Hip Hop History | Hip-Hop and Politics

Hip-Hop In Germany

March 30, 2009 By mrDaveyd

Hip-Hop In Germany

from The Bomb Hip-Hop Magazine #46 (April/May 1996)
by Boris Heimberger

When I went to the States for the first time in 1986 I would say I was the typical European kid. I was a MOD and Ska and New Wave music was the hype. I went to a record shop while I was out there and bought some promo copies of Sugarhill records with a lot of Grandmaster Flash on it. I had read some stuff on hip-hop but had never heard of Melle Mel. Then I went to a Whodini concert and guess who was the special guest that night, Run DMC… who at that time had not discovered Adidas yet.

Hip-Hop in Germany has a similar beginning like in the US. Although strongly influenced by overseas records and movies like Wild Style, it turned and flowed in a different direction caused by a different enviroment. Graffiti and breakdancing came out big but it only lasted for one summer. But hip-hop survived in the underground with people still bombing trains and rap jams at special clubs. At that time we did not have MTV or anything comparable in Europe – but with it’s start about three years ago hip-hop broke thru to get more popular and our own industry started to grow. The German equivalent of MTV’s Yo Raps is VIVA’s Freestyle which presents a comfortable mixture of US, GB and German Hip-Hop. Low budget bands sit together on the interview couch with the Beastie Boys and a crew of VJs travel around the country to make updates.

Special clubs that play 100% hip-hop are rare. In Hamburg you will find all those special clubs clubs in the Red Light district around the Reeperbahn, which is very famous not only for their prostitutes but also for the highest density of bars, music clubs, and discos. Due to the amount of sex and crime in that area it is not a beneficial enviroment. But the advantage of no limit opening hours makes it to be the most famous area of all of Europe. Famous clubs are The Mojo (more jazz oriented), Molotow (hardcore), and The Powerhouse which is separated in two parts – one for jungle music and one for hip-hop. The Powerhouse is the most favorite for US rappers who are touring and/or hanging out after a show. Last summer I met Ice T and his Body Count Crew as well as House of Pain at The Powerhouse. There are also a lot of jams all over the city where German DJs mainly play native music intermixed with live acts. Breaking is not very big in the clubs except for The Powerhouse and I have to admit that I do not know any breakers because most of those guys are from the suburbs. Live acts always depend on the season – which is Spring to Fall. Last summer we had a open air concert featuring Ice Cube and Gang Starr that was a highlight. Unfortunately the Amerikkkas Most Wanted Tour, featuring Ice T, Ice Cube, and Public Enemy was cancelled. Word had it that it was cancelled due to a management problem, same thing happened with the Warren G concert. We’ll see what happen this year.

Like the clubs there are not any pure hip-hop radio stations, but almost everyday hip-hop dj’s have their hours to play rap music. The good thing is that there is no censorship here. Example: Everday you can hear 20 Fingers original ‘Short Dick Man‘ on the radio.

Like in the states the US Rap Music market is very big and you can find everything in the big mall record shops including local independent German releases. But shops like Zardoz in Altona normally have the brand new releases first, that’s where I found the ‘Bomb Hip-Hop Compilation‘ on compact disc. The relation of import and domestic right now is 70% import to 30% domestic right now, but domestic is increasing rapidly. CD’s have practically taken over the market out here and cassettes are almost out and are just used for black copies. I think they keep a little bit of vinyl alive for the DJs to scratch with and sample. It’s hard to describe the scene in detail because even in the city of Hamburg different styles occur due to ethnic and musical background. Germany is full of immigrants from Turkey, former Yugoslavia and of course Africa. Consequently everyones rappin’ in the lanquage that he or she prefers. Due to a grand hardcore community, rock influences in German hip-hop are much stronger than in the states.

Graffiti artists like Hesh and Daim actually earn enough money from their art to live from and other groups like Fantastische Vier (fantastic four) are mega-stars. If you meet Miro (alias sprayer Mesh, alias rapper Masquerade) you might have the impression that you have just met a lazy bum (but this probably comes from his yugoslavian background) but once he starts working his creativity of music and graffiti it definitely makes him to be the GM of his hood Altona.

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Filed Under: Essential Hip Hop Articles, Hip Hop History Tagged With: 20 Fingers, Bomb Hip Hop magazine, Daim, Davey D's Hip Hop History, Hesh, Hip Hop History, Hip Hop news, Hip-Hop In Germany, Molotow, The Mojo, The Powerhouse

The History of Hip Hop (1985 Reprint)

March 30, 2009 By mrDaveyd

The History of Hip Hop
by Dave ‘Davey D’ Cook (reprint from 1985-The Power of Rap)

Nowadays if you ask most people to give a definition of “rap”, they’re likely to state that it’s the reciting of rhymes to the best of music. It’s a form of expression that finds its roots embedded deep within ancient African culture and oral tradition. Throughout history here in America there has always been some form of verbal acrobatics or jousting involving rhymes within the Afro-American community. Signifying, testifying, Shining of the Titanic, the Dozens, school yard rhymes, prison ‘jail house’ rhymes and double Dutch jump rope‘ rhymes are some of the names and ways that various forms of rap have manifested

Modern day rap music finds its immediate roots in the toasting and dub talk over elements of reggae music. In the early 70’s, a Jamaican dj known as Kool Herc moved from Kingston to NY’s West Bronx. Here, he attempted to incorporate his Jamaican style of dj which involved reciting improvised rhymes over the dub versions of his reggae records. Unfortunately, New Yorkers weren’t into reggae at the time. Thus Kool Herc adapted his style by chanting over the instrumental or percussion sections of the day’s popular songs. Because these breaks were relatively short, he learned to extend them indefinitely by using an audio mixer and two identical records in which he continuously replaced the desired segment.

In those early days, young party goers initially recited popular phrases and used the slang of the day. For example, it was fashionable for dj to acknowledge people who were in attendance at a party. These early raps featured someone such as Herc shouting over the instrumental break; ‘Yo this is Kool Herc in the joint-ski saying my mellow-ski Marky D is in the house‘. This would usually evoke a response from the crowd, who began to call out their own names and slogans.

As this phenomenon evolved, the party shouts became more elaborate as dj in an effort to be different, began to incorporate little rhymes-‘Davey D is in the house/An he’ll turn it out without a doubt.’ It wasn’t long before people began drawing upon outdated dozens and school yard rhymes. Many would add a little twist and customize these rhymes to make them suitable for the party environment. At that time rap was not yet known as ‘rap’ but called ‘emceeing‘. With regards to Kool Herc, as he progressed, he eventually turned his attention to the complexities of deejaying and let two friends Coke La Rock and Clark Kent (not Dana Dane’s dj) handle the microphone duties. This was rap music first emcee team. They became known as Kool Herc and the Herculoids.

Rap caught on because it offered young urban New Yorkers a chance to freely express themselves. This was basically the same reason why any of the aforementioned verbal/rhyme games manifested themselves in the past. More importantly, it was an art form accessible to anyone. One didn’t need a lot of money or expensive resources to rhyme. One didn’t have to invest in lessons, or anything like that. Rapping was a verbal skill that could be practiced and honed to perfection at almost anytime.

Rap also became popular because it offered unlimited challenges. There were no real set rules, except to be original and to rhyme on time to the beat of music. Anything was possible. One could make up a rap about the man in the moon or how good his dj was. The ultimate goal was to be perceived as being ‘def (good) by one’s peers. The fact that the praises and positive affirmations a rapper received were on par with any other urban hero (sports star, tough guy, comedian, etc.) was another drawing card.

Finally, rap, because of its inclusive aspects, allowed one to accurately and efficiently inject their personality. If you were laid back, you could rap at a slow pace. If you were hyperactive or a type-A, you could rap at a fast pace. No two people rapped the same, even when reciting the same rhyme. There were many people who would try and emulate someone’s style, but even that was indicative of a particular personality.

Rap continues to be popular among today’s urban youth for the same reasons it was a draw in the early days: it is still an accessible form of self expression capable of eliciting positive affirmation from one’s peers. Because rap has evolved to become such a big business, it has given many the false illusion of being a quick escape from the harshness of inner city life. There are many kids out there under the belief that all they need to do is write a few ‘fresh’ (good) rhymes and they’re off to the good life.

Now, up to this point, all this needs to be understood with regards to Hip Hop. Throughout history, music originating from America’s Black communities has always had an accompanying subculture reflective of the political, social and economic conditions of the time. Rap is no different.

Hip hop is the culture from which rap emerged. Initially it consisted of four main elements; graffiti art, break dancing, deejay (cuttin’ and scratching) and emceeing (rapping). Hip hop is a lifestyle with its own language, style of dress, music and mind set that is continuously evolving. Nowadays because break dancing and graffiti aren’t as prominent the words ‘rap’ and ‘hip hop’ have been used interchangeably. However it should be noted that all aspects of hip hop culture still exists. They’ve just evolved onto new levels.

Hip hop continues to be a direct response to an older generation’s rejection of the values and needs of young people. Initially all of hip hop’s major facets were forms of self expression. The driving force behind all these activities was people’s desire to be seen and heard. Hip hop came about because of some major format changes that took place within Black radio during the early 70’s. Prior to hip hop, black radio stations played an important role in the community be being a musical and cultural preserver or griot (story teller). It reflected the customs and values of the day in particular communities. It set the tone and created the climate for which people governed their lives as this was a primary source of information and enjoyment. This was particularly true for young people. Interestingly enough, the importance of Black radio and the role djs played within the African American community has been the topic of numerous speeches from some very prominent individuals.

For example in August of ’67, Martin Luther King Jr addressed the Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters. Here he delivered an eloquent speech in which he let it be known that Black radio djs played an intricate part in helping keep the Civil Rights Movement alive. He noted that while television and newspapers were popular and often times more effective mediums, they rarely languaged themselves so that Black folks could relate to them. He basically said Black folks were checking for the radio as their primary source of information.

In August of 1980 Minister Farrakhon echoed those thoughts when he addressed a body of Black radio djs and programmers at the Jack The Rapper Convention. He warned them to be careful about what they let on the airwaves because of its impact. He got deep and spoke about the radio stations being instruments of mind control and how big companies were going out of their way to hire ‘undignified’ ‘foul’ and ‘dirty’ djs who were no longer being conveyers of good information to the community. To paraphrase him, Farrakhon noted that there was a fear of a dignified djs coming on the airwaves and spreading that dignity to the people he reached. Hence the role radio was playing was beginning to shift…Black radio djs were moving away from being the griots.. Black radio was no longer languaging itself so that both a young and older generation could define and hear themselves reflected in this medium.

Author Nelson George talks extensively about this in his book ‘The Death Of Rhythm And Blues‘. He documented how NY’s Black radio station began to position themselves so they would appeal to a more affluent, older and to a large degree, whiter audience. He pointed out how young people found themselves being excluded especially when bubble gum and Europeanized versions of disco music began to hit the air waves. To many, this style of music lacked soul and to a large degree sounded too formulated and mechanical.

In a recent interview hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa spoke at length how NY began to lose its connection with funk music during this that time. He noted that established rock acts doing generic sounding disco tunes found a home on black radio. Acts like Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones were cited as examples.

Meanwhile Black artists like James Brown and George Clinton were for the most part unheard on the airwaves. Even the gospel-like soulful disco as defined by the ‘Philly sound’ found itself losing ground. While the stereotype depicted a lot of long haired suburban white kids yelling the infamous slogan ‘disco sucks’, there were large number of young inner city brothers and sisters who were in perfect agreement. With all this happening a void was created and hip hop filled it… Point blank, hip hop was a direct response to the watered down, Europeanized, disco music that permeated the airwaves..

FYI around the same time hip hop was birthed, House music was evolving among the brothers in Chicago, GoGo music was emerging among the brothers in Washington DC and Black folks in California were getting deep into the funk. If you ask me, it was all a response to disco.

In the early days of hip hop, there were break dance crews who went around challenging each other. Many of these participants were former gang members who found a new activity. Bambataa’s Universal Zulu Nation was one such group. As the scene grew, block parties became popular. It was interesting to note that the music being played during these gigs was stuff not being played on radio. Here James Brown, Sly & Family Stone, Gil Scott Heron and even the Last Poets found a home. Hence a younger generation began building off a musical tradition abandoned by its elders.

Break beats picked up in popularity as emcees sought to rap longer at these parties. It wasn’t long before rappers became the ONLY vocal feature at these parties. A microphone and two turntables was all one used in the beginning. With the exception of some break dancers the overwhelming majority of attendees stood around the roped off area and listened carefully to the emcee. A rapper sought to express himself while executing keen lyrical agility. This was defined by one’s rhyme style, one’s ability to rhyme on beat and the use of clever word play and metaphors.

In the early days rappers flowed on the mic continuously for hours at a time..non stop. Most of the rhymes were pre-written but it was a cardinal sin to recite off a piece of paper at a jam. The early rappers started off just giving shout outs and chants and later incorporated small limricks. Later the rhymes became more elaborate, with choruses like ‘Yes Yes Y’all, Or ‘One Two Y’all To The Beat Y’all being used whenever an emcee needed to gather his wind or think of new rhymes. Most emcess rhymed on a four count as opposed to some of the complex patterns one hears today. However, early rappers took great pains to accomplish the art of showmanship. There was no grabbing of the crotch and pancing around the stage.

Pioneering rapper Mele-Mel in a recent interview pointed out how he and other acts spent long hours reheasing both their rhymes and routines. The name of the game was to get props for rockin’ the house. That meant being entertaining. Remember back in the late 70s early 80s, artists weren’t doing one or two songs and leaving, they were on the mic all night long with folks just standing around watching. Folks had to come with it or be forever dissed.

Before the first rap records were put out (Fat Back Band‘s King Tem III’ and Sugar Hill Gang‘s ‘Rapper Delight’), hip hop culture had gone through several stages. By the late 70’s it seemed like many facets of hip hop would play itself out. Rap for so many people had lost its novelty. For those who were considered the best of the bunch; Afrika Bambaataa, Chief Rocker Busy Bee, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Four (yes initially there were only 4), Grand Wizard Theodore and the Fantastic Romantic Five, Funky Four Plus One More, Crash Crew, Master Don Committee to name a few had reached a pinnacle and were looking for the next plateau. Many of these groups had moved from the ‘two turntables and a microphone stage’ of their career to what many would today consider hype routines. For example all the aforementioned groups had routines where they harmonized. At first folks would do rhymes to the tune of some popular song.

The tune to ‘Gilligan’s Island‘ was often used. Or as was the case with the Cold Crush Brothers, the ‘Cats In the Cradle‘ was used in one of their more popular routines. As this ‘flavor of the month’ caught hold, the groups began to develop more elaborate routines. Most notable was GM Flash’s’ Flash Is to The Beat Box‘. All this proceeded ‘harmonizing/hip hop acts like Bel Biv DeVoe by at least 15 years.

The introduction of rap records in the early 80s put a new meaning on hip hop. It also provided participants a new incentive for folks to get busy. Rap records inspired hip hoppers to take it to another level because they now had the opportunity to let the whole world hear their tales. It also offered a possible escape from the ghetto…. But that’s another story..we’ll tell it next time.

written by Dave ‘Davey D’ Cook
c 1985

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Filed Under: Essential Hip Hop Articles, Hip Hop History Tagged With: Afrika Bambaataa, Clark Kent, Coke La Rock, Davey D, Grandmaster Flash, Hip Hop, Hip Hop History, Hip Hop news, Jack The Rapper Convention, Kool Herc, Kool Herc and the Herculoids, Mighty Zulu nation, rap

DJ Eddie Cheeba & DJ Hollywood-The Disco Side of Hip Hop

March 30, 2009 By mrDaveyd

DJ Eddie Cheeba & DJ Hollywood-The Disco Side of Hip Hop

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

‘AJ Is Cool’ by Kurtis Blow

Cheeba, Cheeba Y’all: Original House Rocker Eddie Cheba

By Mark Skillz
MarkSkillz@aol.com

http://hiphop101a.blogspot.com/2007/09/cheeba-cheeba-yall.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back Like Cadillac’s and Brim Hats

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

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

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

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

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

The Sound Systems in the Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Man With The Golden Voice

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

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

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

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

“I’m bonnified, I’m celitified and I’m qualified to do,
I say anything your heart can stand,
It all depends on you.
I’m listed in the yellow pages,
All around the world,
I got 21 years experience with loving sweet young girls…”
During an early morning phone interview Hollywood related the story of his discovery to me. “One day in 1975, I was at home playing records, and one of the records I pulled out was the “Black Moses” album. It was not popular at the time. So, there I was listening to this album, and I put on a song called “Good Love 69969”. Isaac Hayes was singing this part that went “I’m listed in the yellow pages, all around the world; I got 30 years experience in loving sweet young girls.” That record stopped me dead in my tracks. You see, before that record I had been doing nursery rhymes. But after that record: I was doing rhymes. And not only was I doing rhymes but I was talking about love. This was another level.”

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

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

But Eddie wanted the spot light too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the very mention of Fisher’s name Eddie becomes visibly uncomfortable. “Yes, Wood worked for Guy Fisher and them, those were Nicky Barnes’ people. I didn’t want to have anything to do with those people.” He tells me. “Yeah sure, we did parties for them, but that was it! They were nice guys outside of their business, but I didn’t want to play for them that much.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

“Because see, Hollywood might show up to Club 371 at two, three o’clock in the morning. Sometimes he didn’t show up at all. You couldn’t do that kind of shit with people like that because they would come and get you – and throw you in a bag or something.”

Havin’ Fun at Club 371

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like Butch and Sundance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

..at-brown-225.gif” width=200 align=right border=0>One night Eddie bought Furious Five lead MC Mele Mel with him to play a gig in Roosevelt. “When he brought Mele Mel with him it was like two voices from heaven,” Chuck D says, “back then, if you didn’t have a good voice you couldn’t ‘cut through inferior sound systems. These cats were flawless. Hearing them sold me on hip-hop as being a wonderful thing for my life.”

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

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

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

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

“Why’s that?” I ask.

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

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

“At one time there were about thirty to forty me’s out there”, Hollywood says to me sounding almost as irritated today about it as he was thirty years ago. “Everybody was saying the rhymes and when it would come time to say my name – they would take mine out and put theirs in. Woody Wood was one of them people.”

“So you battled him?” I asked.

“Yeah, I stepped on him too”, Wood said as confidently as Muhammad Ali in 1975, “at that time there wasn’t nobody that could get wit’ me. I was top dog back then. I had control of everything.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Nah, nah, nah, nah, it didn’t quite go down like that, Mark”, Hollywood tells me in between laughing.

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

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

One Night at the Jamaica Armory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome Home

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

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

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

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

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

“I was a New York deejay in Paris. I was a rare commodity over there. They were so far behind what we were doing over here – I beat all of them. I did TV commercials, I spun at the biggest clubs in the country.” Eddie says, “I was a celebrity. I lived in a nice house and drove a custom made Mercedes Benz.”

“So why did you leave?” I ask him.

“Because”, he says as he frowns up his face, “I got bored over there. My daughter was growing up not knowing any of my family. I had done everything I could over there. I won the world competition; I spun at some of the chicest clubs. I got tired of it all.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

and DJ Hollywood.

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

Return to Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner

Filed Under: Essential Hip Hop Articles, Hip Hop History, Hip Hop News articles Tagged With: Cheeba, Cheeba Y'all: Original House Rocker Eddie Cheba, Club 371, DJ Eddie Cheeba, DJ Hollywood, Edward Sturgis, Guy Fisher, Hip Hop History, Hip Hop news, Hotel Diplomat, Kool Herc, Kurtis Blow, Maboya, mark Skillz, Pete DJ Jones, Reggie Wells, The Disco Side of Hip Hop, The Smith Brothers, Woody Wood

52 Year Old ‘MC’ Sneed Is the Most Powerful Force in Hip Hop Radio

January 12, 2004 By mrDaveyd

Hip-Hop’s Unlikely Voice At 52, Shaping the Playlist for a Young Audience

Mary Catherine Sneed aka MC Sneed

LOS ANGELES — Mary J. Blige, in thigh-high green stiletto boots, grinds her hips on stage at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. “Got a jones in my bones,” she sings over the band’s jumpy hip-hop beat. “And it’s all for you, babe. Can’t leave you alone.”

Six thousand young people are on their feet bouncing and pumping their fists. Twenty rows back, between two young black women, sits a redhead named Mary Catherine Sneed, an Alabama native raised on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. She sways and nods demurely as the two teenage girls in front of her shake it. Later, after the lights come up, while she waits for the crowd to file out, Sneed turns to her assistant: “She was great. Every song is like a chapter in the life of Mary J. Blige.”

Few in this crowd know how much this 52-year-old white woman’s opinion matters: She controls what many of them hear when they turn on their radios.

As chief operating officer of Radio One Inc., a black-owned company based in suburban Prince George’s County, Md., Sneed is one of the most powerful people in black radio. The company owns a fifth of the black stations in the country. Sneed, who likes to be called “M.C.,” helps oversee the business side, supervising station managers, and the music side, supervising the program directors who decide what goes on the air. In most radio companies, those are separate jobs.

Most weeks she leaves home in Atlanta for one of the two dozen cities where Radio One owns 67 stations. This week in December is her L.A. week, and Sue Freund, general manager of KKBT-FM (“The Beat”), Radio One’s local hip-hop station, is driving a steel-gray Land Rover through the office canyons of Wilshire Boulevard on the way to lunch. From the backseat, Sneed chats with the Beat’s program director, Robert Scorpio, who decides, with advice from Sneed, what music to play.

She was not a fan of the first two singles — “Flying Without Wings” and “Superstar” — from Ruben Studdard, the black man who won the amateur-hour TV show “American Idol.” The whiter network audience may have loved Studdard, but Sneed said his slow, crooning rhythm and blues singles are too mainstream for the station.

“I think they were trying to be mass appeal, but by being mass appeal they appealed to no one,” she said. {grv}{grv}Those songs weren’t urban enough.” {grv}{grv}Urban” in the radio business means {grv}{grv}black.” The rest of the album, she said, is a better fit.

Scorpio agrees. A 39-year-old white hip-hop fan, he is a veteran of black radio who was a morning DJ in Houston before leaving the air to program seven years ago.

After talking to Sneed, he adds Studdard’s latest single, “Sorry 2004,” with its more driving hip-hop beat, to the playlist. It becomes a hit. Sneed “definitely gets the whole urban vibe,” he said later. “Not a lot of corporate people do.”

Radio One’s L.A. Story

The Los Angeles station, Radio One’s first in the nation’s entertainment capital, is especially important to the company. Radio One bought it three years ago from Clear Channel Communications Inc., the country’s largest radio company. Federal competition regulations forced Clear Channel to shed the Beat after buying Dallas-based AMFM Inc. for $23 billion. Radio One’s strategy is to buy struggling stations cheap and turn them around.

Sneed forced out the old general manager but kept on Ed Lover and Dr. Dre of the TV show “Yo! MTV Raps” for the morning show. They flopped. She replaced them with Steve Harvey, a black comedian and TV personality popular with black audiences. The ratings jumped.

Although Radio One is doing better than the industry as a whole during a nationwide advertising slump, last winter a drop in the ratings at the Beat and a few other Radio One stations began to worry investors. The company has run up debt, spending $1.6 billion recently buying radio stations, and needs a steady revenue stream to repay it. The stock price began to drop from $16 a share to $13 last summer. It closed Friday at $19.48 a share.

Sneed then fired the production director and afternoon DJ. She spent three weeks running the station when the new general manager took maternity leave during the summer. Arbitron Inc., which measures radio and TV audiences, is to release the latest ratings while she is in Los Angeles.

From Country to Hip-Hop

Sneed grew up in Huntsville, Ala., where she went to an integrated high school in the 1960s and then across the state to Auburn University. She joined the Pi Beta Phi sorority to fit in at school, but rarely showed up for meetings. When the sisters had to nominate someone to volunteer at the campus radio station, they picked Sneed. They thought it was punishment. She thought it was destiny.

“I went to the [radio station] meeting, and I was really over the sorority,” she said.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, she programmed country music stations in Nashville and R&B, adult contemporary, pop and rock stations in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Then Summit Communications Corp., a small Atlanta-based radio chain, hired her as executive vice president, the second-highest executive in the company, which operated adult contemporary stations playing soft-rockers such as Phil Collins and Celine Dion.

“It was a big job to be a woman and vice president,” Sneed said. “There just weren’t girls in radio programming. It is still a position that is dominated by men.”

At the same time, another woman was making her mark on radio. Cathy Hughes developed the “quiet storm” format — heavy on slow, sensual rhythm and blues sung by soulful crooners like Luther Vandross — at predominantly black Howard University’s station in Washington. In 1980 she bought her own station, WOL-AM, for just under $1 million.

Now chairman of Radio One, Hughes made her son, Alfred C. Liggins III, chief executive. Liggins found Sneed in Atlanta in 1994 when he went to buy an Atlanta radio station from Summit.

Later that year Summit sold all its stations and Sneed, a separated single mother of one son, was looking for a job that would let her remain in Atlanta. Liggins wanted to expand Radio One beyond Washington and Baltimore. They started what was only the second all-rap radio station in a major market in the nation; the first was in New York. Sneed had never programmed a rap station before.

Radio One began to grow just as white teenagers began mimicking West Coast rappers by throwing gang signs, wearing ultra-baggy jeans and cranking the music up to parent-deafening levels. Today hip-hop and R&B — “urban music” — are among the most popular formats with listeners ages 12 to 34, according to Arbitron. Nationwide, 348 stations play urban formats and in many large cities they compete directly with about 600 pop stations that play Top 40 hits, since Top 40 is no longer overwhelmingly white: Many Top 40 hits these days are rap songs. Recently eight of the top 10 singles in Billboard magazine were by rappers, including Outkast, Ludacris, Chingy and Jay-Z.

The gansta rap genre of hip-hop and rough images perpetrated by some rappers is part of what has become a billion-dollar industry that markets music, clothes and movies to young people of all races. From its roots as an urban black music form, rap has become an integral part of mainstream culture and is used to promote such products as Coca-Cola and Old Navy sweatshirts.

The fact that Sneed is white and has a 23-year-old son may have helped her get a feel for young people. The company said it gives local programmers lots of leeway, but every two weeks she has a conference call with program directors telling them which rappers flopped at the Source Awards in Miami and which songs record labels are plugging. To stay plugged in, she goes to concerts and clubs.

“Realistically speaking, you don’t see that many white women in the ‘hood,” said Chris Bridges, a best-selling rapper who uses the name Ludacris and who was once a DJ at Radio One’s Atlanta hip-hop station. “She would come to clubs and events right in the ghetto. That says a lot for the chief operating officer of the company.”

Last year, the company earned $7 million on revenue of $336 million after losing $55 million on $277 million in revenue because of the billion-dollar station-buying spree in 2000 that vaulted the company into the big leagues. Liggins took the company public in 1999.

But everywhere it looks, Radio One is surrounded by giants more than twice its size. Its toughest competition in Washington is WPGC-FM (95.5), owned by New York-based Infinity Broadcasting Corp., a unit of Viacom Inc. that owns 185 stations. Radio One’s R&B station, WMMJ-FM (102.3) and WPGC battle for the top market share. The Infinity station is slightly ahead.

Rebuking Critics

Soon the Land Rover is parked and Sneed is eating a chicken Ceasar salad at a Marie Callender’s, a middle-market chain restaurant heavy on comfort food. She tells Freund and Scorpio a story about conservative TV pundit Bill O’Reilly berating white rapper Eminem for advocating the assassination of the president. “In hip-hop, ‘dead presidents’ means money,” she said, throwing up her hands. “He just didn’t get it. Come on, people!”

It is not just middle-age white conservatives who dislike the music. Lots of parents worry about songs celebrating guns and violence or demeaning women. And some rappers are not exactly role models. Unlike easy-listening stars, rappers tend to walk it like they talk it, and some have been shot and killed. Then there is the rabid consumerism, obsessed with “bling-bling” — jewelry — and expensive cars and clothes. Some rappers talk about the rough neighborhoods where they grew up while others offer views on subjects as diverse as politics to partying.

Sneed blows off the critics. “Until they listen and can have a conversation that lets me know that they actually spent some time monitoring what we are playing, we have nothing to talk about.”

Late that night, Sneed’s driver drops her and her 29-year old assistant for a meeting at Mr. Chow, an intimate celebrity hangout in Beverly Hills. Sneed steps out of the black Cadillac Escalade and is soon joking with a Geffen Records executive and his three assistants over champagne and lobster, chicken satay and shrimp dumplings. The conversation turns serious for a moment when the background music changes. The Geffen executive has secretly asked the restaurant manager to play young R&B singer Avant’s new record so he could pitch it to Sneed.

“Sounds good,” she said, but makes no promises.

As dinner progresses, there are lots of stories about hip-hop artists — who is the hardest-to-work-with diva; who is known to carry a gun. “If you ever see that guy,” the Geffen executive said, “you know he’s packing an arsenal.” Sneed laughs.

Then it is morning again in Los Angeles, in a conference room at the Beat offices on Wilshire, and the station manager and sales team gather around printouts of the latest Arbitron figures. The station manager passes a sheet to Sneed: The previous month the Beat ranked third in the market for the 18- to 34-year-old age group. It grabbed a respectable 3.3 rating, meaning that during any continuous 15-minute period 3.3 percent of Los Angeles listeners, or 343,000 people, were tuned in. The station gained ground on its competitor, an Infinity station, which leads the Beat but lost market share.

“Oh, God! OH MY GOD!” Sneed yelps. “That’s freaking awesome!”

By Krissah Williams

www.washingtonpost.com/wp…Jan11.html

—————————————————————

This was an important article which shed light on one of the most powerful people controlling the flow of Black music to the masses.. A week after this article came out Lisa Fager from Industryears, a watchdog group based in DC, shot off this response to the article..

Hip-Hop and Unheard Voices

In the Jan. 12 front-page article “Hip Hop’s Unlikely Voice,” Krissah Williams did a great job of painting the picture at Radio One Inc., in essence summarizing the bigger issue in the hip-hop industry — the exploitation by mostly non-blacks working both sides of the industry, radio and record labels.

pub12.ezboard.com/fpoliti…D=53.topic

Mary Catherine Sneed is a typical urban music executive: She launched the second hip-hop radio format in the country with no experience or connection to the genre or its typical listeners. Now she determines what music black kids hear with confirmation from her white program director.

Gangsta rap is not the reflection of the black community but of white music industry executives. Unfortunately we can’t even count on the black-owned radio stations to save black children from demeaning stereotypes, because stations have consolidated and work from regional playlists, and program directors no longer have the power to localize and choose music. Record companies direct radio stations on which singles to play.

Before this consolidation, program and music directors made these decisions. Now radio execs such as Ms. Sneed have the power to see that songs with offensive lyrics get daily double-digit spins, while other songs without offensive lyrics receive no airplay.

Where’s the balance?

LISA FAGER

Laurel

The writer is a marketing consultant who has worked for radio and television networks and record labels.

Filed Under: archive articles, Hip Hop History, Industry news & Views Tagged With: Arbitron, hiphop, Industryears, Lisa Fager, Mary Catherine Sneed, Mary Cathy Sneed Program director, MC Sneed, radio One

Pioneers Step Out to Honor Disco King Mario

August 15, 2001 By mrDaveyd

Disco King Mario

This Saturday [August 18th] Hip Hop’s pioneers will be coming out in full force to pay tribute to the memory of one of its legendary DJs who passed away a few years back-Disco King Mario. We often hear about the achievements of people like Bambaataa, Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, but very little is said about some of the other pioneers who also laid down much of the foundation we now call Hip Hop. Cats like Pete DJ Jones, Grand Wizard Theodore, the late DJ Flowers and of course Mario were key architects.

Disco King Mario never released no records. He didn’t produce no major rap stars. I’m not even sure if he ever toured around the world once Hip Hop became known world wide. However, for those of us who were around back in the beginning days of the 70s, Disco King Mario who lived upstairs from my man DJ Paradise of X-Clan over in the Bronxdale Housing projects, was a household name. He was known for throwing some of Hip Hop’s best jams and keeping the party going. He was staple in early Hip Hop whose name and his crew Chuck Chuck City was mentioned on many of the early tapes. One of Mario’s unwritten contributions was how he gave Afrika Bambaattaa a helping hand. He used loan Bam his dj equipment. Later on Bam would face Mario in his first official DJ battle. Back in the early days it was Disco King Mario who was at the top of heap and the man to beat

Today its hard for people to understand the significance of the DJ. When Hip Hop first began it wasn’t the rapper who was in charge. It was the DJ. It was the DJ came to symbolized the African drummer. It was the DJ who kept the pace and set the tone. It was the DJ who rocked the crowd and was the supreme personality who garnered the spot light. Everyone else including the rappers were secondary. Cats from all over came to your party based upon who was deejaying. Hence when Disco King Mario‘s name was mentioned cats came from all over because he was the man. He was the type of cat who simply had that magic and command of the crowd. Sadly he passed away before his time, unknown to many of today’s bling bling artists who benefit from the culture he helped laid down.

Chuck Chuck City flyer If you happen to be in New York, you may see a flyer being circulated around that is reminiscent of the old school flyers from back in the days. ‘By Popular demand DJ Cool Clyde, Lightnin Lance, The Nasty Cuzins, Quiet Az Kept Present their first annual Old School Reunion & Picnic’. It lets you know that the celebration for Disco King Mario is taking place Saturday August 18th at Rosedale ‘Big Park’ in the Bronx. The Big Park itself is legendary. When I was a kid living on Croes Avenue, we were absolutely forbidden to go across the street to the Big Park. That was because the Big Park was where many of many of the early Black Spades used to hang out. The Spades at that time were the largest and most notorious gang at that time. They eventually evolved to become The Mighty Zulu Nation. As for the Big Park, it eventually became the place where Disco King Mario would eventually throw many of his early gigs.

This Saturday, there will be performances by the Cold Crush Brothers, DJ Charlie Chase, DJ Tony Tone, The Crash Crew, Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Jazzy Jay, The Soul Sonic Force, Kool Herc and the Herculords, Jazzy 5, Prince Ikey C, Kool DJ AJ and Busy Bee Starsky. Also on point will be Grand Master DST, Chuck Chillout, DJ Red Alert, Mr Magic and Grandmaster Flash. This is an event not to miss. More importantly Disco King Mario is a man not to forget! For more info holla at my man Big Jeff at 917-644-3233 or Cool Clyde at 917-954-9049

Filed Under: Hip Hop History Tagged With: Afrika Bambaataa, Big Park, Black spades, Bronxdale Housing projects, Chuck Chuck City, Disco King Mario, DJ Cool Clyde, DJ Kool Herc, Hip Hop, Hip Hop History, Jazzy Jay, Lightnin Lance, Zulu nation

What Is Hip Hop? Grandmaster Flash’s Definition Of Hip Hop

September 23, 1996 By mrDaveyd

Grandmaster Flash‘s Definition Of Hip Hop

As one of the pioneers of who was known for his ability to mix music I mixed anything from Billy Squire to Michael Jackson to Thin Lizzy to Sly And The Family Stone to Glen Miller to Tschochosky..

When I laid this foundation down.. the key was we could take almost anything musically just as long as it had a beat to it.. so that the rhymer who flowed over the top of it could syncopated.. For anybody to say that whatever they’re doing in Florida is not hip hop..or whatever they’re saying in LA is not hip hop.. Who are these people to say that?.. There were songs that Bambaataa played that to this day I still don’t know.. They were so funky.. Some of the ones I got the privilege to know..I was surprised…You take a song like ‘Apache‘ for example which was considered to be one of the hip hop main themes..Those were a bunch of white guys.. The Incredible Bongo Rock Band were white guys.. There was one person there who was Black.. He was King Erickson who was a percussionist…

For anybody to say ‘this is not hip hop’ or ‘that is not hip hop’ is wrong. That is not the way the formula was laid down.. It was for the people who were going to continue this to take anything…by all means necessary and string it along…

September 1996

Filed Under: Hip Hop History, what is Hip Hop? Tagged With: Afrika Bambaataa, Apache, Billy Squire, Grandmaster Flash, Hip Hop, rap music, What Is Hip Hop? Grandmaster Flash's Definition Of Hip Hop

What is Hip Hop?: Afrika Bambaataa’s Definition of Hip Hop

September 23, 1996 By mrDaveyd

Afrika Bambaataa’s Definition Of Hip Hop?

Hip Hop means the whole culture of the movement.. when you talk about rap..Rap is part of the hip hop culture..The emceeing..The djaying is part of the hip hop culture. The dressing the languages are all part of the hip hop culture.The break dancing the b-boys, b-girls ..how you act, walk, look, talk are all part of hip hop culture.. and the music is colorless.. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red, white.. whatever music that gives you the grunt.. that funk.. that groove or that beat.. It’s all part of hip hop….

Are artist from the West Coast and Miami
considered Hip Hop?

Too Short, E-40 all the brothers and sisters that are making that hip hop and coming from the funk part of it are all hip hoppers.. The Electro Funk which is that Planet Rock sound which is now considered the Miami Bass sound is also hip hop.. The GoGo sound that you hear from Washington DC is also hip hop.. New Jack Swing that Teddy Riley is R&B and hip hop mixed together…So hip hop has progressed into different sounds and different avenues.. People also have to recognize from hip hop music..inparticular the electro funk came House music and Freestyle music with a lot of our Pueto Rican hip hoppers…

The freestyle music really comes from Planet Rock..If you look at all the freestyle records its based upon Planet Rock.. If you look at all the Miami Bass records it’s based upon Planet Rock.. It’s all based upon electro funk… which came from hip hop music…

Hip Hop has experimented with a lot of different styles of music and there’s a lot of people who have brought different changes over time with hip hop.. which have brought out all these funky records which everybody just started jumpin’ on like a catch phrase.. For example when ‘Planet Rock’ came out you had all of the electro funk records.. When you had Doug E Fresh with the show and ‘La Di Da Di’.. a lot of rappers went that way…When Eric B came out with ‘I Know U Got Soul’… all the way up to Run DMC and Wu-Tang. All these people brought changes within hip hop music… Unfortunately today a lot of the people who created hip hop..meaning the Black and Latinos do not control it no more…

Afrika Bambaataa
Sept 23 1996

Filed Under: Hip Hop History, what is Hip Hop? Tagged With: Afrika Bambaataa, Hip Hop History, rap music, what is Hip Hop

Hip Hop History: Interview w/ Afrika Bambaataa Hip Hop’s Ambassador

September 23, 1996 By mrDaveyd

Everyone in Hip Hop owes a bit of gratitude to Hip Hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa and his Universal Zulu Nation. Here’s a guy who came out of New York’s ruthless gang culture and succeeded in creating something positive when there was so much negativity around. He took former gang members put them under one umbrella initially called the Organization and later Zulu Nation. He was the one who attempted to bridge the generation gap between a resistant older Black community and it’s innovative young. He along with DJ Kool Herc was among the first use Hip Hop as a way to provide a positive for the local neighborhood thugs.

Bam was known as the Master of Records because of his huge vinyl collection and his willingness to expand Hip Hop’s musical boundaries. He was the first deejay I ever heard take a Malcolm X or Martin Luther King speech and play it over a Hip Hop break beat. He was creative enough to take the ‘Theme to the Pink Panther‘ and rock it over Hip Hop drum beats. Bam was the first to really take Hip Hop beyond the boundaries of The Bronx and Harlem’s Black and Puerto Rican communities and make it multi-cultural. He was the first to take Hip Hop downtown to New York’s trendy Village district. He was also the first to provide a safe haven for folks outside the community to come up and see what Hip Hop culture was really all about.

Bambaataa was the one who gave birth to the Electro-Funk aspect of Hip Hop when he dropped his uptempo landmark record Planet Rock in 1982. True to his moniker Master of Records, Bambaataa used a sped up riff from the German dance group Kraftwerk and their classic song Trans-Europe Express. He’s the one who attempted to keep the soul of Black music, in particular the funk, from being compromised, diluted and watered down during the Age of Disco. Before folks were really up on George Clinton and The P-Funk era, Bam was a full fledged Funkateer. Before folks really developed a deep appreciation for James Brown whose music became a major backbone for early Hip Hop, Bam was making records with him.

DJ Afrika Bambaataa was the one who spread the word about this new style of music and culture thus making him Hip Hop’s first Ambassador. This is the same Bambaataa-The Grandfather of Hip Hop, who recently came to the San Francisco Bay Area [November 1999] to perform at a club with less then 100 people. It was sad to see the man who did so much for this culture wasn’t given the respect from one major radio or video outlet that now makes a living peddling Hip Hop culture. They didn’t bother to seek him out and grant him an interview. No one bothered to build directly from his experience, expertise and wisdom. This is the same Bambaataa who laid down much of the blue print for Hip Hop but now when his name is mentioned to today’s Hip Hopper he/she will arrogantly dismiss Bam and accomplishments and say ‘He’s Old School’.

Over the years I have interviewed Bambaataa numerous times. This particular day was telling because it Bam was on his way to a peace summit of sorts. He was doing his part to quell a growing feud between East and West Coast rappers. At the time of this interview [September ’96] things were kind of hectic because Hip Hop had just lost 2Pac to senseless violence.

Davey D: How did you get involved with Hip-Hop?

A. Bambaataa I am one of the founders of Hip-Hop along with my brothers Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash. Kool Herc came to the shores of America from the island of Jamaica in 1969. He started jamming these slamming types of b-beats that we call break beats. I knew that as a DJ from 1970 on up that I would eventually come with this sound. I brought out all these other break beats that you hear so much on a lot of these records. It was for this reason I am called the Master of Records.

Davey D: A lot of people don’t realize your reputation. Back in the days you use to shock everybody because you had so many records and so many beats from different sources of music. You definitely earned that title. When we talk about Hip-Hop how would you define it? Is it just one type of music? Is it a way that you present it? Or is it a conglomeration of a lot of different things?

A. Bambaataa People have to understand what you mean when you talk about Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop means the whole culture of the movement. When you talk about rap you have to understand that rap is part of the Hip-Hop culture. That means the emceeing is part of the Hip-Hop culture. The Deejaying is part of the Hip-Hop culture. The dressing, the languages are all part of the Hip Hop culture. So is the break dancing, the b-boys and b-girls. How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white. It’s from whatever music that gives that grunt, that funk, that groove, that beat. That’s all part of Hip Hop.

Davey D: So is music on the west coast considered Hip Hop? I ask that cause you have a lot of people who keep insisting that artist like Too Short or E-40 is not real Hip Hop. Is that a false definition?

A. Bambaataa Yes, that’s a false definition. Too Short, E-40 and all the brothers and sisters that’s making Hip Hop and coming from the funk side part of it is all Hip Hop. The electro-funk, which is that ‘Planet Rock’ sound which is led to the Miami Bass sound, is also Hip Hop. The GoGo sound that you hear from Washington DC is also Hip Hop. The New Jack Swing that Teddy Riley and all them started is R&B and Hip Hop mixed together. So Hip Hop has progressed into different sounds and different avenues. Also people have got to recognize from Hip Hop music came the birth of House music and Freestyle dance music that is listened to by a lot of Puerto Ricans.

Davey D: Now can you repeat that again. I keep telling people all the time that Latin Freestyle and Hi Energy music is part of Hip Hop. I keep telling people that a lot of the early freestyle producers were original Hip Hoppers. I keep telling them how the Puerto Ricans took the fast uptempo break beats from songs like ‘Apache‘ and developed freestyle.

A. Bambaataa Actually freestyle really comes from ‘Planet Rock‘. If you listen to all the freestyle records you’ll hear that they are based on ‘Planet Rock’. All the Miami Bass records are based upon Planet Rock. So freestyle came from Electro Funk, which as you know came from Hip Hop.

Davey D: How has Hip Hop changed over the years? What do you like about it? What do you think is hurting it? What do you think we need to do to take things to the next level?

A. Bambaataa The thing that’s good about Hip Hop is that it has experimented with a lot of different sounds and music. There’s a lot of people over time who have brought out all these funky records that everybody has started jumping on like a catch phrase… When Planet Rock came out, then you had all of the electro funk records. When you had Doug E Fresh doing songs with Slick Rick like ‘La Di Da Di‘, you had all the people going in that direction. When Eric B and Rakim came out with ‘I Know You Got Soul‘ and all the way up to Run DMC all the way to Wu-Tang…All these people gave little changes that effected Hip Hop music. The thing about Hip Hop today and music in general is that the people who created it meaning Blacks and Latinos do not control it no more. A lot of them have made companies and sold it out to the money devils. Now we act like we have freedom of expression within Hip Hop but there’s actually censorship in Hip Hop.

Davey D: What exactly do you mean by that?

A. Bambaataa Well, a lot of people within government and big business are nervous of Hip Hop and Hip Hop artists, because they speak their minds. They talk about what they see and what they feel and what they know. They reflect what’s around them. That means if you see drugs in your area, your gonna come straight with it. If you see something is going wrong within politics and the world today, then some Hip Hop artist is gonna come along and get straight with it. If they think that there’s a lot of racism going on then there’s another Hip Hop artist who’s gonna come out and speak their mind. A lot of people fear this. So they (big business types) go together in their secret meetings like Warner Brothers and they came down on people like Ice T or Sista Souljah. They came down on the Zulu Nation. They came down on Public Enemy. They came down on NWA and The Geto Boys. All these Hip Hop artists were bold and demanded freedom of expression. But now you see censorship going on.

Ice T made a record called ‘Cop Killer‘ which was really a heavy metal record done by a Black heavy metal band so they came after it because it was Ice T and said it was rap.

Davey D: How are you seeing this censorship coming about?

A. Bambaataa You have to look at the fact that Hip Hop is under attack. It’s not just Hip Hop but Black people, Latino people and all people are under attack for different things. We’re attacked within Hip Hop music. We’re attack within our minds by what they put on television to accommodate you and ‘supe you up’ [tell you lies]. We’re attacked within our bodies and health. They attack our natural food source so that it’s hard for people who want to get into holistic herbs or natural healing. Since the pharmaceuticals don’t make any money and they control the doctors. If the doctors don’t make any money then all hell breaks loose. In communities like LA and New York they are using a lot of the youth for a test sight. By that I mean, they are flooding the communities with drugs. We are under attack in all fields of our life.

Davey D: Today there’s a meeting taking place at the Mosque in NY and I know you’re going to be playing a significant role in this Hip Hop Day of Atonement, Can you explain to everyone what this is all about and what you hope to accomplish?

A. Bambaataa Well basically The Hip Hop Day Of Atonement at Mosque 7 in New York City is basically bringing a lot of the Hip Hop artist together to talk about this East/ West coast mess and to talk about our brother 2Pac Shakur. We want to give him a memorial.

We also want to try and slow down all this foolishness that’s going on between the East and West. We gotta understand that Hip Hop is now universal. Hip Hop is not East coast or West coast. Hip Hop is in the North of America and in the South of America as well as all around the world. It’s in different countries from Europe to Africa to the West Indies to the Pacific Islands. It’s now a universal thing. It’s what you put in your lyrics that makes it a Black or white thing. Or it can speak to all people on the planet. That’s what this day of atonement is about-to bring our people together.

We want you to sit down and leave your egos at home and let’s get an understanding as to where all this is foolishness coming from. There are others who are putting things out there or throwing a stick and hiding their hand and keeping things built up in the media. They’re keeping friction going between people from the East and the West. One thing we all got in common is your color, which is Black and Latino, which is our family.

Davey D: Can you speak on the relationship between Hip Hop and violence?

A. Bambaataa Well, the continuation with violence is America itself. They tell you you’re not supposed to have guns or you’re not supposed to have knives, yet they still show guns and all sorts of weapons in all these movies. They allow us to have guns and weapons in our videos. They allow us to disrespect our Black woman. A lot of these things would be considered criminal if it were to be carried out in the streets. That’s like when they tell you after you buy your VHS and you rent movies they tell you not to copy the movies. But here they come with a scrambler that allows you to make illegal copies. Life in the American system is just crazy and ‘wild out’. There are certain things that they say you can’t do, there are all these secret people behind the scenes who make things available for you to do. That’s why you have so much crime and violence.

Black people didn’t come up with the first drive by shooting. A lot of this was taught from watching the movies from the 1920s when they had so called ‘real’ gangsters like Al Capone. All this is played in your subconscious mind. There are people who think less of themselves and don’t know their real self and they tend to fall victim these traps that are being put on television or in a lot of these movies.

Davey D: Any last words…Where do you see Hip Hop going in the next couple of years?

A. Bambaataa If we do not sit down, meaning our people as a whole and unite and form a Hip Hop united front or police our own self and organize, I can definitely see Hip Hop becoming destroyed and a lot of frictions getting bigger. I can see a lot of people going out and hurting each other. Sooner or later we need to wake up and know what’s going on. We need to do what brother Malcolm X, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Minister Farrakhan and many others had suggested–read books. You better know what’s going on with this New World Order cause there’s something serious going down and believe me all of y’all that’s out there with all this foolishness. They got a lot of big concentration camps (prisons) just waiting for you. So get ready for the new age and the next Millennium. In the year 2000. The New World Order.

c 1996

Filed Under: Artist Interviews, Hip Hop History, Hip Hop Pioneers Tagged With: Afrika Bambaataa, afrikabambaataa, Bambaataa, Hip Hop Pioneer, hiphop, Kool DJ Herc, Master of Records, Miami Bass, Planet Rock, Universal Zulu nation

What is Hip Hop? DJ Kool Herc’s Definition Of Hip Hop?

June 1, 1988 By mrDaveyd

Click HERE to listen to pt of our interview w/ Kool Herc

DJ Kool Herc‘s Definition Of Hip Hop?

Hip Hop.. the whole chemistry of that came from Jamaica… I was born in Jamaica and I was listening to American music in Jamaica.. My favorite artist was James Brown. That’s who inspired me.. A lot of the records I played was by James Brown. When I came over here I just put it in the American style and a perspective for them to dance to it. In Jamaica all you needed was a drum and bass. So what I did here was go right to the ‘yoke’. I cut off all anticipation and played the beats. I’d find out where the break in the record was at and prolong it and people would love it. So I was giving them their own taste and beat percussion-wise.. cause my music is all about heavy bass…

How Did The early Hip Hop Scene of The ’70s Kick Off?

It started coming together as far as the gangs terrorizing a lot of known discotheques back in the days. I had respect from some of the gang members because they used to go to school with me.. There were the Savage Skulls, Glory Stompers, Blue Diamonds, Black Cats and Black Spades. Guys knew me because I carried myself with respect and I respected them. I respected everybody. I gave the women their respect. I never tried to use my charisma to be conceited or anything like that. I played what they liked and acknowledged their neighborhood when they came to my party….I would hail my friends that I knew. People liked that… I’d say things like..’There goes my mellow Coke La Roc in the house’, ‘There goes my mellow Clark Kent in the house’, ‘There goes my mellow Timmy Tim in the house’..’To my mellow Ricky D’, ‘To my mellow Bambaataa’.. People like that sort of acknowledgement when they heard it from a friend at a party.
What were the early rhymes like?

Well the rhyming came about..because I liked playing lyrics that were saying something. I figured people would pick it up by me playing those records, but at the same time I would say something myself with a meaninful message to it. I would say things like;

Ya rock and ya don’t stop
and this is the sounds of DJ Kool Herc and the Sound System and
you’re listening to the sounds of what we call the Herculoids.
He was born in an orphanage
he fought like a slave
fuckin’ up faggots all the Herculoids played
when it come to push come to shove
the Herculoids won’t budge
The bass is so low you can’t get under it
the high is so high you can’t get over it
So in other words be with it..

Who were the first modern-day rappers?

My man Coke La Rock.. He was the first original members of the Herculoids. He was first known as A-1 Coke and then he was Nasty Coke and finally he just liked the name Coke La Rock. There was Timmy Tim and there was Clark Kent.. We called him the Rock Machine…He was not the same Clark Kent who djs for Dana Dane… An imposter.. I repeat he’s an imposter. The real Clark Kent we called him Bo King and only he knows what that means. There was only one original Clark Kent in the music business. This guy carrying his name, I guess he respects Clark Kent…

June 1988

Filed Under: Hip Hop History, what is Hip Hop? Tagged With: Black spades, Bo King, Clark Kent, Coke LaRock, DJ Kool Herc, Herculoids, Hip Hop, Hip Hop History, Jamaica, James brown, Nasty Coke, what is Hip Hop

What is Hip Hop? A Historical Definition Of The Term Rap pt1

January 1, 1984 By mrDaveyd

A Historical Definition Of The Term Rap pt1

What is rap? Depending on who you ask and from which generation the word ‘rap’ will take on different meanings. At one point in time ‘a rap’ was a set of excuses a con artist handed you in an effort to deceive you.

In the 70s rap were the words a person used when trying to persuade you. This particularly applied to the persuasive efforts of a young man trying to obtain sexual favors from a female..

Today rap means saying rhymes to the beat of music making it’s one of the four major elements within hip hop culture. Because the other elements which include deejaying, breakdancing and graffiti aren’t as widespread, the words Hip Hop and Rap have been used interchangeably over the years..

King Tim III

The truth of the matter is the word rap wasn’t always used to describe this activity. The act of rhyming to the beat of music was initially called emceeing. The term rap first became associated with Hip Hop around 1979 with release of two records in ’79. The first was called King Tim III [Personality Jock] which is considered Hip Hop’s first record. This was track put out by the Brooklyn based Fatback Band. This song was said to be inspired the old rhyme styles of popular Black radio disc jockeys of the 50s and 60s like Jocko Henderson, Jack The Rapper, Magnificent Montague and Daddy O to name a few. These Black radio deejays would eventually go on to influence pioneering club deejays like DJ Hollywood..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcTP4cvXSP0

The second song that popularized and associated the term Rap with Hip Hop was the landmark song ‘Rapper’s Delight‘ by Sugar Hill Gang. I’m not quite sure how Sugar Hill came up with the term ‘Rap’. Some say it was already being bantered about within the mainstream media who were then mystified by this new phenomenon.

Others say that the term was coined by older folks within the community, in this case, Sugar Hill record label owners Sylvia and Joey Robinson who saw similarities between young hip hoppers from the ’70s and the word manipulators of earlier generations where the term rap was used…
Rapper’s Delight

H Rap Brown

Ironically within the song Rapper’s Delight contains a well-known rhyme which appears to have been borrowed from the former Black Panther and SNCC chairman H.Rap Brown now known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. The rhyme in question appears in Brown’s autobiography written in 1969 called ‘Die Nigger Die‘. It spoke about his militant approach toward solving some of the ills afflicting Black America. Within his book, he spoke about how he obtained his name ‘Rap’. He detailed that when he was growing up in Louisiana people used to play a variety of word games including one called The Dozens.

The purpose of the game was to totally destroy somebody else with words. He noted that in his neighborhood and bear in mind we are talking about the early 60s, there would be close to 50 guys standing around competing against one another in this rhyme game in which people talked about each other’s mothers. The winner was determined by crowd reaction… Rap Brown got his name his name because he was considered to be one of the most skilled…

In his book, H.Rap Brown gives some examples of his rhymes…

I fucked your mama
till she went blind.
Her breath smells bad,
But she sure can grind.

I fucked your mama
for a solid hour.
Baby came out
screaming, Black Power.

Elephant and Baboon
learning to screw.
Baby came out looking
like Spiro Agnew.
[Spiro Agnew was former Vice President under Richard Nixon]

Brown also explained another verbal game called Signifying. He noted that this was a verbal game which was more humane than The Dozens because instead of dissin’ someone’s mother you would dis your opponent. He also explained that a skilled signifier knew how to skillfully put words together so you could accurately express your feelings. He concluded that signifying could also be used to make someone feel good. He dropped a rhyme which was used in the movie ‘Five On The Black Hand Side‘ and later immortalized several years later by the Sugar Hill Gang.

Yes, I’m hemp the demp the women’s pimp
women fight for my delight.
I’m a bad motherfucker. Rap the rip-saw the
devil’s brother ‘n law.
I roam the world I’m known to wander and this .45
is where I get my thunder…

The fact that H.Rap referred to his .45 caliber gun may have inadvertently been a precursor to what we call gangsta rap. (This, of course, is being said with tongue in cheek)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkbKKnKg7dk

Isaac Hayes

As was mentioned earlier the term rap has changed from generation to generation. In the 70s the term not only meant the art of persuasion but it was also used to describe the monologue talking styles used by singing artists like Isaac Hayes, Barry White, Bobby Womack, Lou Rawls and Millie Jackson. Albums like Isaac Hayes’ ‘Hot Buttered Soul’ and Millie Jackson’s ‘Still Caught Up’ best personified these styles called ‘Love Raps’.

Below is an example of Isaac Hayes delivering a ‘love rap’

The art of rappin’ with respect to hip hop was characterized by one’s ability to syncopated to a beat. Ideally, an emcee rapped from the heart. His rhymes were spontaneous, not memorized or read aloud from a written document.

Of course, we now know that most of the great pioneering emcees like Mele-Mel, Grand Master Caz and Kurtis Blow to name a few, all rehearsed and pre-wrote their rhymes. But the approach was to present yourself as if the rhymes were coming off the top of the dome. ..

Ideally a rap is a group of rhymes that are thrown together so everything has meaning. Nothing said is frivolous. It reflects the here and now and ideally the lifestyle of the one rapping. Rap’s ideally projected the emotions and feelings experienced by the rapper. Ultimately and historically an artist rapped for no one but himself. His rap was a call for attention to himself.. He was ideally saying..’Hey look here I am world-Somebody hear my song!’.

And the beat goes on an on an on
It don’t stop rocking till the crack of dawn
when the people hear me rock the funky rap song
The whole damn world wants to hum along
Cause I’m e-lectricic..I’m bigger than life
An everyone calls me Jesus Christ
To The beat y’all check me out..
To the beat y’all check me out..

-Davey D-
Double D Crew..’78

c 1984.. The Power Of Rap..
By dave ‘Davey D’ Cook

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