salt and Pepper danced store, if you look
Speaker 8: at epmds you got the Chill video, you know. If
Speaker 8: you look at Big Daddy Kane to see Schoob and Scrap,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. You look at Houdini and
Speaker 8: you see got the Ice and the Kango Kid and
Speaker 8: the young Jermaine Duprie. Those were the dancers that were
Speaker 8: being done in the Latin Quarters. The ghosts of the
Speaker 8: Cotton Club was reborn in the dancing at Latin Quarters.
Speaker 8: And we had a group called the Iou Dancers and
Speaker 8: the jac Dancers and the Jason Dances. Was Buddha Stretch
Speaker 8: who went from dancing at the Latin Quarter to choreographing
Speaker 8: Michael Jackson's.
Speaker 4: Remember the Time video and being the lead dancer in
Speaker 4: that video.
Speaker 8: You know, because those doing that Egyptian style, all those
Speaker 8: interesting dance styles were coming out of the Latin Quarter,
Speaker 8: you know. So fifteen year old Queen Latifa was working
Speaker 8: at Burger King in New Jersey. When she decided to
Speaker 8: go to the Latin Quarter to do dancing and she
Speaker 8: saw MC light for FUM, it was like, oh my god,
Speaker 8: I want to do that.
Speaker 4: So that's how the club was.
Speaker 1: When do you mark the grand opening of the Latin Quarter?
Speaker 4: Well, in my era, the one that that I did,
Speaker 4: that's called you know that made it be renamed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not calling the Latin I know, it's a history.
Speaker 1: I just spent. Like the name of your parties was
Speaker 1: was called?
Speaker 4: It was LQ.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll just say the LQ. When do you consider
Speaker 1: the LQ period of the Latin.
Speaker 8: I say, no tricks in eighty six is time to
Speaker 8: build because by eighty six rap music had blown up internationally.
Speaker 8: And if you went to the Latin Quarter on the weekend,
Speaker 8: Curtis blow Run, DMC, the Fat Boys, Houdini, all of
Speaker 8: them would be hanging out there because they were my friends,
Speaker 8: and I would let them in free and give them
Speaker 8: drink tickets. You know, so all the hip hop would
Speaker 8: convene there. But I couldn't put Melly Mel on stage
Speaker 8: to do a show. He would get on stage. Even
Speaker 8: though he would get on stage and do a little
Speaker 8: impromptu stuff, and he was at actually the catalysts that
Speaker 8: help turn it into the Golden Ebra hip hop because
Speaker 8: he was the filter.
Speaker 1: If these legends.
Speaker 3: And I mean, you know, I understand that one year
Speaker 3: here also to represent the opening of a museum, which
Speaker 3: is like, hey, you preserve the culture. But I mean
Speaker 3: even you have to admit that hip hop is very
Speaker 3: big on this sort of disposable adult culture and like
Speaker 3: the youth run it and once you hit a certain
Speaker 3: age then it's like all right, well that was then.
Speaker 8: But that's because of the record labels man and the
Speaker 8: music industry. When when black artists and hip hop get older,
Speaker 8: you got pay him. They know the game. They're not
Speaker 8: seventeen eighteen years old. You're not gonna just run some
Speaker 8: bull crap contract on them.
Speaker 1: No more, damn.
Speaker 8: So when it came that, yeah, we're all economics, they're like,
Speaker 8: you know what, y're old, We're not paying y'all. You know,
Speaker 8: kick rocks and kind of the way that that I
Speaker 8: really transform here pop at the Latin Quarter was for
Speaker 8: the same reasons.
Speaker 4: It was economics.
Speaker 8: I had Mellie mal Houdini run DMC in the club,
Speaker 8: but I couldn't put him on stage.
Speaker 3: So if if Grandmaster Flash in the Furious Five wanted
Speaker 3: to perform.
Speaker 1: At the Latin Quarter, I would have gave him the stage.
Speaker 4: Great gladly passed them to Mic.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: They getting arena money now, they were no club money
Speaker 4: no more, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So so so I put biz Monkey on stage, Roxanne Schaan,
Speaker 8: Te mc shan, Big Daddy, Kane, Salt and Pepper Kid
Speaker 8: and play ep m D Eric Ben rocked him, stets
Speaker 8: of Sonic, just Dice care us one.
Speaker 4: They was all hungry and they weren't They didn't have
Speaker 4: record deals.
Speaker 8: You rocked the Latin Quarter on a Friday or Saturday,
Speaker 8: you had a record deal Monday morning.
Speaker 4: Not that A and R's was in the crowd. Russell
Speaker 4: Simmons is in the crowd.
Speaker 8: Tom Silverman is in the crowd, Fred Maneo is in
Speaker 8: the crowd. Aaron Fuchs is in the crowd. You know,
Speaker 8: they knew where the bread was buttered, and they knew
Speaker 8: that if they did not show up, that they were
Speaker 8: going to miss out on the next big hit.
Speaker 3: Okay, without the threat of getting hit with a lawsuit
Speaker 3: anytime I mentioned these two names. Can you clarify to
Speaker 3: me what exactly is Aaron Fuchs's role in hip hop?
Speaker 3: Because I know of him only when I see a
Speaker 3: relatigious situation happening.
Speaker 8: Right on Tough City Records. He was an independent record
Speaker 8: owner at the time when we started Latin Quarters, the
Speaker 8: majors hadn't come in and dominated and buy out all
Speaker 8: the independent labels. But because all these new artists were
Speaker 8: emerging every week, the majors was getting wiped out, and
Speaker 8: they say, you know what we better get in this game.
Speaker 8: You had Jive RCA, Fourth and Broadway, Columbia, you know,
Speaker 8: start to actually recruit and sign these artists, and we
Speaker 8: replaced the whole generation of artists because of economics and sound.
Speaker 8: You know, the new artists at Latin Quarters they started
Speaker 8: making hip hop dance music. And if Red Alert who
Speaker 8: was my DJ on Friday nights or Chuck Chillout, who
Speaker 8: was my DJ on Saturday nights, if they played your
Speaker 8: music in the Latin Quarter and the IOU and JC
Speaker 8: dancers didn't rush the dance floor and start tearing it up,
Speaker 8: you might not hear your record again.
Speaker 4: So people changed the sound. They made it more up tempo.
Speaker 8: We went a little more James Brown heavy, a lot
Speaker 8: more boomed back, and you know a lot of new
Speaker 8: artists started emerging.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we also live in a time now. Now,
Speaker 1: we live in a time where it's really hard to
Speaker 1: break a new artist out.
Speaker 3: Like you know, as a DJ, I'll play if I
Speaker 3: think something is dope, I'm gonna play it, and you'll
Speaker 3: clearly see an energy shift where it's like I don't
Speaker 3: know this song, so let me go to bathroom or whatever,
Speaker 3: and then it will wind up being a hit later,
Speaker 3: you know, once.
Speaker 1: It goes through the system, if they pay for it
Speaker 1: to go through the system. But you know, to hear
Speaker 1: me tell it.
Speaker 3: A lot of what we consider just the classic bread
Speaker 3: and butter basic food groups of hip hop nightly are
Speaker 3: just getting debuted, like play.
Speaker 1: Top Building for the first time and the audience is
Speaker 1: going crazy. But you had to how how okay?
Speaker 4: So how are you telling me that a.
Speaker 3: Def jam rep can go up to the booth to
Speaker 3: red alert and be like, hey, rock this join like
Speaker 3: there's no because people do that to me a lot.
Speaker 3: Thank God for like the system of Sarato now where
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, I don't my hard drive them,
Speaker 3: like I can't immediately play it. I don't like playing
Speaker 3: some unless I hear it first.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, we had.
Speaker 8: A great sound system in the DJ booth, and you
Speaker 8: could bang something and listen to it in the DJ
Speaker 8: booth without playing it out to the house. But what
Speaker 8: I mean more or less, it's like if DMC walks
Speaker 8: in the club and say, yo, this is our new ship,
Speaker 8: you know you're going to give it a chance.
Speaker 4: But if if if MC butter Butt come in with it, you.
Speaker 1: Know whatever, And you know who who Audio two is?
Speaker 4: I did or is it?
Speaker 8: I hated the Audio two at the time, but I
Speaker 8: loved them as human beings, as people, but they had
Speaker 8: horrible music.
Speaker 4: I like Cherries.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I was going to say, let
Speaker 1: me take Cherries.
Speaker 4: Was the A side? No, No, the A side was.
Speaker 8: Making it that was produced by Daddy, right, okay, you know,
Speaker 8: and the B side was Top Villain and it was it.
Speaker 4: It was only like about two minutes in the beginning, right.
Speaker 8: So what happened was Matt Robinson Milk's dad, who owned
Speaker 8: First Priority Music record label. He had every DJ in
Speaker 8: New York playing Make It Funky except one cool DJ,
Speaker 8: Red Alert, and my partner rests in peace to Robert
Speaker 8: Lamma Carson aka Procesess, an ex. He was Nat Robinson's
Speaker 8: good friend for years and years, so he would always
Speaker 8: come in Paradise, please get ready to.
Speaker 4: Play that record? Man, where gotta play it? You know?
Speaker 4: You know they're right there, They're almost there. They just
Speaker 4: need Red Alert.
Speaker 8: And I wasn't feeling milking kids myself, so I wasn't
Speaker 8: pushing red I do not ask Red Alert to play
Speaker 8: anything because you will get embarrassed.
Speaker 4: Red Alert is unbiable.
Speaker 1: I was just about to ask that you.
Speaker 8: Cannot offer Red Alert no drugs, no women, no money.
Speaker 8: Red Alert had the most integrity.
Speaker 1: But if he said no, no said are you right
Speaker 1: there now? Where? Okay?
Speaker 4: He don't care. He wouldn't play Bam bodis record. And
Speaker 4: he was a zulu.
Speaker 8: If he wasn't feeling it, he ain't playing it, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, no matter how much peer pressure come.
Speaker 8: So Nat Robinson came one day and he was like, Paradise,
Speaker 8: please get ready to play it, man.
Speaker 4: We got this people listening for it, you know, and
Speaker 4: it'll take us over the hunt.
Speaker 1: Please.
Speaker 8: I was like, I took the record in the in
Speaker 8: the DJ boot before Red Alert got to the club,
Speaker 8: and I was just dropping the needle all over the record,
Speaker 8: like there gotta be something that's playable on this, and
Speaker 8: I flipped it over to the B side and I
Speaker 8: couldn't believe my ears.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh my god, this is dope.
Speaker 1: The initial thing was it's dope.
Speaker 3: It's dope, okay with time out pause of the thing. Now,
Speaker 3: when I heard it, it was such an unorthodox song.
Speaker 3: Lady B premiereda in Philadelphia, so I'm certain whatever Red
Speaker 3: Alert was doing.
Speaker 1: She co signed it. Next it is an unusual song,
Speaker 1: yes it is.
Speaker 4: That's why How did you see the light? You know
Speaker 4: what made me love that song?
Speaker 8: Milk is Chilling spending uncounted hours in the studio with
Speaker 8: Rick Rubin.
Speaker 4: Rick Rubin.
Speaker 8: If you look at the early records that he produced,
Speaker 8: it doesn't say produced by Rick Rubin, it says reduced
Speaker 8: by Rick Rubin. And Milk Is Chilling was bare bones, raw,
Speaker 8: uncut hip hop that I was used to from being
Speaker 8: a street DJ in the Bronx. That it reminded me
Speaker 8: of a street jam and somebody put a beat on
Speaker 8: and somebody it's sellaneus MC came running out the crowd
Speaker 8: and put it down on the mic. It was so
Speaker 8: catchy and so sing songie. I knew it was to
Speaker 8: hit the first time I heard it, so I gave
Speaker 8: it to my house DJ DJ Roman. He played it
Speaker 8: about five or six times before Red Alert even got
Speaker 8: to the club on the Latin quart.
Speaker 1: Of sound system.
Speaker 4: That beat hit so hard. Right.
Speaker 8: So Red Alert shows up after coming off with Kiss FM.
Speaker 8: He's headed for the DJ booth. I'm like ecstatic. I
Speaker 8: go running over to him with two copies of this
Speaker 8: record and I.
Speaker 4: Was like, yo, Red, Yo, you gotta check this out.
Speaker 8: And he snatched it out of my hand and threw
Speaker 8: it across the room and it smashed on the wall.
Speaker 8: He was like, Yo, this cit is a Frisbee. I
Speaker 8: wish y'all was stopped coming at me with this frisbees man.
Speaker 8: I told him I'm not playing it.
Speaker 4: I don't like it. I was like, Red, why you
Speaker 4: do me?
Speaker 8: Like? I was like, dud ever tell you to play
Speaker 8: something that's whack. He was like no, but I don't
Speaker 8: like that. I said, you ain't even hear it yet.
Speaker 8: So when he went to go to the DJ booth,
Speaker 8: I beat him to the booth and I made sure
Speaker 8: that the last thing that played was Top Villain was
Speaker 8: Top Villain. I put it on and he walked into
Speaker 8: booth and the crowd was going banana. They were bouncing
Speaker 8: all over the place to it, and I walked away
Speaker 8: and I said, Yo, that's yours.
Speaker 4: And you know, I tell the story that after that
Speaker 4: they started banging it. It was a big hit. Milk
Speaker 4: tells the story. Yo, Dice, he still hates it. He
Speaker 4: still don't play it. He might have played it a
Speaker 4: couple of times for you after that, but he still
Speaker 4: hate us. Still. Yep, that's what all that says. I
Speaker 4: love that.
Speaker 14: Okay, QLs listeners, this is where we're cutting it. Please
Speaker 14: come back next week or check your podcast for you
Speaker 14: for part two of our Gains Studio conversation with Paradise Gray.
Speaker 14: In that episode, he speaks more about the glory years
Speaker 14: of the Latin Quarter, his action of hip hop artifacts,
Speaker 14: and so much more.
Speaker 10: Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast
Speaker 10: is hosted by a Mere Quest Love, Thomas and boss
Speaker 10: Man Like Here, Saint Clair, So Black, Andy Black Myself,
Speaker 10: Fontidelo Fonte, Goldman, Sugar, Steve Mandell, and Unpaid Bill Sherman
Speaker 10: The executive producers are Amir Quest, Love Thompson.
Speaker 1: Sean g and The Unbothered Brian Calho.
Speaker 10: Produced by Britney Benjamin, My Dog Cousin, Jake Pam My
Speaker 10: Motherfucking Man and Like he Is Saint Clair My Work Wife,
Speaker 10: Edited by Alex Conroy. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown
Speaker 10: and Mike Johns. Audio engineering by Graham Gibson aka Double
Speaker 10: G at Iheart's La Studio.
Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in. Check us out next week.
Speaker 1: What's Up Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
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