00:00:00
Speaker 1: Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeartRadio. All right, good people, this is the Quest Love Show, reminding you folks that we are also a visual experience. Like a lot of you are just taking this in as a podcast, but we are on YouTube and we are gladly accepting subscriptions, likes and follows. All right, that's very important if you like what we're putting down on the show. What can I say? Our guest today is a personal personal hero of mine. He taught me the power of creative aisle crossing. I learned never to burn a bridge because you never know who you're gonna need in your journey in life. He taught me the power of being a renaissance person. He taught me the power of speaking of bridges, being a bridge like connecting people from all walks of life. And I guess through him, I learned that hip hop is really it's an art form and we need to hold it up as such. Of course, he's ubiquitous. You may know him too if you're a New York resident of a certain era. Of course you might have seen his legendary tags or his pieces on trains if you were lucky enough. He was the first person to get a shot out on hip hop's first number one rap single, not to mention he was instrumental and really bringing hip hop to the world. Be it first time that I got to see an actual, authentic representation of it if you saw Charlie Adhearn's Wild Style movie. Not to mention the platinum plus flooding of a lot of our classic era hip hop artists through a vehicle called YEO and TV raps, we would have never have heard of Jazzy Jeff for the Fresh Prince or NWA or Public Enemy or Queen Latifa or a Tribe or any of those pioneering groups that inspired us to go on. And he has a new book called Everybody's Fly and it gives astonishing detail about his life on Hancock Street in Brooklyn. What can I say? The flies of them all fab hire Freddy Dude, the way so much, the way that Tarik and I would dream like all right, so you know I'm big on like manifesting and all that manifesting thing. Yeah, And I would say that there's always two scenarios that Tarik and I and our journey, you know, it was like a seven year journey from high school to like when we first started busking on the street corners, right, And the first one is always what I call well Treek, and I'll always be something like, well trek Man. We just finished a four month run of like Indian Africa going on. We laugh, like wed be on the bus coming home from our insurance jobs. But like it was always a well Tarik moment. And the other one, Tarik's version was always ah, yeah, we live here on the fifty two bus at fifty second and Spruce Street with the one and only Questlove and like he would pretend he was you, and like, I guess the whole thing was like, you know, maybe one day we could be on your MTV reps and Wow, to talk to you now in this setting, one is ironic that I'm interviewing you.

00:03:44
Speaker 2: So it's perfect amazing. Yeah, that's so true.

00:03:47
Speaker 1: I feel like this is gonna be a very this will be a terry gross question.

00:03:50
Speaker 2: Haha.

00:03:51
Speaker 1: Okay, what is fly and who came up.

00:03:55
Speaker 2: With that term? Wow? Well, you know before it was I think you could probably safely say popularized in the hip hop space, very early hip hop space. In the Boogie Down Bronx, there was a great movie blaxploitation, although I'm not always crazy about that term, but super fly fly, so fly was just a term that meant, you know, you was cool, you had your gear right, you look right, you stepped right. And so in early hip hop, fly guys and fly girls was the way the participants were referenced, and so it kind of was sort of amplified in that space. And then in explaining to Chris Stine and Debbie Harriet and Nucleus of Blondie what was going on, what this scene was about, how it had its own slang and its own look and its own feel and sound, they kind of took it from me, put it on their record, and now I uh put it on the cover of my book as a title as you should, yeah should? Yeah.

00:05:05
Speaker 1: You have one of the more colorful alliteration names, fab five Freddy Yeah. Can you give me the history of how that moniker landed with you?

00:05:14
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, Well, you know, when I became a part of a group of graffiti writers that were legendary call the Fabulous Five short the Fab five, I became like, let's say, the final member to join, if you will. But my mission when I connected with Lee kenyonis who was the premium member of that group as a just outstanding painter muralists, if you will. When I became a part of that, I would tag up you know, fred and then Fab five, Fabulous five probably you know, just to tag Fab five and that became has just morphed itself into Fab five Freddy.

00:05:50
Speaker 1: So before you came, were they the Fabulous four?

00:05:53
Speaker 2: No, they were the Fab five. They were I guess at different times, probably more than five.

00:05:57
Speaker 1: Okay.

00:05:58
Speaker 2: It was just a cool thing, probably inspired by the by the Beatles to a certain extent, but probably even more so the kind of influence of comics, and you had the Fantastic Four, and so there was like that superhero influence which I guess influenced a lot of graffiti people as well as hip hop people. So it kind of was a popular thing, you know, the Treacherous Three, Fantastic Four, this, the four, the three to two.

00:06:28
Speaker 1: What year is this when the Fabulous well, the Fabulous five as a graffiti crew, they were strong through the seventies and they became known for painting whole car murals and they were just outstanding.

00:06:40
Speaker 2: And Lee, like I said, Lee keg Jonis was the premium member so they were renowned for that. But it was seeing Lee's work, particularly a mural he had did in the Lower east Side at fifty six Park on Madison Street. He was the first guy to paint like an entire handball court, as opposed to the like, you know, to the format of painting a train, which was a kind of a long horizontal. He painted this huge, kind of not a square but thing, which was outstanding. And when I saw that work, and he had written up in the upper corner, graffiti is an art, and if art is a crime, that God forgive all the fact that he was aware this was an art, and it clicked with ideas I had that pop artists had been inspired by similar things that had inspired graffiti, as it really developed into a way to make pictures and really tell stories with the imagery, and I had a feeling like we could move from the subway street space into an art space. I shared these ideas with Lee and we became a team, and hence I became a part of the group. I got with the original members, broke down what my plans were. They was like, go with it, baby, and I went with it all right.

00:07:56
Speaker 1: So you lived in New York city at various transit. I want to ask you about each period. So the first ten years of your life, which I can say is the sixties.

00:08:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is.

00:08:08
Speaker 1: Your happiest memory of nineteen sixties New York?

00:08:14
Speaker 2: Like, what is a great day?

00:08:16
Speaker 1: What's happening?

00:08:17
Speaker 2: A great day? Was, you know, playing in the street? I did all that classic New York street stuff. We played all kinds of games. On the side was what was your main game? Some games were somewhat seasonal because when it warmed up you could play it was a game called skelly.

00:08:35
Speaker 1: Is that a street pool where you take a.

00:08:36
Speaker 2: Time of similar to street pool if you will. You had a kind of a diagram you would draw with little corners and squares. One through thirteen would be in the middle. You'd take a cap and sometimes people would put tartar in it or take a glass and you did. There's a way you could break the top of a glass. So the whole idea is you would shoot your projectile on this little field, so to speak, and you could knock somebody out. You'd go from one and then you went to thirteen. That was really popular, and then then we called it.

00:09:08
Speaker 1: Tops in Philly. Interesting, but we used to always get in trouble for stealing the red tops off of milk bottles. Yeah, and all night like free put them in the freezers so they would have good traction.

00:09:19
Speaker 2: Okay, very similar Philly in New York City. I like to sometimes consider Philly the sixth Borough. It is because it was so connected culturally, esthetically, early graffiti, corn bread, I'm sure you know about it. So, yeah, that was just playing in the street. Was the litany of games we had, whether it was skelly, you know, all kind of games you played, but a little pink ball which was Spalldean was the popular brand, punch ball, handball, Chinese handball. You know. It was a bunch of games that we played, and that's how we played. That was the fun. We had Johnny on the pony, kick the can, red light, green light on two three coke, Olivia or ring Olivio if you guys from that era of New York you remember. So that was fun basically essentially, all right.

00:10:08
Speaker 1: So I also know that you had different experiences than say your peers or your friends, or at least I like to think, so, yeah, very different tho, Like, in the first ten years of your life, what is a memory that you experienced that was just like unique to you. And did you realize how different your life was than say, your neighbors, or your cousins, or whoever is in your age group.

00:10:33
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I didn't think of it as being that different. As I grew older and began to reflect, I realized, Oh, my goodness, what an incredible household, What an amazing things going on that my dad was connected to that rubbed off on me and stuff like that. So I guess, you know something that I get into in the book. Early on, my dad was very connected and conscious with trying to find a better way for us as a people, specifically, so he was reading everything he could read. He was listening Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, you know, as African countries are gaining their liberation. I guess in the sixties and even prior, he was super dialed into all of that. And there was one incident that I get into really dramatic it had happened. It was the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. My dad, he had an old nineteen fifty seven Chevy and a couple of his friends. We got in a car to go to the Brownsville section different parts of the city. Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Ocean Hill, Brownsville, there were people were in a rage. There were fires going on. We had first went up on the roof and we looked out because he heard there was fire here. It was fire here, and we could see the glow of these fires in the distance. My father was connected to like a community organization in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. He said, let's go over there to make sure to try to keep it burning.

00:11:55
Speaker 1: Because I was like, my dad would been like, stay ass in the house. Yeah.

00:11:58
Speaker 2: Well, they were very involved in the community in Brownsville, which is still one of the livest edgiest parts of Brooklyn. And we went out there and while we were driving there, we were waiting at a light, I want to say, on Troy, right at the intersection before we make a left on Atlantic. While sitting there at a red light, I happened to glance to my right and there was a middle aged white man running furiously right at us, and I'm like, what's going on? And before I knew it, this man had opened the car and jumped in and literally like practically sat on top of me and right as he jumped in, it was a huge bang on the hood of a car. These black guys were chasing this man. They were enraged that Martin Luther King had been killed. This man, I do believe would have likely have been killed if not beaten really badly. He jumped in the car. My dad jumped out, scolded those guys because they banged the car. He screamed, this man is not our enemy. This man is not our enemy. I was iarified, and then we drove this man to the local police station, not far on Utica Avenue, the seventy seven precist. My dad was like, don't let them, let you leave on your own. Make sure they took he was on Atlantic Avenue. The Long Island Railroad ran. He was working at some whatever it was. I don't know, but he was walking to a stop on the Long Island Railroad, not aware of what was going on in the community, maybe not even aware Martin Luther King had been assassinated that day. So it was a traumatic, terrifying experience. But I remembered how my dad did the right thing. Took this man to the precinct and dropped him off and made sure He said, don't let you leave here on your own, make sure they drop you off at the train station. Right. It's one of those things you never forget, you know.

00:13:49
Speaker 1: And so okay, like my childhood, we had communities, and I think I was like the last generation of like the free lunch program from the Panthers and wo wow, when did that weighing off? Like when did anyone carry that on after your father? Did he just do it? What do you mean as far as like community organization and what is that entitled? As far as like community organizations?

00:14:12
Speaker 2: Well, you know, my dad was connected. There were a lot of people that were had become activists of sorts that were involved in very because I guess a part of what happened, I guess with all the doing the Johnson administration, there was a lot of money that went into the communities to kind of right some of the wrongs, to give some it was. They were like anti poverty programs, if you will. So my dad was connected with different guys that were involved in these community activities to get people jobs and employment. So he was just dialed in and our house was sort of like an interesting part of also my growing up was because my dad had consumed so much knowledge and he was kind of really up to the minute. Plus his jazz connections, there was at least four days out of every week there was a group of guys that would gather in the basement of a house to talk, discuss, stay up to the minute on what was going on, as change was happening and the Black Panthers were coming and all this stuff was going on. So he was super tied in. So that was also something that went on constantly as a youth, and I would pick up pieces and snippets. As you probably know, Max Roach, the great bebop jazz drummer, was my dad's childhood friend. It was my godfather, and so those my dad would be in his ear. They were all very concerned about all of these issues going on. That was something that was very prescient at that time. And some stuff that I picked up on didn't realize how much it affected me, but it did have an effect on the moves I would make, controlling the narrative.

00:15:49
Speaker 1: Your community organizer, your hip hop community organizer.

00:15:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, my earliest aspiration as a young kid was to be an architect, which didn't work out. But I think in terms of what I've been able to have my hands on. Culturally, I feel it's the type of architecture in terms of building and controlling the narrative was a key thing for me and whatever I did, because I would pick up snippets of their conversations that they wanted to run labels. They was guys were incredibly intelligent, super worldly, but when you think of the dynamics of that time, the hands were tied, if you will, in terms of what one could and could not do. I used to hear stories about Charlie Mingus wanting to start a label. One of my dad's close friends was close with Mngus. He wanted to have a label. But those things weren't always They weren't able to happen in the way people had desired, and they were frustrated. And you know, I always hadn't in my mind to you know, whatever I put together, I wanted to be able to control that narrative or make sure I can direct what that narrative would be.

00:16:52
Speaker 1: Do you think that maybe subconsciously you figured out the key to that sort of action, as is the power of connecting, like hey, let me meet this person, let me go to this part of town and see what's hitting.

00:17:07
Speaker 2: Here let me Yeah, somewhat. I didn't look at it like that, but I did think in terms of I had a slight understanding of how one gets a bill passed through Congress. You have to lobby and connect and convince. So I had a rough understanding. It wasn't clearly defined, but reaching out and being able to communicate with whoever was there was something I was determined to do. And I guess what really got that moving for me was specifically seeing the beginnings of the punk rock, new wave kind of revolution, if you will. I remember there was a page two or three story in the New York Times. Luckily my dad read everything, had always had all kinds of publications and reading about the sex pistols and how shocking that was, you know, coming at the Queen of England and what they were talking about was like really heavy stuff. And I began to look at some of what was going on around that. And as I'm developing ideas about this graffiti as art, this new music, how to bring this all together and present as one, I figured those people seem wild and crazy enough. If I can connect, I might be able to get an audience with some of these people to share these ideas which nobody was embracing or there was no love for any of this at the time.

00:18:31
Speaker 1: You were an army of one.

00:18:33
Speaker 2: I was an army of one or sure, and yeah, so that would be key in terms of meeting people that I guess it. I did connect, but it wasn't a specific thing. Ha, I wanted to make all these connections. I was just trying to get people to listen to my story, understand this crazy idea I had, and I was embraced and immediately found a lot of support from people in that new wave space, and that got things really moving aggressively. If you will, in retrospect, what was.

00:19:18
Speaker 1: The first act of creativity that you part took in. What was your first creative project?

00:19:26
Speaker 2: Well, besides me and a kid having art in school, whether it's finger painting in the single digit years of school, that was always a fun thing to do. But I guess it was really I did have a brief gig designing the imagery for these kind of candles that would be sold and that people would prey on. And you'd have these candles, yeah, like Lucky thirteen. People would have these things to hit your number or to bring good luck.

00:19:57
Speaker 1: Goodwill were designed that multicolored candle.

00:20:00
Speaker 2: I designed the image that would go on the glass sticker, a sticker.

00:20:04
Speaker 1: Well, it was like a well nowadays there's prints and Drake and Madonna, and someone showed one of my face on it, so you you those stickers that ever go on those candles kind of this It.

00:20:15
Speaker 2: Wasn't quite a sticker, but the imagery that would get printed, it would kind of turned it into like a screen, a one colored print that would be printed on the on the glass. And that was kind of like a first real kind of hired to do art type of thing. A buddy of mine termed me onto that, a kid across the street from me on Hancock Street investa and I did, I did. I did a bunch of those, so I was like when I was like, oh my god, I was hired to do art. But really I guess from there that the more serious thing was when I connected with Lee Canonis became a part of five five, my mission to elevate this work into a kind of art gallery museum, find people that really understood the art to look at us. And that all came from the connections I made with people on the new wave scene, particularly Glen O'Brien advised me to you need to get some publicity. And the first publicity came in the Village Voice newspaper, a piece on myself and what Lee and I were trying to do. And that piece had my home phone number. You could reach reach out to us. We would paint a mural, or we would on your wall or whatever had five thousand square foot and that was all and the phone.

00:21:26
Speaker 1: Started reading thousand square foot. Yeah, we figured, you know, now it's five hundred thousand dollars easily right. Oh god.

00:21:33
Speaker 2: But we did get a few commissions came in. A few people hired us to come and spray paint a wall, you know, a couple. We did a few walls. But out of that, an Italian art dealer from a very prestigious gallery in Rome, the Gallery of Lamadusa, reached out and wanted to acquire some work engage with us. He saw we were cool. He had similar ideas that he would come. It's a very prestigious dealer and and he had homes all over the world, but when he would come to New York, he'd ride the train. He was fascinated and so he basically offered us an exhibit at this gallery in Rome, and that really was beyond expectation and it really got the ball rolling for what we wanted to do as artists. And then it kind of opened the door for other people from that same space that we kind of pulled in to get down with this. That included Futura, Crash Days, Pink and so it was a lot that happened in a miraculous way. But that was a key thing that set it up. I had also had recently become friends with Jean Michel Boskiot and he was just like me, same age. We're both trying to make similar moves in that space, and he was just, oh my god, it's just super exciting. And that really was a big moment. I really detail that thoroughly in the book What year was this? And Italy seventy nine?

00:22:57
Speaker 1: And you enjoyed it? Ah?

00:22:58
Speaker 2: Man, I got it.

00:23:01
Speaker 1: I get mad when people all right, My experience of Italy was kind of the opposite. Oh boy, it was not enjoyable. But also like just being a broke we were broke musicians living in Europe. It's not like, oh, we go on tour in order for us, you got to understand, like we were one of maybe eight black bands that still had a record deal. Wow, like the black band was a non existent thing. You know, hip hop sort has washed everything away. So we had to move to Europe. We like stole our budget money, got an apartment in London and we would just spend a month in each country. Let's go to France for a month, Let's go to Italy and Italy. Man just every night, man, like they thought we were part of this African cartel. We do our laundry and then their version of the FBI come in, let me see your IDs. Like every night. It was anything that's ever happened in like right a tech shows or problems with police.

00:24:02
Speaker 2: They would come and hassle you guys, only in Italy.

00:24:04
Speaker 1: Like we finally, I think maybe in two thousand and five, had a good experience there, and so since then I've changed my mind about it. But to be broke in the summer of Italy, I hated every moment of it. So when people like talk all romantic about oh it was amazing, and we were just like depressed.

00:24:24
Speaker 2: So yeah, we had a much better experience, I guess. I guess the context of what we were doing. We basically you know, but we're basically there for this exhibit. And I had been reading about the Red Brigade. This was a militant Italian terror group, if you will, that were doing this thing that's people reference it now as you know, it was called kneecapping and they were shooting officials in the knees. They would ride by and spread these guys knees and then they would write graffiti to Red Brigade and they were like a radical thing against the it.

00:25:05
Speaker 1: It was like a political activist.

00:25:07
Speaker 2: Political terror group if you would have had people shook to their core. So me seeing stories and photos, you know, any no idea, Yeah, trust me. People, when you hear the term kneecapping, now that's where it originates. Wow, it was like kneecapping. It was a big thing. But because the graffiti connection, whenever you'd see a story about it, they would show the spray painting around. I thought, oh, well, graffiti and rome is a radical kind of thing. Maybe if they hear about what we're doing, these guys may want to show up and check our workout or something to that effect. When we had the exhibit at and I realized that this guy was a real Upper Cross Italian and the people that came to our opening included the chairman of FIAT, Johnny Agnelli, and contested this. I was like, boy, these are the kind of people that could be targets Revygae. There could be some kneecapt candidates here. But but essentially we just went on me and Lee Man late at night, wandering the streets of Rome. Of course, I had my boombox with me. I'm blasting early rap tapes and we just would wander the streets of Rome. Turn a corner there's, oh, there's remnants of a monument, and you walked through the city of Rome. So we just had a delight. We climbed over a fence of the coliseum and sat on the last remaining steps in the coliseum, which was like two kids from New York City, just what are we doing here. At that time, there were feral cats, hundreds of them that ran all over the Colisseum in Rome. I ran into Fellini on the street Rico Fellini lived. We were staying in what's called the Penzi, which was like a super cheap joint, and our dealer lived in this area on Via Margutta, and Fellini lived up the street and so helped me. I'm walking in the street and there's mister Fellini. I stopped. I chatted with him briefly. He had the classic hat on. And so is it like a pretty memorable What is it about you that has no fear?

00:27:24
Speaker 1: Because even in your book you are speaking of like I live in an era of New York where it has to be something worth it to get on the train. And now you know Manhattan, people are like, I don't do Brooklyn, I don't do Queens. I'll be like, yo, there's mad restaurants and queens. Let's go to Queens one night. Literally, you are the embodiment of like when people ask me, like, what's your advice or whatever, it's very simple, show up, see what happened. Show up, and you'll be shocked at the amount of time where people talk themselves out of their destiny because they've already painted their head. Nah, I don't want to do that. Something might happen, like because in my mind, I'm like, you're from real New York. I'm in now, a pampered New York. And even then, you know, my first thought is who are all going to be there?

00:28:20
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:28:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm good. No, but I'm saying, like you one, you're an army of one. So was there never not a concern I should find out about this neighborhood I'm going to before.

00:28:36
Speaker 2: Come on and that. Well, regarding that moving through the city, definitely you had to be away and caution. So my street senses with kicking, like even though I was reading and had like an intelligent nerd side to me coach whim with the best of the worst in the hood, like my parents didn't take it their respect, just being real, like if you had to knuckle up, I was ready, you know what I'm saying. You know, I got bullied, like a lot of kids did. But at a certain point kid bullying me, I just called turned off and knocked his head off, knocked his block. Everybody went crazy, and that at least would let people know like, yo, you don't mess with him, you know what I'm saying. So I was able to move with some kids that was pretty wild.

00:29:22
Speaker 1: Did you have cousins or brothers or anything.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: No, I was the only child for most of that time. I have a younger sister, but you know, but.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: Nothing strikes to fear in someone, especially in the seventies, yeah, man, I'm gonna get my brother fuck you up.

00:29:36
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, nah that was real, But like I just navigated it in a way. You learned. You got bullied, you got picked on, but you learned the haul off and knock a kid upside his head and other kids realize, Yo, you don't want to mess with him because he'll knuckle up. And so you get a certain level of respect at that level, like on some jungle shit. And then you know, we would travel I'm from the era like where we would hitch busses, we ride the back of butt We did wild crazy shit, and my era I did. I put my feet in those waters to a certain extent. So when we travel through certain areas of Brooklyn to go to swimming pools, and like in Red Hook or wherever we was going, some neighborhoods you'd move through, cats would step to you and be like, Yo, what's up? You know? All right? Well fight so and so over here you had to. Yeah, it'd be crazy. Wait what yeah, like you come us out you got Sometimes you be in a rough neighborhood, kids will step to you, be so so understanding what a rough neighborhood is. Sometime if you move in. You come to a corner, you look down a block, but yo, it's just just it looked wild over here. Or you wouldn't go through projects unless you really knew somebody like a housing project, you'd navigate around there. So your instincts would get developed to a certain point where you can feel an energy when you come to a certain location. That's New York, especially in the summer. Heads are gonna be out and they're gonna be on a stoop. They're gonna be in the parks, and you can feel that. So you would avoid certain where would.

00:31:09
Speaker 1: You never go in nineteen seventies New York?

00:31:13
Speaker 2: Like I said, if you knew it was crazy over here, you had to move with a certain level of caution. You know. That's how it was.

00:31:20
Speaker 1: Is there a certain New York that you would I'm good.

00:31:23
Speaker 2: Certain parts of Brownsville it was roughs for green would be kind of rough. You know. If you in certain areas in them hoods, dudes would step to you because you know, they'd be like, yo, what you're doing around here? Like what's up? Yo? These kids don't look you know, they whatever what's happening. So you find a lot of early beefs with stem from just being in the wrong part of town, or if you was dating a girl or the chick lived here, that could be problematic. You know, it's ignorant stuff when you grow up a little bit, but you know, you learn how to navigate, how to make moves, where to go and where not to go. That was New York back then because you know, actually people didn't move travel too much out of their particular safe zones, and if you did, you move with a certain Listen. The stick up kid thing was real, and in Brooklyn that was a major occupation, like a hustle, like I've directed. One of the many videos I directed was for Gang Star or just to Get a Rep, which was all about that stick up kid. You know when rock Kim, one of his early record turns stick you know on the message turn stick up kid, look what yeah God sent up for. This was a thing. So you had to know how to move because they'd be waiting for you at certain places, like when kids had their summer jobs and you get paid. Everybody got paid. On a certain day, your stick up kids would be out. You'd be going to the Lancey Street, you know, to get it in our fit stick up kids to be there. YO, give me all that run it, you know what I'm saying. You know that mop energy completely encapsulated what it was like when I hear that, you know, those certain records, certain rappers was able to really encapsulate what it was at those times, and you just had to learn how to navigate that or to deal with it, you know, and you have to knuckle up.

00:33:16
Speaker 1: What was your household record collection?

00:33:18
Speaker 2: Like, well, my parents had. That's an interesting story which I also talk about in the book. So my parents had a bunch of album not a massive amount, but it was a lot of jazz records. And as a young kid, I'm so sad about this. I destroyed a lot of the collection trying to stack the albums up in interesting ways, building things. Records would roll out of the covers and be you know, you know, so those things I damaged a bunch of records. But so those are the records that were in the house. Primarily my mom would be into a lot of the contemporary stuff, which would primarily be on forty fives. So you'd have the classic scenario, which I've been explaining a lot as I've been on a book tour. Before the idea of a DJ mixing, which was just before hip hop, way before hip hop. Just the idea of keeping the music going was a huge innovation and a revelation because typically you put a stack of forty fives on the spindle, the arm would swing back, it would drop a record, the armoud play the record, the shuffle the okay, the original shuffle. That's how parties were, that's how you listen to music. That's how music was enjoyed in the home. And so, yeah, so my mom had some of the contemporary stuff, and she would give me fifteen twenty cent a quarter to show her the latest dances, you know, whatever the come.

00:34:43
Speaker 1: On, what are you.

00:34:47
Speaker 2: You know? Yeah, do the wobble, do the whatever, the jerk whatever, you know.

00:34:52
Speaker 1: So I would use the entertainment. Yeah.

00:34:55
Speaker 2: But so basically my mom was into that. And one of the earliest records that I remember that I went because I damaged your copy my mother owned was a record called The Name Game by Shirley Ellis Yes, which is sort of to me like an early rap record, if you will, because she's pretty much just talking with along with.

00:35:16
Speaker 1: Right, you know, you are right. I never thought of that.

00:35:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when later when youre hip hop and and so that I remember I was playing with a ball that bounced up on the turntable scratched the record, and a little record store around the corner from us right then on Sumner Avenue which is now Marcus Garvey, a little small record store. I went and brought a copy, and that was actually turned out to be the first record I would podcast. But as a young adult or a teenager, growing into my adult years, I always was a boombox guy with a double cassette.

00:35:45
Speaker 1: When you mentioned that, I totally forgot about Corniac boom Kannac. I forget the name of the company, but like that boombox culture. Can you so can you explain because it's hard for me to convey the people how we took in music right now, of course, my entire record collection can be on the phone name here.

00:36:06
Speaker 2: It's crazy where technology has gotten us. But I was a cassette guy primarily because you know, you can make a copy, and if you had somebody had something special, you can burn and run a copy on your double cassette. So that's really was instrumental and how hip hop really spread around the city. It was cassettes being handed and being dubbed and copied whatever. But I was always a boombox guy for quite a while. In fact, one of the last boomboxes I had I donated to the Smithsonian. It literally is on exhibit, not the Afro Smithsonian. It was donated for that purpose, but they actually because it was way before they finished the building, so it's in the American smith If you google fab five Freddy's Boombox Smithsonian, you'll see my boom box. But some guys, now I don't remember the name, that have a Kickstarter going on with the classic massive Boom double cassette. But it's also got bluetooth CD USB. It has that old school boombox.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: Look, Chapelle hooked me up one of those Chappelle knows those guys, and that was my Christmas.

00:37:12
Speaker 2: I have that thing. Well it's I just ordered one. So I'm patiently waiting because I still got a lot of cassettes and stuff. A lot of my stuff went to the Schomberg and Harlem a lot of my stuff, but I still have so Boom. But I still have a lot of cassettes that I need to dive into.

00:37:30
Speaker 1: So back then, before the Giuliani era of anti noise.

00:37:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it was just anti everything. It was well yeah you down.

00:37:40
Speaker 1: But like it was just you could freely just walk around and blast your shit onto you listen.

00:37:47
Speaker 2: That was that was That was what it was man, you know. And this the boom boxes got bigger, better and sounded better have to put up. I remember cruiser cats that wanted to really walk around and listen to some music, you know, you know like a The Ladies whatever. You had to cast the crew with chipping to put the batteries in because you had to put them D sized batteries in and them big boxes was they was heavy, But that was the move back then. Like I can even remember before the cassettes. I remember casting had eight track. There was quartable eight track boomboxes. I didn't have that, but I remember seeing them is eight track thing, which was weird, but that was the move back then.

00:38:26
Speaker 1: And then what would you rock like what was like your number one tester, like you just curate tapes the night before and then make your soundtrack worse well, for me, when it really got going good, you would have if man like recording Red Alert Show even before Red Alert and Magic was on mainstream stations.

00:38:46
Speaker 2: There was a station called WHBI, which was sort of no. WHBI was a New York City station. It was a community connection where you could pay if you got a good slot, you'd pay, like to get on fifty sixty dollars, which is what it costed. You pay them, and you could broadcast. So the Supreme Team was the ones that was playing early breakbeats and early rap records, and you could go on YouTube and hear examples of what they would do. I'll have my fresh tape ready to record, you know when the Supreme Team came. That's how you got access to the music they was playing.

00:39:24
Speaker 1: The real have some of those tapes. So you're telling me that because in my mind, I'm like, wow, like radio programmers, I'm thinking like Frankie Crocker is like paving away for these DJs to get on. I didn't realize that that's community radio, community radio. So the character that Sam Jackson played and do the Right Thing, hm, that was an actual thing where it's like a community radio station.

00:39:47
Speaker 2: For Yes, they had them. They had Yes, that's Sam Jackson and do the Right Thing, Senior Loved Senior Love Daddy. Yes, that was that would go on but also on the weekends on b Less and Kiss they would have master mixed shows where they would just let the music go for long stretches uninterrupted. They would do a commercial break or two. If you would slick with it, you would pause and then you'd come back in, so you'd cut out all the talk and the gibberish. But that was the key way you got hot music that wasn't in the regular playlist or the regular top whatever. However, they broke it down, So that was it for me.

00:40:42
Speaker 1: Can you name me three live shows that you witnessed in your early fourteen years? In your life, how often did you go to contract shows?

00:40:52
Speaker 2: Oh? Boy, not too often. But the first time I go to a concert in the seventies on my own, it would slid in the family stuff. Okay. I loved your documentary by the Way Back Way, and that was great because taught me a lot about Slider. I didn't know. I didn't realize he was on the radio and had been super impactful in that category, which explained a lot. Going to see him was huge. Not much long after going to see Parliament Funk of Delic when they would come to the garden, those were huge events. I had tickets. I'm way up in the nosebleeds, but I loved it. It was incredible. So seeing Sliding family Stone, you know, the Parliament, Funk of Deelic, those were huge, memorable shows. I remember there was a summer concert series in Central Park that I went to. I was in Central Park when Dinass I was there for that. I was there both days. So the first one went crazy. Look, I'm from Brooklyn. It was Brooklyn that went bananas that day. Kind of embarrassing, but tore that shit up. Then it rained and then they read. Then they did some miraculous let's do it the next day, and I was back there again for that. I was that.

00:42:06
Speaker 1: I wanted to go because I swore Michael Jackson was going to show up.

00:42:11
Speaker 2: You can't go. That was epics. So I've seen some good shows, man, definitely a few, a few of them.

00:42:17
Speaker 1: So of all of the stories that you've well, I guess I could say great stories of the adults in your life. And you talk about your your father's inner circle. Yeah, what is the one that impacted you the most because you carry a lot of the history. Well, first of all, I was so mind blown. You go into the craziest detail of your father's witnessing Malcolm X's assassination, And are you the only one that has a cassette recording of that actual.

00:42:55
Speaker 2: Assass real to real that went that real to real tape. So one of my dad's closest friends was this gentleman actually a drummer, but he kind of retired from drummer became a full time activist. Name was Willie Jones. He recorded on a felonious monk date Friday to thirteenth, most famously, and then he became like a community activist and he got tight with Malcolm to the extent where he had a portable reel to reel that would he would go to all of Malcolm's New York rallies. He would have his recorder set up he would record. So that fateful day, my dad, Willie and another one of their friends were at the Autobomb ballroom. WILLI had his mic on the pedestal and when the shots open up, he recorded everything. So we heard that it was a gentleman I can't remember his name that within the last ten years or so wrote a Malcolm X bio if you will, or a book about Malcolm and the way he recounts that incident. I'm sure he had access to the tape because that tape was my dad. Yeah. Well, they made copies for their friends and so it was kind of circulated. But the copy I have is one of the original dupes, if you will, went with my stuff to the shamreg I don't know if they ever did the whole baked the tape to make sure they preserved everything in the correct way, but yeah, you know, my dad and then would recount that numerous times and it'd be.

00:44:28
Speaker 1: Chilling, like how old were you at the time. It's sixty five, so.

00:44:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm like, I don't remember it because I'm real little, but they would tell the story. I would hear the tape they would put on the tape. They had numerous tapes of Malcolm's speeches that really had recorded, and so they were like really following in fact, one of the speeches Malcolm had gave prior he spoke. But because you know, they had tried to fire bomb his house and queens, there's the famous image of Malcolm holding the peeking out of the window. Because that shot was about him protecting his family. He knew he was being targeted. There was a speech where my dad and them would play a recording where he would mention something to the effect that I know I might not be here, something kind of he knew they were on him, but he still was so courageous. He kept going, he kept speaking. And so that faithful day when that happened, and my dad and them would tell that story. I heard it dozens of times over the years, and then it was a famous part, like when they ran up on stage and then they ran backstage, and then Willie was peeping through a hole. My dad said, that's likely a bullet hole. Will he stepped back, and it was just craziness. In the recent Netflix documentary Who Killed Malcolm X, I'm looking, I did actually not in that dock, but I did find literally I think it's the day before. I did find footage of Malcolm outside of the Hotel Teresa building, Willie Jones right behind him. What you could see. Yeah, I've got the photo with the tape deck on his shoulder. But just hearing about that relentlessly, it was just such a sad And I also want to point out, like it's Malcolm. At that time, in most mainstream press, he was dragged. I mean, he was not as universally accepted and acknowledge as he is now among black folks as well, because he came off real edgy at the time, you know what I mean by the conservative Yeah, so really, you know, really super duper cautious about how to move. You know, black folks weren't even comfortable being black. It was still negroing and kind of colored at that time when I'm really young. But Malcolm definitely has been proven to be right on so many topics and so many categories of things that he focused on and things that he was about in terms of what he said. You know, we hear those things echoing now in our timelines if your algorithm is in the right space and place. Yes, So those things were just echo throughout my childhood among my dad and his friends.

00:47:04
Speaker 1: You mentioned Willie playing for Felonious. You gotta tell me the story. What made you want to cold call Felonious monk? Yeah?

00:47:12
Speaker 2: I did, oh man. You know, well, it starts with I guess being around my dad and his friends. They'd be playing jazz often recounting stories and the fact that they would know who these musicians were just from hearing them play was fascinating to me. How do you know that's Sonny Rollins And how do you know that's you know, Mary Lou Williams or who these musicians are was fascinating to me just without hearing a voice. And then later the first musician that I was able to spot was Monk and it's the very powerful, seemingly simple way he plays, but at the same time it was very stink to my ear, and I was like, I remember the first time, was like, that's Monk, and they would be like, yeah, that's Monk. So I was like, man, you.

00:48:08
Speaker 1: Never have musical aspirations because you're around all this jazz. I was.

00:48:12
Speaker 2: I thought I wanted to be a drummer as a kid. Max gave me like a little really unique practice kit that opened up and had these pads that swung out of a briefcase and would sort of replicate what the different. Yeah, some somebody in Europe had given it to him. He gave it to me. That didn't work out. I didn't I didn't do whatever is it?

00:48:34
Speaker 1: I wish I knew, Come on, friend, stop playing, just say that to a master drummer.

00:48:41
Speaker 2: But that was single digit. Yeah, that didn't work out.

00:48:43
Speaker 1: So, so you you cold called him?

00:48:46
Speaker 2: And yeah, so I'm looking through my dad's phone book.

00:48:49
Speaker 1: What made you want to call him?

00:48:51
Speaker 2: Because I liked the music and I was I developed this thing about Monk. I was the first musician who sound I could distinguish on the radio when my dad like the way my dad and his friends, that's so and so, Oh that's mngus, that's the how do you guys, how do you do that? So literally, Monk's sound became super distinctive to me. So it became like this Monk. I like Monk. I like Monk, And I'm flipping through my dad's phone book and there's Monk's name in the loneus Monk. So I said, man, let me call the number. And I wanted to talk to Monk, but his wife answered to phone Nelly and I just had this incredible conversation with Nelly. Thinking back as an adult, she hears the voice of a young kid on the phone. She was like, oh, how sweet is this? But what really stayed with me is the fact that I was talking about jazz and she said, well, Freddy, jazz is like a conversation which starts off with a topic being stated and the other musicians are giving their interpretation or interpolation of that topic. And that helped me understand so much because you know, particularly in bebop jazz, they state this statement in the beginning and then the other cats do their response and interpretation of that, and it was like wow, and it helped me understand. I would later actually meet Nelly in the late nineties early two thousands, and I reminded her about the call, and then I have been fascinated about the baroness who my dad and his friends would also talk about. This was a roth child heiress, a patron of jazz. She would be around, Yeah, she would help many musicians. She had incredible taste. They respected her so heavily because she could hear the way they heard. Like if some cats were jamming, she'd be like, Oh, that piano player, he's a motherfucker, and the cats would be like, he's the one.

00:50:54
Speaker 1: So every area of our music has that person.

00:50:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was fascinating because my dad this is one of the stories that would come up often. She'd have a Rose Royce parked outside until five six in the morning. So she was a patron to Monk loved Monk helped the family in bad times when these guys weren't able to eat. She was close with our Blakey the Drummer. But Charlie Parker literally dies in her hotel suite at the Stanhope Hotel. She was helping out. She would help cats out in a true patronly way, and so she was revered. There were numerous songs named after her. One of Monk's tunes after I think it's called Crepsicle for Nelly if you check out Nellie the Rothschild. So that was a story that I'd hear a lot about. And then later when i'd get on the downtown scene and I'd meet different women that were just supportive and instinctive and understood it and got it, I'd say, you know, you might be something like this woman. I'd hear Nelly, and.

00:52:00
Speaker 1: She right about Monk having distinctive style like my dad and I often didn't see eye to eye on a lot of hip hop. Huh. But for some reason, the last time we had a bonding, he recognized like, this is the only time where he put me onto something. In November, when Wu Tang's thirty six Chambers came out the same day as Midnight Marauders and I'm listening to that. I'm about to go to New York to get my record deal, and I'm playing Wu Tang shame on the nigga was on. He was like, that's the loneiest monk. And then Clanning the funk came on. He's like, that's the loneiest monk, and he was like, are these kids at the loneiest monk or whatever? But and at first I was like, you don't know. Later I was like, oh, Dad was right, that is the loneiest monk.

00:52:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right.

00:52:47
Speaker 1: So you know, unfortunately, I guess I'm part of the well not intentionally gentrification part of New York. Literally my first day in New York was like every real news complaint, like the last day. It was December of ninety three, and this is literally the day in which I guess forty second Street was open for business as far as the disnification of it all. So me arriving in New York literally all week was just anger and disdaining in the air. Like I'm staying in the Paramount on forty sixth Streets, so I'm in like midtown Manhattan, but all I hear is that people are bitching because like, man, forty second Street ain't the same. No more is Disney and Starbucks is here. Like this is when I'm first starting to hear complaints of the old. But I think that is a cycle. So like I always hear the before your time, this is what New York was. And I've heard, you know, I've heard stories of people in the fifties say that, No, the real jazz renaissance was in the early late thirties and early forties, and people in the seventies be like, man, sixties was the shit. Yeah, So for you becoming a teenage, you're in the seventies, what was the shift that you first noticed happening in New York? Because you paint a pretty fair I'm not going to say rosy or rose colored glasses, but I know of eras where the projects weren't seen as a mark of shame, or you wanted to visit your aunt uncle Nat and oh, I'm gonna go to the projects. But in the eighties you wouldn't dare do that. So what happened in the seventies that you observed that didn't cross over, Like what things that were noticeable in the sixties that you didn't see come the seventies.

00:54:37
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, let me make sure I got this right.

00:54:39
Speaker 1: In terms of well, just in terms of culture, your observation of New York well, h and I know it might be hard for you to take an observation if you're inside it. Yeah, were the seventies all that different for you?

00:54:53
Speaker 2: I can remember the beginnings of not even so much bedsty because I guess when I was really young, I went to a tutor in downtown Brooklyn what would be considered the Fort Green area when the whole renovating of brownstones happened. That created this awareness of the quality of these homes when people began to start renovating them, and I guess that would set the table for gentrification down the line, if.

00:55:28
Speaker 1: You will sell your house for a million dollars.

00:55:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that didn't, like I said, some parts of Fort Green. And then even further I remember like Brooklyn Heights because as a young kid, I was really curious about architecture. I would be looking at different periodicals and reading things that related to buildings, and I became aware that, you know, and then I remember this like brownstone renovation thing happening back then and that hit my radar. People stripping the plaster and having exposed brick and refinishing the wood, and our the wood in our house was all painted. Then when I was like, wait a minute, our house had wood, liked it? Why did they paint it? Like I like, you know, it became aware of what it had been. Having grown up in a brownstone in Bedsty, that was somewhat of an awareness that things were changing. And then when you look down the line as the prices went way up through the roof in different areas that now is going on in Bedsty. You know, luckily we still own the house. You still own your Yeah, me and my sister, but she lives in it with her family in bed Style, So that's a blessing. I mean, that's really what I learned watching gentrification happen in various areas in New York City, particularly watching that happen in the Lower East Side where I lived when I made my move into Manhattan to really get things moving and grooving. That became like a big kind of line in the sands, so to speak. That activists were like, here's what they want to do, here's what they're coming and the rents are going to be this literally the block I lived on that I talk about a lot in my memoir Ludlow Street. There's high rises that have been recently built on Ludlow Street amidst tenements built for the poorest immigrant New Yorkers. So a lot of the stuff that they would talk about back then that I thought was so extreme and exaggerated has come to fruition. So but seeing that the way it transpired and following artists initially, who are the people that would go into these areas and set up shop what literally first happened in Soho Tribeca, Lower east Side. I was connected like to those pioneers, if you will, like particularly in the Lower east Side. And then when it got crazy based on the energy that the creative community create, like we made it cool, we made it sexy, we made it interesting. Then the developers come in and buy it all up. And unless you own something, you really don't benefit. You gotta go once that lease is up. Is it a fight to the finish to hang on to your history. And I mean, if you own something, it's the only way you can kind of survive it. And then you kind of somewhat benefit because the value of your property goes up. But watching that happen, particularly in the Lower East Side, when they were selling drugs super duper, ultra flagrantly. I'm talking heroin and cocaine in the streets broad daylight, like it was a farmer's market. In certain areas in Alphabst City, like Avenue C Avenue D, it was edgy to see the real estate people watch for artists to move into those areas, watch for galleries to open up to support artists like what we were doing. They would be now it's time to buy and they would buy up the property that was completely like decrepit, and now that became the high rent district, if you will.

00:59:09
Speaker 1: It's crazy to say that because if you say alphabet City, now, I'm like, man, some of the greatest record stores, some of the best homakazi sushi ever had. Yeah, I missed an era from the outside. Looking at the outside, I mean, I'm a Philadelphia you know, I was force fed the history of hip hop in the Bronx, hip hop in the Bronx and the Bronx and the Bronx and the Bronx and Bronx. But you know, I know that this culture is also developing in other boroughs as well. Correct, what were your earliest hip hop experiences in Brooklyn?

00:59:56
Speaker 2: Sure? So before it's hip hop, and I had to hand it that it was these mobile basically disco DJs. This begins from I mean, they probably go back to the late sixties, but as a young shorty I got to experience them coming to the parks or block parties in Bedstock and these were the guys that made being a DJ cool. Just they weren't cutting, scratching, nobody was really rapping, but just keeping the music going continually was a huge innovation. And the better of those guys could blend records that kind of almost connected and keep a groove going, you know, BPM, beats, permnt and all that stuff we'd learned about later. And so some of the people that I remembered that resonated was in my area Bedstot was Frankie D. It was Master D who later became DJ Lance Rest in Peace. It was Pete, DJ Jones, DJ Plumber, me Boya and Queens. It was people like Infinity Machine, you know, the disco twins. These guys had massive sound systems, speakers, turntables, a mixer, crates of records, and they'd come out and just they were the rock stars in the community that really fueled what became the disco boom. Okay, this is before Saturday Night Fever, before Studio fifty four. This was where it all comes from. And who helped pushed us into the mainstream was Frankie Krocker, the DJ and program director of WBLS, who had his ear tapped in to these DJs, and when he saw the crowd respond to whatever they were playing, he would program that and spend that on BLS regardless of what was on the chart. He didn't follow the chart. He followed his ears and he was in the man in control and that lit a fuse that set off a move throughout the city. This was where energy was coming from these DJs and then these parties. They would eventually like rent out restaurants in Midtown during a bad economic time in the city, and then they would promote these parties on BLS. Places like Nel Gwan's Riverbow Cafe, Nemo's Superstar Caf Nemos or whatever. These are places i'd hear about. I didn't have the money. I'm still like a young teen, but I'm aware of what this is going on. So this was the spark that inspired Cool Herk to do what he did and other DJs around the city. Yes, this is how it goes down. There's a misnoma that just because Cool Herk is from Jamaica, keep in mind he's about twelve or so years old when he immigrates to the city, that because there's this incredible dance hall reggae scene that goes on. What's even more interesting is that these two forms of dang if you will, are developed independent of each other, not aware of each other, but from similar inspiration, which were the black radio jocks in Jamaica. When the weather is right, they can catch the black radio jock in New Orleans or maybe somebody that had a late night show in Florida, and they were sort of emulating that idea of the deep. Matter of fact, keep in mind, that's the original disc jockey, is the guy playing music on the radio talking a little slick patter. JACKO, well, Jocko of course is a great example. But what's the brother on Sacks Records that did the was it Rufus Thomas.

01:03:48
Speaker 1: Yes, he was a.

01:03:49
Speaker 2: Radio guy, super popular as sly Stone. So these are the guys in the black community that would get a Oftentimes it'd be a late night radio slot that did talk that slick, jazzy patter with rhyming a little bit here and there. Frankie Kraker came out of that whole thing as well. Also in New York it was WWRRAL with people like Hank Span and these guys that talk real slick and groovy. Those were the initial inspirations for the idea of being a DJ. Keep controlling that music and then the whole pattern are talking. Initially, the first talking on the mic at these local parties was promoting who the DJ was. You know, Flash will tell you he just set up a mic stand and I think it was Kid Creole that got on the mic first, and then you know, Mellie mel and Cowboy and the rest would come in.

01:04:40
Speaker 1: And then they.

01:04:41
Speaker 2: Developed cool things to say on the mic, But it was all about the DJ initially. So I witnessed all of that transpired. This was some of the stuff.

01:04:51
Speaker 1: If you want, how would you know something was happening.

01:04:55
Speaker 2: Oh, we'd be a I remember on certain summer nights, man and sitting on the student When it got quiet enough, you might hear the rumble of some of the base bottoms and he'd be like, that was what we were talking in Brooklyn at that time. In best I was like, yo, where they jamming at? Yo, it's a jam at this park, forty four Park, Saint John's Park, Breevoid Projects. I hear there's a jam going on, we would be we would walk all over to these parks or the right block party to hear one of these hot mobile DJ's playing. And it was at one of these parties I think it might have been a Master d party when he put on something real different. A couple of cats dropped to the floor doing a semblance of breakdancing, and I don't know if it was Apatche, Bob James, Marty Grs. It was something that I was like, what is he playing? And I went up to DJ said Yo, what's that? And the cat the first inkling of something. He said, Yo, that's the uptown sound. But this is when you'd go up to the rope. DJ's was set up a rope around them playing. It would always be a crew of kids watching, like just standing at everything. These are all the kids that wanted to be DJ's. This one inspired early DJs to soak. They records so they could see you're because people like, yo, what's he playing? I never heard that? No way? Oh you know, was like, no, I'm soaking the label off of this final So you will never know, because that's part of what the attraction is. Only you will only hear this record and you go to this cat spinning anyway, dude said it's the uptown sound. Like I literally went, I got some of my homies off my block and we took the train up to up to Harlem and walked around asking cats where they jamming at. You know, we was just trying to find like, what's this uptown sound. I didn't know if it was uptown Manhattan or the Bronx, but I was obsessed. Just blindly went yes, yes, I like, what is this going on? Like, oh, y'all having jams uptown too?

01:06:52
Speaker 1: What did you discover?

01:06:53
Speaker 2: Nothing? So it was a minute. I didn't even connect with nobody. But ironically, as I detail in my book, when I connected with Lee kenyonis like I'm I'm asking, Yo, are you hip to these DJs? I hear these cats uptown? They doing something different? Oh yeah? And he I mean I probably had heard Flash his name by this point and I know a few colonels of info and Lee said, wait a minute, Yo, I know what you're talking about. Those cats have played at the community center at the base of these project. This is the Smith Projects in the Lower east Side, right at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm like, what. So. Literally a month or so later, Lee let me know that it was flashing and furious for this is seventy eight. I only need the seventy eight seventy nine, Lee says, Yo, They're gonna be playing at the right here in the community center this weekend. It was flashing and furious. For the fifth member, Raheem hadn't joined the group yet. And that's how I connect. I'm there at that party. I speak to Mellie man I said, Man, you ever think about making a record? He was like, who would buy it? That's what Melie Melo said to me, because it wasn't about records yet. These cats was getting three four hundred dollars for spending here there whatever. This was what it was at that time.

01:08:09
Speaker 1: How long would the party last?

01:08:11
Speaker 2: The party would be from you know, ten eleven to three, two, three four in the morning.

01:08:17
Speaker 1: You know, Now, I'll do a two to three hour set, and I'm already like it's about one hundred and eighty songs, but it's twenty twenty six. There's a whole history of music behind me. Yeah, but I'm trying to figure out, like in nineteen seventy eight, with just like a good quality maybe forty songs if you're lucky.

01:08:39
Speaker 2: Wow, it's like, how do you make shit last?

01:08:42
Speaker 1: And was there ever a law or well?

01:08:46
Speaker 2: Typically four o'clock was to cut off for most joints because in New York we got our liquor lore. It goes to four. Most places when I would begin to travel, it's over at two. But New York, I realized in one of the few cities I think, like New Orleans or Louisiana, things can go to four, which I was like, wow. But most other places everything was a rap at two. But typically a party would go to that time, I mean most of the most of it.

01:09:14
Speaker 1: What about noise ordinances, like when cops come in and be like, yo, it's.

01:09:17
Speaker 2: Too loud, or at a gymnasium, no, because it's like a contained area.

01:09:22
Speaker 1: I don't you have any you know, the sound was good to you? Like it felt like no.

01:09:26
Speaker 2: A lot of the sound at that time, the quality of a lot of the sound was bad.

01:09:33
Speaker 1: Finally someone tells me the truth. Oh god, Ama was crazy.

01:09:36
Speaker 2: We hadn't some guys talk ship, but I'd go to a lot of jams, and you know, Bronx guys initially didn't have great equipment, but they had the innovative idea. And the way I look at it is also because the Bronx was the poorest borough. A lot of times you're about to tell the Herculeoids and these her I believe had I'm from Brooklyn, but I believe her had a massive system, which was the thing, so that Hurkley had the big speakers whatever, but a lot of people was cobbling together shit. I remember hearing about CAS was they would snatched the audio PA speakers out of the training station. CASS would take the speakers out of their TV sets, out of the big consoles. You had the big piece of furniture TV in the crypt. CAS was trying to cobble together anything to get some bigger sound.

01:10:25
Speaker 1: You know what, I believe you.

01:10:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was crazy. So I remember going to some parts to be like, Yo, this shit sounds horrible. Some of the mobile d what I would learn later, like, there's an incredible documentary I took part in it. My man Ron Am and Rad Lawrence produced this along with my boy Hassan Poor. It's called Founding Fathers, which gets into a lot of these early disco DJs that set the table for what HERK and the rest of hip hop would be. Some of these cats. I remember distinkling that doc one of these cats, pops Hit, had some paper and gave his son a couple of g's, which was a lot of money still is. But then probably you know, of course, the living to go and buy the big effect official stuff, sir. When Vegas Speakers was a big brand, get the right amps and all of this stuff. I mean, they had better. A lot of these mobile DJs that led up to it had better sound quality. But the innovations were definitely sparked by what HERK did and the cats wanting to cut, scratch and mix and what Flash did, like going into serious R and D did innovate tremendously, so that all did go down. But you know this is what you navigated through.

01:11:45
Speaker 1: I believe you only know I went. I went to Cuba for the first time in two thousand and two, and it was like it was like time traveling back to the seventies.

01:11:54
Speaker 2: I went to Cuba earlier and.

01:11:56
Speaker 1: They were one guy had a car speaker, one guy I had that.

01:12:00
Speaker 2: Thank you yes, and they were something similar. When I went to Cube, they jerry rigged whatever they can have and it was so magical to watch the whole community.

01:12:09
Speaker 1: I have the headphones, I have this record, I have this turntable, I have this cassette player.

01:12:13
Speaker 2: I saw it at these cords.

01:12:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I seen people with razors, like yes, it was the most incredible thing I ever seen.

01:12:21
Speaker 2: A lot of that in the in the in this desire to be in that space because it was so huge at that time. And yes, once again HRK did have the Hercules, which was the name of his big powerful speakers, but a lot of other cats didn't have that. You just didn't have the money. That stuff costs a few thousand dollars to get the amps, the speakers. All the equipment needed was a heavy lift. That's why the famous story is when the Blackout of nineteen seventy seven happened, a lot of cats in the Bronx went to them areas when the and they liberated a lot of equipment.

01:13:01
Speaker 1: See that's how I thought hip hop started.

01:13:04
Speaker 2: And it's you know, the great thing about YouTube now if you google Grand Master Flowers, Pete DJ Jones, people not telling the story, but there was little clips and moments and footage of these guys that people found some maybe somebody filming on a Super eight film camera and you could see Flowers and you could get a peek at these guys. But if you see this documentary, which I believe should be on two b By now was on YouTube for quite a while, this Founding Fathers, you get a real good look and understanding of the people that predated what we know of as hip hop. So it was a fascinating story with a bit more of a history that's not as widely known because these guys didn't make records. They just played at party, so they didn't record a compilation or do any of this stuff. All of that would happen during hip hop. The whole idea of the well once again, initially it was all about who the DJ was and how many watts in his system. The rapper was there just to big up who the DJ was. The rapper eventually took over inadvertently and when all the great records came out, and the DJ was pushed further to sell the back. The ones that were on top of the game became producers, the DJs, because it was the thing, you know, in the beginning, as you know, I'm sure you know, in the early phase of hip hop hitting records, everybody had their DJ because the DJ was that was the nucleus of it all. But that pushed further to the back, unfortunately as the rapper became, you know, the kind of pre eminent thing.

01:14:59
Speaker 1: So I've been dying to ask you all my life. All Right, I'm going to time travel. Let's go to Let's go to nineteen eighty eighty one. All right, sure, I'm going to be your intern. I'm ten eleven here. I want you to walk me through from sketchbook to completion when you see it ride by. Walk me through the entire process. Now, I mean, like in your early beginnings, but tagging a train like you're Campbell soup. Yeah, idea, Yeah, walk me from sketchbook, acquiring the paint, knowing what time to go, who's the lookout. I want to know that the entire duration of how this happens.

01:15:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, spray paint was. It was all kind of liberated at that time. Of course, it's a New York thing. There's a reason where any place that's selling spray paint, it's usually in a cage. It's usually like a metal thing, because that was requisite.

01:16:00
Speaker 1: That's how how long did it take them to catch on that this is what it's for.

01:16:05
Speaker 2: This all started back in the seventies, okay, I mean you just your hardware store. It'd be like, where's all the spray paint going? And it was like, clearly, I mean the casts was on some super stealth shoplifting shit. That was what it was. Ninety percent of where it came from. That's how it was.

01:16:23
Speaker 1: It was. Even so no one's like pulling up the year I got forty cans? How much is that? No one?

01:16:29
Speaker 2: Hell, everybody for the most part doing this at that time is a teenager. All of this culture was invented by teenagers. Okay, the beginnings of the rap hip hop thing. Everybody's is a teenager. So nobody has one hundreds of dollars that's required to go and do this, And so those metal frames were put were affixed to that part of the hardware store that sold spray paint. That became a thing, but before that was a thing in the graffiti fine cats would be like, yo, such and such a store, such and such a location. They got all the right colors and it's a good look. So graffiti cats would move on these places to get the to get the paint. It was one well known graffiti artist whose girl had made a baby carriage and the space that was supposed to be the baby was hollowed out. So he going there with his chick, you know, and they were slipping. So they might be able to put ten or fifteen cans in this hollowed out baby.

01:17:36
Speaker 1: How many cans would you need to really make the train of your dreams?

01:17:40
Speaker 2: Okay, it tends how much? Yeah, no question. So for the soup can, that's a whole car top to bottom subway cars about twenty feet in length by about eight feet high. That's a good That might be a good twenty or so can. A lot of red and a lot of white, because that's the main thing. What you would have is you would have what you have different types of caps. Now, graffiti has now elevated to it's like an official art form, So there's companies that literally manufacture varying caps and tops to give you different sized lines, and we would have to hit up the Jiffy. The oven cleaner was one oven cleaner and spray starch had caps that would spray out in a wide area. So once you do your outline for whether it's a letter or whatever you're trying to draw, you then put on what we call a fat cap to do the fill in. So the line of a fat cap is probably three to four inches wide, so you can fill in quicker as opposed to the line the initial cap that line maybe not more than an inch a half inch.

01:18:52
Speaker 1: Always wanted to know how you determine, like.

01:18:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could, you know, like everything under the sun. There are two tutorials all over you to that break down how you do this with these caps that you can now acquire. There's even companies that make paint with an incredible array of colors for the purpose of making art, referred to as aerosol art by some as opposed to graffiti, which is technically illegal, but in the formative days, this is how a lot of the paint was acquired. These were the different types of tools and techniques that would be needed, so you would do your outline, let's say for the cans. Then you do the outline. Then you switch up the tops and you start filling in those areas. So with that fat cap you get a wide line. You could fill that in as opposed to a thin line you'd be there forever using too much paint. You come through with a fat cap, fill that in, do the white areas at the top of the can through the red areas at the bottom of the can. If you will get all that right and tight, boom, then you come and do the other layers that need to happen.

01:19:53
Speaker 1: How are you able to see?

01:19:55
Speaker 2: Incredibly difficult. It depends if you're in a tunnel, Well, it's going to be a lot darker. But people would adjust and have a lot of graffiti. Writers of course would do a pre sketch in their piece book or on whatever piece of paper.

01:20:09
Speaker 1: So it's one of those people.

01:20:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't do a whole lot of pieces, so I'm not trying to front like I was a master do this. I did a lot of tagging, but when I got with Lee, who was a master at that time, God, I learned a hell of a lot. So under lease tutelage regarding the techniques and different colors and stuff. I learned a lot of that from him, and then a lot of the art history stuff because I have been nerding out on pop art and all these different schools of art history. I'm sharing with Lee. So we had a nice little coming together sharing of information. So that's essentially so whether you were doing it's a great image of this and also Star Wars Martha Cooper's photos of my man Dondie rest in Peace in the yard painting, and so he's in the yard where you literally would have to climb up. There's an incredible iconic shot a Dondee stretting two cars in a yard, one leg on this part of the train, the other leg here as he's painting. Iconic photo and that's how what we call top to bottom hole cars. That was the reference. Top to bottom meant that the imagery went from the bottom of the train to the top and the entire car. It was a I think that was the hand of doom Piece. It was his name, Dandie, and then a hand at the end of the just super iconic.

01:21:27
Speaker 1: So would be necessary like what that is, No, you.

01:21:31
Speaker 2: Had to climb and hang off a ship to do it no ladder, You wouldn't bring a ladder, and you got to if you're really doing a big piece, you've got a big bag of spray paint, shopping bag. People wasn't rocking backpacks then, so I don't think that was a miss. So you pretty much have a shopping bag. So you'd have to navigate. You'd have to scope out what yard you wanted to do, because graffiti guys would want to hit specific trains. He was like, I'm killing this line. So the Fab five most of their great work was on the Lexington Avenue number five train, so that was a target. So you would then need to know where you can hit the five, whether you hit the yard, go to the yard up in Bychester, or you would know what tunnels the trains could be in the different parts. So in the graffiti scene network, if you will, at that time, if you was really tapped in, you would know or learn from other graph guys where you go to hit this particular line or I'm trying to get up on the fives, the two's, the a's, the b's, the d's.

01:22:34
Speaker 1: You had to know exactly where the trains.

01:22:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had to know, oh this lay up is where these trains. The layup means when the trains are not running doing rush hour certain times in the day, and then after seven eight when rush hour ends, they lay up most of these trains in certain places. So graph guys would be like, Yo, I'm trying to get up on this line, I'm heading here there, whatever. So that's all a part of the how you did it, the process.

01:23:02
Speaker 1: How long will it take you to the danger? Element one getting past security?

01:23:08
Speaker 2: If there's any no, you some So sometimes in a train might be in a particular tunnel, you would know like, oh, there's a layup in between such and such a stop and a tunnel where such and such a line a train is being laid up during the rush out, So you'd be like, oh, you jump off the tracks, you go to the end of the platform, you may run through the tunnel to a certain experience or maybe go down or whatever, and the train would it would be there. You can hit that particular line there or the yard at either end of the where the trains end. Usually at the end of the train where the runner is on the map, there's typically a yard somewhere nearby where the trains go to the layup. Get made maintenance, et cetera, et cetera.

01:24:02
Speaker 1: All right, So my only education of the rivalry factor with a disrespect factor, of course, was B Street and the whole Spit The narrative beach Reet a story of a graffiti artist that's a lead here on this type that does these beautiful murals and then someone comes in behind them spray spit on top of the thing to disrespect them. Were there, what's going on? Was there jealousy.

01:24:28
Speaker 3: Amongst crews as far as like raging the great ruining art and the great look at that which was incredibly captured is a documentary called Style War, of course, and in Style.

01:24:41
Speaker 2: Wars, oh man, this was a big deal. Now I'm not actively bombing trains. That was the phrase we used for being aggressive bombing. But we was now have moved into the art. Well, that whole linkage that I envisioned is now happening. But during that period, there was a graffiti write a white kid name thank you, I'm sorry, thank you so much because I'm like always and Cap who was doing a type of graffiti known as throw ups. These are kind of bubble letters. You can do them quick. You do a quick outline and then you put the fat cap on and do a quick filling. You could do them real quick. They'd usually be just a couple of letters. His name was Cap Cap and he I think in the graffiti slang at the time, if you weren't nice, witted or respected, you were referred to as a toy. And if people saw you as a toy, they would sometimes go over you if you respected somebody, like if you was a graffiti right, Oh, that's that's quest love. He's major. You don't want to fuck with his name and try to put you on there. You would respect and not go over somebody's name. People didn't really have a lot of respect for Cap is the way I understood it. And he went ballistic and he started doing Cap throw ups over everybody. I don't think it was all the raised and some dudes that was doing graft that was kind of thugging it. Yo. Be when I run up on him, I'm gonna do this, that and the third yo. But this white boy was no joke, and so he was ready for that. He knew what was coming. So literally, while Henry and them are making this documentary Star Wars, they encountered him in the tunnel. Now He didn't show it on camera, but he let them know like, yo, bi, I'm ready forever. And he was when he when this was going on. So if you see the documentary Star Wars, it literally captures that moment. You see young graft guys talking about Yo, this cat went over this, he went over my piece. Even seeing this other dude kid that was real nice with the white kid in the bron scene does this incredible mural in the dock right after that, a cap over it like a beauty. I was like, yah, how.

01:27:06
Speaker 1: Long can you expect your piece to stay up before?

01:27:10
Speaker 2: Haha?

01:27:11
Speaker 1: First of all, with the city, like if a train gets tagged, would the city be like, all, it's right now, take it back to the yard and clean it.

01:27:18
Speaker 2: It was an ongoing program at that time. When trains were being cleaned, the city was spending millions of dollars fighting graffiti. The mayor at the time, Mayor Cochage, was planning to put wolves and attack dogs in the subway yards. It was it was pretty heavy duty. It was the scourge of the city. It was hated. It was just I mean, it was everywhere, and I'm not trying to say that all of it was art if you will, But man, it was nobody really acknowledging like, well that went over there, it's pretty incredible. Look but the guy painted and look at this one over here. And so that was the general climate at the time. How long could it for you, Like I said, well, it depends. So once again, you could do a piece that might run for months, or you could do a piece that may go into the buff. Maybe that particular train was scheduled, it might go into the buff right away. So what began to happen was Henry Chaffont, who along with Martha Cooper, became these incredible documentarians of this work going on. The graffiti riders knew these guys and they would as soon as you do a train, you would hit because most graffiti kids, as we all were, had a bullshit one ten instamatic with a pop up flash. That's all we had as kids. Henry had official thirty five millimeter camera, as did Martha Cooper, and they became really a part of the scene that would do graffiti. Riders would hit them right away, Yo, I just did a train, It's going to be on this sunny side. So they would know what's you would let them know what side they can catch it with the sun on it, and they could. They would run out to really photographed these trains as they first left the yard after being painted, so oftentimes they would get a fresh shot b for the windows would get buffed first, but if you got the whole car first. So they now have this incredible documentation of hundreds and hundreds of various trains through that period that have been documented in many books. They're featured in the documentary Star Wars. There's a book Subway Art, and a couple of other books came out that became the textbook for people that got into graffiti around the world, Like they would all get blew my mind and got accidentally like some.

01:29:39
Speaker 1: Of the greatest pieces I've ever seen.

01:29:41
Speaker 2: It's d yeah, Italy, It's remarkable. I mean look, I mean I'm a part of the culture. I wasn't the most prolific or I've never claimed to be that. But sometime when I'm traveling, I'm in Europe and I'm on a euro train or whatever, and I see graph everywhere, I'm like, oh boy, I can't believe. It's not like my fault. But I definitely helped you planning the seed definitely planning a lot of seeds that got beyond expectation. How the seeds bleue and got planted and germinated all over the world.

01:30:20
Speaker 1: All right, we haven't done this in a long time, but we have to stop the episode right here, all right, by by Freddy and I spoke for over two hours. You know how that gets. So come back next week. I want you to check your podcast feed for part two, where we get into wild style and your own TV rap years and talk about his directing music videos and his book. Everybody's Fly is out now. I brought my copy. Make sure you get yours. If you dug this episode, please tell somebody you think might dig it in the meantime, Get you next week, all right. Quest Loup shows hosted by me A mere Quest Love Thompson. Executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me. Produced by Brittany Benjamin and Jake Payne. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown, edited by Alex Conroy. iHeart video support by Mark Canton, Logos graphics and animation by Nick Padaloi. Additional support by Lance Coban. Special thanks to Kathy Brown. Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandel Please subscribe, rate, review, and share The Quest Love Show wherever you stream your podcasts, and make sure you follow us on socials that's at q LS. Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLs episodes, including the Quest Love Supreme shows in our podcast archives. Quest Love Show is a production of iHeart Radio.