January 3, 2024 • 60 mins
Questlove Supreme sits down with a keystone of Hip Hop culture, Paradise Gray. In the first of a two-part interview, Paradise revisits growing up in the Bronx backdrop of Hip Hop. He recalls his time at The Latin Quarter, a legendary New York City club that birthed the careers of Rap legends and more. This is an insightful, informative, and entertaining in-studio interview.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of Iheartradiots.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Supremo Supremo role called Supremo shut, Supremo role called Supremo
Supremo role called Supremo Sun Supremo role.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I'm an owner, not a GM. Yeah, joints creeping to
my d ms. Yeah, I represent freedom. Yeah, Hey, Steve.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
What rhymes with the last corner?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Supremo role called Supremo Supremo role.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
My name is Fante. Yeah, I got my moisturizer. Yeah,
what time is it? Yeah, grand Verbaiza.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Supremo Supremo role called Supremo Supremo roll call.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
My name is Sugar. Yeah, where's my per diem?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (01:04):
Self sabotage. You're an asshole, hit bill?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, you Number one is the border. Yeah, it's time
for tails.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Quarter Supremo roll Suprema.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
So Supremo roll.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
It's like em. Yeah, it's so nice. I've been talking
about the Latin quarter. Yeah, finally we got Paaradise.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Supremo roll Suprema.
Speaker 6 (01:48):
So my name is Paradise. Yeah, I'm twice as nice.
Speaker 7 (01:54):
Yeah, lecekating on ice Yeah, I can't say it twice.
Speaker 8 (02:01):
Supremo Suprema So Supremo roll Suprema, So supremo, Ro Supremo supremo.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Roll.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Wait there, man, that's what I mean. Many, let's go chill.
This is what they called the when when you have
(02:46):
like a special episode.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, no, no, but the this is the longest stretch
of finally getting to the tail ends of what the
show has been about for the last what seven seven years?
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Seven years? Good luck?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yes, Okay, there we go.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You know, we've been talking about or joking about the
Latin Quarter with every hip hop luminary that has made
their mark in this culture in the late eighties, early nineties,
and we've heard many a tale of the Latin Quarter.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
But as a walking Smithsonian pack.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Ratter pop culture hoarder, of course, you know that I
easily got excited about doing this particular episode of course,
Love Supreme, because you can't have any tales of the
Latin Quarter without our guest today. And you know, for
damn near five decades, our guest has been preserving, building,
(03:52):
shape shifting many a career in hip hop. But more
than that, he's embarking on what I would deem probably
his most important project, which is a proprietor of the
Universal Hip Hop Museum. Yeah, and you know not to
(04:12):
mention he's an author. Currently your your show about your
collections in hip hop. Yes, hip Hop Treasures, which I
the fact that you just had to wherewithal to know
that this stuff was going to be value speaks of
your characters. So and also, welcome to Team Supreme with us.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yes people, what.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
Y Bill?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I'm back? Yeah, you're back where you been? Sorry to cigarettes.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Okay, no, for real, Welcome Paradise Gray, to Claude, Paradise Gray,
the man that holds our history in his hands, to
Court Love Supreme.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
So, uh, sir, have you ever heard of the Latin Quarter?
How are you did that?
Speaker 7 (04:59):
I'm a absolutely fantabulous Okay, well real, this is a great,
great pleasure.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
You look amazing.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Well, I thank you.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Look, let's just beginning.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Where where does your hip hop journey start? Your very
first moment in which you're meeting the elements.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Of what hip hop is. I don't know if it's
hearing a passy for the first.
Speaker 7 (05:23):
Time, or my journey in hip hop started in my
mother's living room. You know, my mom was a supermom.
You know, she was the curator of all culture in
our household. You didn't touch the TV knob unless she
did it. You didn't listen to the radio unless she
programmed it. She was my program director, and every Friday
(05:45):
she would come home from work and go to the
record store around the corner from my house and come
in the house with a fistful of brand new forty fives.
And she introduced me to James Brown, George Clinton sline
of Family Stuff, the Last Poets, Gil Scott, Heron, Marvin
Gaye A and.
Speaker 6 (06:06):
Goes on and on and on.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
And then she used to play those records and cook
and clean the house while meet my brother and sister
sang and danced with her. And then every Saturday morning
we would watch Soul Train, and after it went off,
we would do our own Soul Train line in the
house because we had all the records that they just
had on TV already in the living room. So she
(06:29):
prepared me to be a DJ and a selector. And
the first two crates of records that I had when
I started DJing in the streets, I took it from
my mother's record collection, you know, really yes records, well
two crates the records, I mean, I had a lot
(06:50):
of the breakbeats right from the door.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (06:52):
Because my mom she listened to every genre of music,
you know what I'm saying, So she prepared me well.
So one day, growing up in the Bronxdale Projects, I
was going to the store and I heard this music
coming from beyond this door. There used to be a
laundry room. But a DJ that lived in my building.
(07:13):
His name was disco King Mario. Oh yes, okay, so
this was another address that should be remembered with fifteen
twenty cents a consider seventeen fifteen Bruckner Boulevard in the
bronx Dale Projects. And I heard the music coming from
the door. I cracked the door open and there he
(07:34):
was disco King Mario with two turntables and a Bozac
mixer with a knob, and he was playing a song
I think called Gotta Get a Nut, oh by a.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
New Birth and then then yep, the infamous Yeah I
sold Can You Keep a Secret?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Drum breaking?
Speaker 7 (07:53):
And then right I was standing there with my jaw like,
oh wow, what does he do to those records? Like
you know what I mean?
Speaker 6 (08:03):
And he was like, man, come in and close the door.
Speaker 7 (08:05):
I came in and I sat down and I was
surrounded by stacks and crates and equipment and speakers and records.
And you know, he uh had a bad habit of
when he DJ, he didn't put the record back in
the cover.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
So his records was all over the place. They were dusty.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And because.
Speaker 7 (08:30):
So, because my mother had conditioned me to wipe the
records and put them back in the sleeve, I systematically
started organizing Mario's records.
Speaker 6 (08:40):
I was seven years old and I wiped them records.
Speaker 7 (08:47):
You better not touch my record the floor okay, you
know what I mean, in horrible condition, And I said,
I came in with the kit. You know, they had
the alcohol in it, remember that with the velvet, and
they wiped the record.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
He loved it. I organized his crates and that began
my journey as a real DJ.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
I want to do a slight sidebar because okay, so
as a family, we've been together for seven years, but
I don't even know your actual journeys. If we can
keep it under three minutes, Like what was your first
hip hop moment?
Speaker 9 (09:23):
I would say my first hip hop moment was my
uncle taking me to the Fresh Fest at the Greensboro
Coliseum in like eighty This was eighty five A six.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I was like six years old. Did you not hear
rap music before that?
Speaker 6 (09:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I heard rap more did Okay?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
So what was the most impact, like your first impactful?
Like me hearing rappers delight was like what is this?
I think probably the first we're talking just hearing the music.
It really wasn't rap. I mean it was like records
like you know, Nucleus Jam on it and it was
those kinds of records because my mother would take me
(09:56):
with her to the park and DJ's will be out
playing those records.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
You know he should have win last, but seeing it
and some bullshit, but not.
Speaker 9 (10:02):
Seeing it that was like that was It was eighty
five run DMC, Fat Boys and Houdini and that was
just that was it for me.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
It was done.
Speaker 6 (10:12):
I knew what I want to be, all right? So
like you next?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Now, first of all, we're in d C. Or were
you in Philly?
Speaker 6 (10:20):
In Atlanta, d C.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
That's where I worked for fifteen years of my life.
But I mean, I feel like mine is more disconnected
through TV because I was babysat by the TV, so
it was through movies. It was Beach Street, it was
breaking one Breaking two, Breaking Book. I'm gonna tell my truth.
Breaking Boogloo was my ship man.
Speaker 6 (10:36):
Let to judge.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Okay, Okay, I saw the movie three times when I
went to the theater. All right, Steve, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Besides, you know smoking with Snoop Dogg at the studio. Well, now,
did you want to tell me you stole we from Snoop?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Okay, but he's so smoking right now.
Speaker 10 (11:01):
I think I told that story when we interviewed Snoop.
But it was a Fat Boys and that first run
DMC album rock Box. And but the thing was, I
heard all this stuff at my Jewish summer camp where
there were no black people. I didn't know what was
going on or what I was listening to necessarily, but
then you know, everything happened in I guess high school breakdancing.
(11:22):
I mean, you can tell me what year was that
was that first run DMC album eighty three.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Wait, this is weird.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I'm noticing now, And you know, we should probably try
to get cool rock Ski on the show. That the
Fat Boys is actually a lot of people's first introduction
to hip hop, which is kind of crazy to me.
But even jay Z said the very first hip hop
(11:48):
tape he ever brought was the Fat Boys. So it's
almost like because hip hop was kind of contributing, you know. Again,
my parents went to that ye Christian Berry, like, yeah,
you ain't listen to that whatever, But they had no
problems with me having the Fat Boys.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Because they were too funny. It was funny. They were
too funny to be threatening, you know, whereas all Right
on paid Bill. Yeah, I think the Fat Boys. I
think Heavy D in the early days, and then like
I came up in like the Vanilla Ice, Teenage Munan
Nina Turtles era, but then Ninja I did. But then
(12:24):
I know it's hard to say out loud.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I don't want I don't want to dismiss that because
only because LLLL and I were talking about this on tour. Well,
concerning Hammer and Vanilla Ice both selling ten million units,
like between licensed to Ill, Hammer's second album and Vanilla Ice,
like those three records were the first three albums to
sell more than ten million units, and for a lot
(12:49):
of people that are in the hip hop now, like
that was their fat which then led them to everything else.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
So I can't even be dismissive. I mean, I don't
like the mag goodness of.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
X Clan's first tour was with the Ghetto Boys and
Vanilla Ice. What what was that like? Man? One day
I was in my room.
Speaker 7 (13:11):
We would go on stage, rock and bounce, you know,
so we didn't know what was going on with the
other we know, you.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
Know, Scarface and the Ghetto Boys was one of our favorites.
Speaker 7 (13:20):
But the first time I even heard the name, this
beautiful girl was knocking on my hotel room after the
show opened the door. I was like, wow, She was like,
where's Vanilla Ice? I was like, I don't know what
chocolate is?
Speaker 6 (13:40):
Right here? Babies, now we use it.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Because I know this is actually a subjective fact. If
that's such a thing in your opinion, When did hip
hop start? Because I keep hearing from many a person that, no, no,
it wasn't August nineteen seventy three. It was Da da
Da Da da da.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Honestly, who's gonna win this tug of war?
Speaker 6 (14:11):
I have no idea, okay, but I will be honest.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
August eleventh, nineteen seventy three is an arbitrary date, okay,
but we had to say it started somewhere. But I
believe that hip hop started when the first man walked
hip hop started when the first person rapped. Hip hop started,
when all the elements were developed hundreds, maybe even thousands
(14:38):
of years ago by our ancestors. For us to say
that we created hip hop from nothing in the Bronx
in nineteen seventy three is totally disrespectful to James Brown,
George Clinton, sline of family, Stone, pig Meat Malcolm, you
know what I'm saying. It's disrespectful to at Hotel Malik
(15:01):
el Shabaz, to Muhammad Ali, to the Black Arts Movement,
a Mary Baraka, Sonya Sanchez, you know, to watch prophets,
the Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, you know, the Jubile Ayers,
Pigmy Malcolm.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
You know, can I ask you so?
Speaker 1 (15:19):
When I was a kid and I was eight years
old when Rappers Delight came out, and you know, for
a line's share of America, Rappers Delight was for a
lot of us our first hip hop experience.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
We never heard of anything beforehand.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Even though I lived next door to a DJ, so
you know, I would hear like, let's dance to the
drummers beat and he had like two turns in, but
I thought he was a disco DJ, right, although he
wasn't scratching.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Before nineteen eighty three, every DJ was a disco dj.
Speaker 7 (15:52):
Okay, if you was not a disco DJ in New York,
you wasn't making no money. And hip hop is the
bastard child of disco, funk, R and B, gospel, jazz
and everything that came before it, But it's closest related
to disco.
Speaker 6 (16:09):
Think about it.
Speaker 7 (16:10):
First rap record you said was important was What Delight.
It was a san but it was a disco record,
Good Times, you know what I'm saying. As matter of fact,
every record that came out in nineteen seventy nine was
a disco record that people was rapping over, with the
exception of Grand Master Flash and the Serious five Freedom,
(16:31):
but rapping and wait right, even Super Dune that all
of those are disco beats. You know what I'm saying.
Rapping and rocking the House that was a disco beat,
or you know King Tim the Third that was a
straight disco record.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
If you look at the.
Speaker 7 (16:51):
Video to the sugar Hill Gang and you turned the
volume down, you would not believe they was rapping.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
They got silk shirts on with big old collars. You
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (17:02):
They wearing dress, slacks and slippery bottom shoes. It wasn't
no Adidas, it wasn't no Pumas. It wasn't you know,
no Nikes, no Gazelli's, no Kingos, none of that. If
you went in the club, our elders was in the
club with slippery bottom shoes, gators, jackets, and hats on.
Speaker 6 (17:25):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
The question I'm asking you is that I'm under the
impression that this culture got its name only because it's
the very first two words that Wonder Mike says on
the very first hip hop record that anyone ever heard.
I would agree with that, yeah, because my parents used
to always be like, you better hip hop, your hands
(17:46):
in bed, you better hip hop, and this is hippity
hoppy and to.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
Hip hip hop, and then Dad would do exactly the
same thing, right.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
So I was asking you, was were you guys even
calling it hip hop?
Speaker 8 (17:56):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Okay, I get it, no more than like the first
two words.
Speaker 6 (18:01):
And that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Even I didn't know the song was called Rappers the Light.
The first day I brought it, I went to the store, like,
you got hip hop?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
He's like, and he hands me a you know record.
Speaker 10 (18:11):
What were they calling it?
Speaker 6 (18:12):
Then?
Speaker 7 (18:14):
Well, we was calling it jamming. We was you know,
we're gonna jam today, you know we're gonna go out.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
We even call it rap music, the rap music. Well
because they called the song Rappers the Light.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Then it's like, oh my god, yeah, like Rappers of
Light contains a lot of the elements that we still
use now, like.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Writing, fiting, the the label label, ribbon off, the artists,
the foundations.
Speaker 7 (18:45):
But you know what those Sylvia Robinson does not get
as much credit as she deserves. You know, she was
the one that saw Hollywood and loved Bug Starsky in
Harlem and say, yo, this is important.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
You know, do you know that little note?
Speaker 7 (19:00):
First of all, Sylvia was the first hip hop mobile, yes, period,
you know. And second of all, she engineered this song
and mixed it.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I heard she played bass on it.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
She probably did. I heard she got so much skills
and talents.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
And are we to assume that her business acumen came
from like the men and the people that came before her.
Speaker 7 (19:20):
The most to the business acumen came because she owned
seven labels.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
I was just thinking she ran with Mars Levy.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
If you know about Mars, like mars Levy was the
Jewish night the word first YouTube was like, huh what
I heard?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Levy?
Speaker 5 (19:40):
And I was like, Bill too.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Young, Mars Levy owned, uh, you know Roulette Records, read
the book Hitman for real.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Gangs that stuff. Can you just describe as visually as
you can.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
What an average jam was like in the Bronx, like
sound wise, because you know we'll see you know, sort
of like not revisioned or you know, like people will
give their stories or tells of it.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
But I want to know.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
I have watched sue footage from nineteen eighty three really
of me and my crew DJ Playboy Paradise and the
Brothers three and my other rap group to throw Down
four in nineteen eighty three, and we're dancing, we're doing graffiti,
and we're DJing and rapping organically without Beach Street, you know,
without Hollywood. And one of these days I'm gonna screen
(20:46):
the footage that we found and then interview. Almost every
single one of my homies in video is still alive.
It's a miracle, yes, sir, but guess what the miracles
called hip hop? Every single one of my homies that
rap danced dig graffiti, except a few, very few.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
Of us perished by natural causes or by murder.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
But the friends of mine from Highbridge who didn't rat
and wasn't in hip hop man decimated.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Is what you witnessed in terms of any park gyms
you went to, was that the only existence of that
culture in that particular thing.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Or on a Sunday, could there be nine block parties happening?
Speaker 6 (21:32):
You just good?
Speaker 7 (21:33):
Well, the first block parties were live bands. We had
a lot of live bands in Highbridge, which is where
I moved after I moved from the Bronxdale projects. I
lived less than a mile from fifteen to twenty Sedject
considered okay and quite honestly, in their early years, there
was a lot of other teachers that were rocking simultaneously
(21:56):
with Cool Hurt, and before Cool Hurt, in my neighborhood,
we had a DJ named Pete DJ Jones.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
So can you explain who DJ Jones is for our audience.
Speaker 7 (22:07):
Yeah, Pete DJ Jones was a mobile DJ. He was
one of the top two mobile DJs in New York
City period. The other one was Grandmaster Flowers from Brooklyn,
hip hop's first grand Master. And a lot of people
may say, well I never heard of him, Yeah right,
I got one hundred fliers with him on the same
(22:30):
flyers with Hurt and Flash and Bam and all of them,
you know. And he opened for James Brown as a
DJ at Yankee Stadium in nineteen sixty eight. Oh wow,
So you know, hip hop just crushed August eleventh in
the Yankee Stadium. But Yankee Stadium has deeper history in
(22:55):
the Bronx, you know. And there's a lot like a
lot of people's say, well, Pete DJ Jones, he was
a disco DJ. Once again, we can't do that. He
mentored Hollywood Loved Buck Starsky, Curtis Blow, and grand Master Flash.
Get that, man, it is hip hop credentials.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Today or no.
Speaker 7 (23:17):
He passed away a few years ago, but there's some
footage on it on YouTube with him stealing it speaking
with his own words. He was amazing dj. He was
great at mixing. He did not cut, he did not scratch,
he didn't do any of that. But he played breakbeats
two and he ushered in Hollywood Loved Buck Starsky, Curtis Blow,
(23:39):
and grand Master Flash.
Speaker 9 (23:40):
I wanted to ask, of Paradise, how does the DJ
somebody like Larry Levan, How did they someone like him
that played the Paradise Garage.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Was that in y'all's kind of radar at all time?
Speaker 1 (23:51):
It?
Speaker 7 (23:51):
Well, it definitely was, because we loved disco music and
dance music and actually, you know, disco to us, that
word is what stops a lot of people from understanding
what we're talking about, because when we say disco, it
wasn't a genre of music. It was a place to
(24:13):
be tech. It was a disco tech. It was the
place where they played music at and when we went
to the clubs, the disco techts, they are a shout
to DC. We played Go Go too in the beginning
of hip hop, and a lot of Chuck Brown and
the Soul Searchers and a lot of those EU and
(24:33):
all of those guys. They contributed to the to the
creation of hip hop too. You know a lot of
people from Philly contributed greatly to the creation of hip
hop and they don't get the credit for it.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (24:47):
The Juice Crew and Cold Chilling records that came out
with Rock, Sanne Chante, Bismarck, Big Daddy came in.
Speaker 6 (24:54):
The Juice Crew that we know that started as pop
art in Philly, you understand, So exactly.
Speaker 7 (25:02):
There's so you know, we migrated from the South and
we brought a lot of these things with us. There's
a rap group that was a gospel group in the
twenties and thirties named the Jubile Airs, who rapped with
the same cadence as the Sugarhill Gang.
Speaker 6 (25:21):
Yep, you know. So if we.
Speaker 7 (25:23):
Ignore our elders and ancestors and don't speak of their contributions,
they taught us hip hop. We learned hip hop from
our elders and ancestors, and if we eliminate them, then
we got to write for young people today to not
remember us or attribute our accomplishments to us. Because we
(25:43):
disrespect our ancestors, we deserve to be disrespected too.
Speaker 10 (25:48):
So I'm trying to think of the proper way to
ask this question though. But is it because disco was
the current music of the time? Is that why it became?
You know, let's say beginning of hip hop was because
disco is funky and disco is that shit?
Speaker 6 (26:05):
Man?
Speaker 7 (26:07):
Come on, one of the biggest greatest breakbeats in the world,
Frisco Disco.
Speaker 6 (26:12):
Come on? Come on? You know brown, Yes, you know
what I'm saying. Come on, where would hip hop be
without the Isley Brothers. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (26:25):
We where would we be without Motown, Stacks votes, you
know what I'm saying. Mcfatten and white Head, all of
these guys were geniuses. We learned hip hop from them
and we remixed it, we sampled it. Hip Hop is
a sample of Afro indigenous culture worldwide. It's the best
(26:48):
of everything that ever existed. If you make a beat
that we like, we don't care if you're corny white
rock group.
Speaker 6 (26:55):
With long hair. We didn't let it go that far,
but we love give me that. It's hip hop now.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
Hip hop is a cultural and musical version of Star
Trek's Borg.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
New generation and after you.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, the things I learned about you? When do you
say that?
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Hip hop started making its uh sort of its trek
into nightclub culture where it starts as block party culture.
Speaker 7 (27:35):
That's where Cool Hurt, the Zulu Nation, Grand Master Flash,
the l Brothers, Graham with the Theodore, That's where the
Disco Twins come in. These guys took it to those places,
you know what I'm saying. And we use disco records
as break beats. Come on, what would hip hop be without?
Speaker 6 (27:58):
I want to thank you having for all the you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (28:02):
I mean just there was just some amazing music being
made by some of the greatest cultural geniuses who ever lived,
and we got to call them out and give them
credit for what they created.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
Bob James, are you kidding? Meet?
Speaker 7 (28:20):
You know, we had amazing the meters. You know, we
had amazing teachers who taught us to beat, and thank
god Jane Brown put it on the one baby.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Can you talk about any historic first that you've seen
in the first fave, pre pre Latin quarter of your
hip hop experiences as far as like shows are concerned
or not clubs you've been to or any of those things.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
We hung out at the Fever, the Disco Fever Halem World,
the Renni which was called the Renaissance Harlem World, I
mean the Disco Fever. The Fever was in the Bronx
right down the stairs, down the Joker stairs from my
community high Bridge. It was at around one hundred and
sixty seventh Street, not far from Yankee Stadium, right by
(29:14):
River Avenue.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
So that's where you had to go to hear those
particular non main street.
Speaker 7 (29:20):
So if you was open enough to go there, we
got everything we needed right in the street for free.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
You know, we speak on it.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
There was the pa L, the Police Athletic League.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Denzel always talks about that.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
Yeah, there was a lot of venues.
Speaker 7 (29:38):
We even had a disco called burger King, which basically
was a Burger King restaurant.
Speaker 6 (29:44):
At night, one of the brothers that worked there would
move the tables.
Speaker 7 (29:48):
And chairs and we would charge twenty five cents and
we would do hip hop parties in Burger.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
King and nobody would be the wiser.
Speaker 6 (29:57):
Nah, they cleaned it up and and you know, nobody
knew anything about it. You know, we did.
Speaker 7 (30:03):
We used school yards, we used talent shows. We was
in the streets. You know, we did see the park.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
You know, there was hundreds of parks all over the city,
from Brooklyn to Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx where
you know, DJs would just come bring their equipment out,
set up and get it cracking. And it was illegal.
Speaker 7 (30:26):
Everything about hip hop was illegal. We stole most of
our equipment in the first place. We were stealing ship
way before that. But that gave a lot of They
gave a lot of people who wasn't as bold or
as good thieves like we was an opportunity, but uh,
you know, we we brought our equipment out in the
(30:46):
park and we partied without a permit.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
When you say we are you speaking? Were you associated
with Black.
Speaker 6 (30:55):
Spades or like I was a Baby Spade when I
lived in the.
Speaker 7 (31:02):
Crew culture the Black Spades, A lot of people say
they were a Black Spade, But the Black Spades is
from the sixties. Have you ever seen the movie A
Bronx Tail That was a story of the Black Spades
and the Bronxdale projects. They organized very similarly to the
(31:25):
US group on the West Coast, and very similarly to
the Black Panthers. It was out of necessity. The white
kids used to live right above where we was in
the suburbs. There was a couple of blocks that separated
the projects from the suburbs. And the white kids were
(31:47):
sons and nephews of Italian mobsters. And they wore thelether
coats like Phronsie with the collars, you know what I'm saying.
They had the grease hair bag, and they had revolvers, chains, bats,
and switch blades, and they would come down into our
community and pray on us, beat us up, and rob
(32:08):
us and do whatever they wanted.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
So the Black Spades, my dad.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Is from New York and he's about ten fifteen years
your senior, and it was different for them because they
used to throw bottles off the top of the of
the buildings and hitting the kids on the ground in Manhattan.
So it was, you know, it's interesting to hear the
Bronx verst of what was going on in.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
The other boroughs.
Speaker 7 (32:26):
So the Black Spades fought back against these white gangs
and pushed there but was way up off us, and
the crew got so big that it became the biggest
black gang in the Bronx. In Brooklyn, they had the
Jolly Stompers and the Tomahawks, and they were represented by
(32:53):
the Black gang in the movie The Warriors. Okay, the
group at the end that was the Tomahawks and Jolly Stumpers,
which later were organized into a black movement by my
elder Sonny Carson in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
To your knowledge, because to my ears, when I'm listening
to Justice Doing Going Way Back or listening to Karaswan,
do the roll call of like what the South Bronx like,
all the.
Speaker 6 (33:22):
Names and mc shann who did the roll call from Queens.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Well, that's why you get the bridge. You know what,
do the other girls have their own tails?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Hell to the year that just didn't have good marketers,
yeas the Bronx did exactly.
Speaker 6 (33:36):
So who was first like Chicken on the egg.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Or I'm asking, like, you know, because I hear of
Queen's having a history that we don't hear about. I
don't know much about Brooklyn's history. I know about Grand
Master Flowers.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
But my boya and there was a bunch of them.
Speaker 7 (33:54):
And there's a DJ that moved from Brooklyn who used
to DJ Whip Flowers to the Bronxdale Projects who actually
predated Mario even but he wasn't a cutter or scratcher either.
But they they played break beats and they blended and
they did the things that were the predecessor. The DJ
(34:15):
culture is the foundation and the predecessor of hip hop
and rap music, and we really have to really do
a better job of shouting these people out and researching.
Me and my partner, Prime Minister Pete Knights from Third
Base mar Cole curator at the Hip Hop Museum, we
found the earliest flyer that we could find with the
(34:38):
words hip hop on the fly and the flyer was
from nineteen seventy nine and it was from Brooklyn.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
So you see what I'm saying. So another battery exactly.
Speaker 7 (34:54):
So there was many DJs, and include Eli Tubo, the
great legendary hip hop producer that produced Eric B and
Rock Kim you know, and engineered those sessions. He was
a popular DJ in Queens. Russell Simmons was a popular
(35:16):
DJ in Queens.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
He actually knew how to DJ.
Speaker 7 (35:19):
Yeah, he wasn't cutting and scratching, but they would dat.
Ralph McDaniel's from Video Music Box, very popular DJ.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Was Hollywood's Terrain in a nightclub only or was he
also a street DJ?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
And is there a difference between.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Street block party culture versus nightclub cultures?
Speaker 6 (35:39):
There Most of the time street DJs didn't make no money.
We did it for the popularity, for the culture, for
the love, you know.
Speaker 7 (35:50):
But we spent way more money than we made, you know,
buying big speakers and records and turntables that was crazy
expensive on young people. That's why I was telling you
it was illegal, you know. Those that didn't steal. We
pieced our sound system together. I had one turntable, He
got one turntable, he got a mixer, he got some records.
This guy got a speaker. Somebody else had the power amp,
(36:13):
so we would form Voltron to even create hip hop.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
How are those speakers being built? Do you have any
knowledge of is it as loud or.
Speaker 6 (36:24):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (36:25):
Herk had some monster speakers and he was running through
people in the Bronx until he ran into Breakout and
Barren with the Mighty Sasquatch sound system. So Herk was
killing him with the Herkalrre sound system. And then he
ran into the Mighty Sasquatch, so.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
The loudier system, the louderier base that like you would win.
Speaker 6 (36:48):
I tell you why.
Speaker 7 (36:49):
There was a DJ by the name of DJ smoke
or DJ Smoky in the Bronx not far from where
Herk was.
Speaker 6 (36:58):
Who was DJing and popular at the same time HRK was.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
He played break beats and he had his version of
bee Boys, which were called Smoka Trons. Had Dj Smokey
been able to defeat Herk, we would be calling the
bee Boys and breakdancers Smoka Trons today because it was
the same thing, right. Smokey battle Hirk on numerous occasions.
(37:25):
He lost every time because every time he'd set up
his equipment, Herk would turn the knobs on him and
blow them out.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
You couldn't even hear them.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
So what constitutes a battle?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Like do you guys choose a ground and then this
guy sets up his speakers over there?
Speaker 3 (37:41):
This guy says, speakers over there is Jamaica styles in
like five minutes you and five hours.
Speaker 6 (37:47):
It depends. It just depends, like hirking them. They ain't
have no rules. You'd be in the park jamming and
they come and they set up they shit right across
from you.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Oh, disrespect you.
Speaker 7 (37:57):
They just turned the knobs up and you can't even
hear your headphones. And you got to pack your ship
and leave tail with your tail between your legs.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yes, that's what you mean.
Speaker 7 (38:12):
When when Hirk started battling Grand Master Flash, Flash had
a great sound system too, plus he was a way
better DJ. So Hurt had to recruit one of my
favorite mentors and DJs of all time, the Grand Imperial
dj JC, which most people never heard of because he
(38:34):
left the Bronx and moved to Yonkers at an early age,
but him and Grand Mixer d x T were the
two best DJs back in the day period, hands down,
no question.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
That was literally, what'll going to be my next questions?
Speaker 6 (38:48):
Like, you know why what?
Speaker 7 (38:50):
Because they related to you? What do they were both drummersids.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Off the books?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Can you talk about your relationship with I'm about to
say Lou Adler Lou Waters, the owner of the infamous
Latin Quarter nightclub by that point, how did you bring
your vision ad mission to the Latin Quarter Nightclub?
Speaker 6 (39:25):
First of all, I never met Lou Walters, Barbara Walter's.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Father, right, I know he owned the spot, so I
didn't know.
Speaker 6 (39:32):
Right, But the guy that bought it off of the
people that brought it off of them is my people.
Speaker 7 (39:42):
I first went to Latin Quarters with the Awesome Two
DJ Teddy Ted and Special K. Yeah, and actually Donald B.
The Awesome two was Special K and Donald B with
DJ Teddy Ted Okay, So they were on WHBIM, the
same radio station made popular by the Supreme Team UH
(40:05):
and UH surch Use missed the Magic and they would
have a show that they played rap music Saturday nights
four o'clock in the morning and they would play anything demos,
h mixtapes. They didn't care if you send it to
'em they would play it. So I went down. I
(40:26):
was promoting records at the time. I was working with
Russell Simmons and Rush Productions and Early Death Jam, and
I would promote records and I would listen to their
radio show and they wasn't playing the stuff that I
was promoting. So I was called a request line over
and over trying to get them to answer, and they
never answered the request line. So me being me, I
(40:48):
got on the train and went up there, knocked on
the door, introduced myself and I said, why don't try
to answer the request line. They said, oh, well, cause
we ain't got nobody to do it. I rolled my SLA,
was up, went and sat.
Speaker 6 (41:00):
Down and there you do.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Now it is organize their records on the floor.
Speaker 6 (41:06):
Know what that organized? Organized the call to people who
were calling in.
Speaker 7 (41:11):
And what we did was we were able to filter
out all the horrible stuff that they was playing and
started playing the most requested stuff. But anyway, they got
a gig working at the Latin Quarters on Tuesday nights
and they called it Celebrity Tuesdays, and they invited me
to come to the club to be a judge. It
was like showtime at the Apollo for rappers. You know,
(41:34):
you get stuff thrown at you, you get booed right
on stage, you get a bottle like he ever was
one second.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
So, but the thing is is like how open is
the establishment to this culture coming into to play?
Speaker 7 (41:51):
Because well, a very interesting and wonderful Jewish man bought
the Latin Quarter. Okay, his name was Mike Goldberg, and
he was a hustler. You know what I'm saying, say Steve, Mike,
sorry everybody, But the Lant Quarter was Mike Goldberg's train set.
(42:17):
It was his play thing, his playground.
Speaker 5 (42:20):
You know.
Speaker 7 (42:20):
He was a multi millionaire that managed the magician David Copperfield,
who was making twenty million a year on Vegas a loon.
So this is just a side thing. Yeah, okay, this
is a side thing. And Mike would just be all
up in it. He would go stand in front of
the box office and collect the money himself.
Speaker 6 (42:41):
Don't even let you put it in there to the lady.
He's standing there and give me.
Speaker 7 (42:44):
You know, he'd got a fistful of money.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Sorry everybody.
Speaker 6 (42:50):
Hey, he just had so much fun doing it, you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (42:53):
So one night I decided, like the celebrity Tuesdays that
the Awesome Too was doing was cool, but it wasn't
packing the club, you know what I mean. And it
was nothing like what was going on at the club
on Fridays and Saturdays. So we used to go to
forty second Street to the kung Fu house called Sinny
forty second and we used to get three Kung Fu movies.
Speaker 6 (43:16):
For five dollars, you know, and you get like three movies, popcorn,
hot dog, and a drink ten bucks, you know.
Speaker 7 (43:25):
So we all hung out down there watching Bruce Lee,
Jackie Chan, you know, the Shaw Brothers movies. And that's
why hip hop became so synonymous with Kung Ko movies
in those early days, because it was all concentrated right there.
So I come out to Kung Fu movie and I said,
let me see what's going on at the club, because
(43:46):
I've never been there on.
Speaker 6 (43:47):
A Friday or Saturday.
Speaker 7 (43:48):
So I go to the club. There's a Jamaican after
work dance party and it's so packed that you can't
even walk around in the club, and the floor was
undulating with sex and bass. The bass was turned up
(44:10):
so much sex that if you stood on the dance floor,
you would probably be dancing without moving.
Speaker 6 (44:16):
It was just undulating.
Speaker 7 (44:18):
It was like watching the matrix, you know, that singing
and zion at the end. That's what it looked like
to me. I was like, there's no place in hip
hop that you can go and have this experience where
every party's on the dance floor and all the dudes
are dancing with women.
Speaker 6 (44:39):
You know.
Speaker 7 (44:40):
So it gave me the idea of epiphany that this
could be an actual hip hop dance club. You know,
we were going to those clubs and my man was
talking about Larry Levon and those DJs and stuff. There
was another movement of freestyle dancing that was going on
in New York at the time, around eighty five eighty six.
(45:02):
People wasn't break dancing in New York no more. All
the rock STEADI Crew, the Dynamic Breakers, all those dudes
was on tour in Europe, China and Japan. They was
rocking over there, but nobody was in the club b
Boy no more in nineteen eighty five eighty six. So
the new style was the style that they was doing,
dancing to disco and dancing to club music. They went
(45:27):
back in time to win the Latin Quarter was the
Cotton Club, and they borrowed the old dancers from Sammy
Davis Jr. The Nicholas Brothers and Cab Callaway and they
modernized those dances and danced hip hop with it.
Speaker 6 (45:46):
If you look at.
Speaker 7 (45:49):
The way Salt and Pepper danced Store, if you look
at epmds you got the Chill video, you know. If
you look at Big Daddy Kane to see Schoob and Scrap,
you know what I mean. You look at Houdini and
you see Dot the Ice and the Kango Kid and
the young Jermaine Duprie. Those were the dancers that were
being done in the Latin Quarters. The ghosts of the
(46:12):
Cotton Club was reborn in the dancing at Latin Quarters.
And we had a group called the Iou Dancers and
the jac Dancers and the Jason Dances. Was Buddha Stretch
who went from dancing at the Latin Quarter to choreographing
Michael Jackson's.
Speaker 6 (46:30):
Remember the Time video and being the lead dancer in
that video.
Speaker 7 (46:35):
You know, because those doing that Egyptian style, all those
interesting dance styles were coming out of the Latin Quarter,
you know. So fifteen year old Queen Latifa was working
at Burger King in New Jersey when she decided to
go to the Latin Quarter to do dancing and she
(46:55):
saw MC light for FUM.
Speaker 6 (46:56):
It was like, oh my god, I want to do that.
So that's how the club was.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
When do you mark the grand opening of the Latin Quarter?
Speaker 6 (47:06):
Well, in my era, the one that that I did,
that's called you know that made it be renamed.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Yeah, it's not calling the Latin I know, it's a history.
I just spent. Like the name of your parties was
was called it was LQ. Well, I'll just say the LQ.
When do you consider the LQ.
Speaker 7 (47:23):
Period of the Latin I say, no tricks in eighty
six is time to build because by eighty six rap
music had blown up internationally. And if you went to
the Latin Quarter on the weekend, Curtis blow Run, DMC,
the Fat Boys, Houdini, all of them would be hanging
out there because they were my friends, and I would
let them in free and give them drink tickets, you know.
(47:45):
So all the hip hop would convene there. But I
couldn't put Melly Mel on stage to do a show.
He would get on stage even though he would get
on stage and do a little impromptu stuff, and he
was at actually the catalysts that help turn it into
the Golden era hip hop because he was the filter.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
If these legends.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
And I mean, you know, I understand that one year
here also to represent the opening of a museum, which
is like, hey, preserve the culture. But I mean even
you have to admit that hip hop is very big
on this sort of disposable adult culture and like the
youth run it and once you hit a certain age
then it's like, all right, well that was then.
Speaker 7 (48:30):
But that's because of the record labels man and the
music industry. When when black artists and hip hop get older,
you got pay him. They know the game. They're not
seventeen eighteen years old. You're not gonna just run some
bull crap contract on them.
Speaker 6 (48:45):
No more, damn.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
So when it came that, yeah, it was all economics.
They're like, you know what, y're old, We're not paying y'all.
You know, kick rocks and kind of the way that
that I really transform here pop at the Latin Quarter
was for the same reason. It was economics. I had
Mellie mal Houdini run DMC in the club, but I
(49:08):
couldn't put him on stage.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
So if if Grandmaster Flash in the Furious Five wanted
to perform.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
At the Latin Quarter, I would have gave him the stage.
Speaker 6 (49:17):
Great gladly passed them to mic.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (49:24):
They getting arena money now, they wore no club money
no more. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (49:31):
So so so I put biz Monkey on stage, Roxanne Schaan,
Te mc shan, Big Daddy, Kane, Salt and Pepper Kid
and play E P M d Eric Ben rock Him,
stets of Sonic, just Dice care us one.
Speaker 6 (49:46):
They was all hungry and they weren't They didn't have
record deals.
Speaker 7 (49:50):
You rocked the Latin Quarter on a Friday or Saturday,
you had a record deal Monday morning. Not that A
and R's was in the crowd. Russell Simmons is in
the crowd. Tom Silverman is in the crowd. Fred Maneo
is in the crowd. Aaron Fuchs is in the crowd.
You know, they knew where the bread was buttered, and
(50:12):
they knew that if they did not show up that
they were going to miss out on the next big hit.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Okay, without the threat of getting hit with a lawsuit,
anytime I mentioned these two names, can you clarify to
me what exactly is Aaron Fuchs's role in hip hop?
Because I know of him only when I see a
relatigious situation happening.
Speaker 7 (50:34):
Right on Tough City Records. He was an independent record
owner at the time when we started Latin Quarters, the
majors hadn't come in and dominated and buy out all
the independent labels. But because all these new artists were
emerging every week, the majors was getting wiped out, and
(50:56):
they say, you know what we better get in this game.
You had Jive RCA, Fourth and Broadway, Columbia, you know,
start to actually recruit and sign these artists, and we
replaced the whole generation of artists because of economics and sound.
You know, the new artists at Latin Quarters they started
(51:19):
making hip hop dance music. And if Red Alert who
was my DJ on Friday nights or Chuck Chillout, who
was my DJ on Saturday nights, if they played your
music in the Latin Quarter and the IOU and JC
dancers didn't rush the dance floor and start tearing it up,
you might not hear your record again.
Speaker 6 (51:39):
So people changed the sound.
Speaker 7 (51:41):
They made it more up tempo, we went a little
more James Brown heavy, a lot more boomed back, and
you know, a lot of new artists started emerging.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Okay, so we also live in a time now. Now,
we live in a time where it's really hard to
break a new artist out. Like you know, as a DJ,
I'll play if I think something is dope, I'm gonna
play it, and you'll clearly see an energy shift where
it's like I don't know this song, so let me
(52:12):
go to bathroom or whatever, and then it will wind
up being a hit later, you know, once it goes
through the system, if they pay for it to go
through the system. But you know, to hear me tell it,
a lot of what we consider just the classic bread
and butter basic food groups of hip hop nightly are
(52:32):
just getting debuted, like play.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
Top Building for the first time and the audience is
going crazy. But you had to how how okay?
Speaker 6 (52:41):
So how are you telling me that a.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
Deaf jam rep can go up to the booth to
red Alert and be like, hey, rock this join like
there's no because people do that to me a lot.
Thank God for like the system of Sarato now where
it's like, you know, I don't my hard drive them Like,
I can't immediately play it. I don't like playing some
unless I hear it first.
Speaker 6 (53:06):
Right, Well, we had.
Speaker 7 (53:09):
A great sound system in the DJ booth, and you
could bang something and listen to it in the DJ
booth without playing it out to the house. But what
I mean more or less, it's like if DMC walks
in the club and say, yo, this is our new ship,
you know you're going to give it a chance.
Speaker 6 (53:26):
But if if if MC butter Butt come in with it, you.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Know whatever, and you know who who Audio two is?
Speaker 6 (53:34):
I did or is it?
Speaker 7 (53:35):
I hated the Audio two at the time, but I
loved them as human beings, as people, but they had
horrible music.
Speaker 6 (53:42):
I like Cherries.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
I was gonna say, I was going to say, let
me take Cherries.
Speaker 6 (53:47):
Was the A side?
Speaker 7 (53:49):
No, No, the A side was making it that was
produced by Daddy, right, okay, you know, and the B
side was Top Villain and it was it.
Speaker 6 (54:00):
It was only like about two minutes in the beginning, right.
Speaker 7 (54:04):
So what happened was Matt Robinson Milk's dad, who owned
First Priority Music record label. He had every DJ in
New York playing Make It Funky except one Cool DJ,
Red Alert and my partner rests in peace to Robert
Lamma Carson aka Procesess, an ex. He was Nat Robinson's
(54:29):
good friend for years and years, so he would always
come in back, Paradise, please get ready to.
Speaker 6 (54:36):
Play that record? Man? Where gotta play it? You know?
You know they're right there, They're almost there. They just
need Red Alert.
Speaker 7 (54:44):
And I wasn't feeling milking kids myself, so I wasn't
pushing red I do not ask Red Alert to play
anything because you will get embarrassed.
Speaker 6 (54:55):
Red Alert is unbiable.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
I was just about to ask that you.
Speaker 7 (55:00):
Cannot offer Red Alert no drugs, no women, no money.
Red Alert had the most integrity.
Speaker 3 (55:08):
But if he said no, no said are you right
there now?
Speaker 6 (55:15):
Where?
Speaker 3 (55:15):
Okay?
Speaker 6 (55:16):
He don't care. He wouldn't play Bam bodis record. And
he was a zulu.
Speaker 7 (55:21):
If he wasn't feeling it, he ain't playing it, you
know what I mean, no matter how much peer pressure come.
So Nat Robinson came one day and he was like, Paradise,
please get ready to play it, man.
Speaker 6 (55:32):
We got this people listening for it, you know, and
it'll take us over the hunt.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
Please.
Speaker 7 (55:39):
I was like, I took the record in the in
the DJ boot before Red Alert got to the club,
and I was just dropping the needle all over the record,
like there gotta be something that's playable on this, and
I flipped it over to the B side and I
couldn't believe my ears.
Speaker 6 (56:01):
I was like, oh my god, this is dope.
Speaker 3 (56:04):
The initial thing was it's dope.
Speaker 1 (56:06):
It's dope, okay with time out pause of the thing. Now,
when I heard it, it was such an unorthodox song.
Lady B premiereda in Philadelphia, so I'm certain whatever Red
Alert was doing, she co signed it.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
Next it is an unusual song.
Speaker 6 (56:23):
Yes it is. That's why how did you see the light?
You know what made me love that song? Milk is Chilling?
Speaker 7 (56:29):
Spending uncounted hours in the studio with Rick Rubin.
Speaker 6 (56:35):
Rick Rubin.
Speaker 7 (56:36):
If you look at the early records that he produced,
it doesn't say produced by Rick Rubin, it says reduced
by Rick Rubin. And Milk is Chilling was bare bones, raw,
uncut hip hop that I was used to from being
a street DJ in the Bronx. That it reminded me
of a street jam and somebody put a beat on
(56:59):
and somebody it's sellaneus MC came running out the crowd
and put it down on the mic. It was so
catchy and so sing songie. I knew it was to
hit the first time I heard it, so I gave
it to my house DJ DJ Roman. He played it
about five or six times before Red Alert even got
to the club on the Latin quart.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
Of sound system.
Speaker 6 (57:20):
That beat hit so hard. Right.
Speaker 7 (57:24):
So Red Alert shows up after coming off with Kiss FM.
He's headed for the DJ booth. I'm like ecstatic. I
go running over to him with two copies of this
record and I.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Was like, yo, Red Yo, you gotta check this out.
Speaker 7 (57:39):
And he snatched it out of my hand and threw
it across the room and it smashed on the wall.
He was like, Yo, this cit is a Frisbee. I
wish y'all was stopped coming at me with this frisbees man.
I told him I'm not playing it.
Speaker 6 (57:54):
I don't like it. I was like, Red, why you
do me?
Speaker 7 (57:57):
Like? I was like, dud ever tell you to play
something that's whack. He was like no, but I don't
like that. I said, you ain't even hear it yet.
So when he went to go to the DJ booth,
I beat him to the booth, and I made sure
that the last thing that played was Top Villain was
Top Villain.
Speaker 6 (58:14):
I put it on and he walked into booth.
Speaker 7 (58:16):
And the crowd was going banana. They were bouncing all
over the place to it. And I walked away and
I said, Yo, that's yours. And you know, I tell
the story that after that they started banging it.
Speaker 6 (58:30):
It was a big hit. Milk tells the story. Yo, Dice,
he still hates it. He still don't play it. He
might have played it a couple of times for you
after that, but he still hate us.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
Still.
Speaker 6 (58:43):
Yep, that's what all that says. I love that.
Speaker 11 (58:47):
Okay, QLs listeners, this is where we're cutting it. Please
come back next week or check your podcast for you
for part two of our again, the Studio Conversation with
Paradise Gray. In that episode, he speaks more about the
glory years of the Latin Quarter, his action of hip
hop artifacts, and so much more.
Speaker 9 (59:03):
Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast
is hosted by a Mere Quest Love, Thomas boss Man,
Like Here, Saint Clair So Black, Andy Black, Myself, Fontidelo,
Fonte Goldman, Sugar, Steve Mandell, and unpaid Bill Sherman. The
executive producers are Amir Quest, Love Thompson, Sean g and
(59:23):
the Unbothered Brian Calho. Produced by Brittney Benjamin, My Dog Cousin,
Jake Pam My Motherfucking Man and Like he Is Saint
Clair My work Wife, Edited by Alex Conroy. Produced for
iHeart by Noel Brown and Mike Johns. Audio engineering by
Graham Gibson aka double G at Iheart's LA Studio.
Speaker 3 (59:46):
Thank you for tuning in. Check us out next week.
Speaker 1 (59:52):
What's Up Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Quest Love Supreme is a production of Iheartradiots.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Supremo Supremo role called Supremo shut, Supremo role called Supremo
Supremo role called Supremo Sun Supremo role.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I'm an owner, not a GM. Yeah, joints creeping to
my d ms. Yeah, I represent freedom. Yeah, Hey, Steve.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
What rhymes with the last corner?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Supremo role called Supremo Supremo role.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
My name is Fante. Yeah, I got my moisturizer. Yeah,
what time is it? Yeah, grand Verbaiza.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Supremo Supremo role called Supremo Supremo roll call.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
My name is Sugar. Yeah, where's my per diem?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (01:04):
Self sabotage. You're an asshole, hit bill?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, you Number one is the border. Yeah, it's time
for tails.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Quarter Supremo roll Suprema.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
So Supremo roll.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
It's like em. Yeah, it's so nice. I've been talking
about the Latin quarter. Yeah, finally we got Paaradise.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Supremo roll Suprema.
Speaker 6 (01:48):
So my name is Paradise. Yeah, I'm twice as nice.
Speaker 7 (01:54):
Yeah, lecekating on ice Yeah, I can't say it twice.
Speaker 8 (02:01):
Supremo Suprema So Supremo roll Suprema, So supremo, Ro Supremo supremo.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Roll.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Wait there, man, that's what I mean. Many, let's go chill.
This is what they called the when when you have
(02:46):
like a special episode.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, no, no, but the this is the longest stretch
of finally getting to the tail ends of what the
show has been about for the last what seven seven years?
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Seven years? Good luck?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yes, Okay, there we go.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You know, we've been talking about or joking about the
Latin Quarter with every hip hop luminary that has made
their mark in this culture in the late eighties, early nineties,
and we've heard many a tale of the Latin Quarter.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
But as a walking Smithsonian pack.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Ratter pop culture hoarder, of course, you know that I
easily got excited about doing this particular episode of course,
Love Supreme, because you can't have any tales of the
Latin Quarter without our guest today. And you know, for
damn near five decades, our guest has been preserving, building,
(03:52):
shape shifting many a career in hip hop. But more
than that, he's embarking on what I would deem probably
his most important project, which is a proprietor of the
Universal Hip Hop Museum. Yeah, and you know not to
(04:12):
mention he's an author. Currently your your show about your
collections in hip hop. Yes, hip Hop Treasures, which I
the fact that you just had to wherewithal to know
that this stuff was going to be value speaks of
your characters. So and also, welcome to Team Supreme with us.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yes people, what.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
Y Bill?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I'm back? Yeah, you're back where you been? Sorry to cigarettes.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Okay, no, for real, Welcome Paradise Gray, to Claude, Paradise Gray,
the man that holds our history in his hands, to
Court Love Supreme.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
So, uh, sir, have you ever heard of the Latin Quarter?
How are you did that?
Speaker 7 (04:59):
I'm a absolutely fantabulous Okay, well real, this is a great,
great pleasure.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
You look amazing.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Well, I thank you.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Look, let's just beginning.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Where where does your hip hop journey start? Your very
first moment in which you're meeting the elements.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Of what hip hop is. I don't know if it's
hearing a passy for the first.
Speaker 7 (05:23):
Time, or my journey in hip hop started in my
mother's living room. You know, my mom was a supermom.
You know, she was the curator of all culture in
our household. You didn't touch the TV knob unless she
did it. You didn't listen to the radio unless she
programmed it. She was my program director, and every Friday
(05:45):
she would come home from work and go to the
record store around the corner from my house and come
in the house with a fistful of brand new forty fives.
And she introduced me to James Brown, George Clinton sline
of Family Stuff, the Last Poets, Gil Scott, Heron, Marvin
Gaye A and.
Speaker 6 (06:06):
Goes on and on and on.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
And then she used to play those records and cook
and clean the house while meet my brother and sister
sang and danced with her. And then every Saturday morning
we would watch Soul Train, and after it went off,
we would do our own Soul Train line in the
house because we had all the records that they just
had on TV already in the living room. So she
(06:29):
prepared me to be a DJ and a selector. And
the first two crates of records that I had when
I started DJing in the streets, I took it from
my mother's record collection, you know, really yes records, well
two crates the records, I mean, I had a lot
(06:50):
of the breakbeats right from the door.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (06:52):
Because my mom she listened to every genre of music,
you know what I'm saying, So she prepared me well.
So one day, growing up in the Bronxdale Projects, I
was going to the store and I heard this music
coming from beyond this door. There used to be a
laundry room. But a DJ that lived in my building.
(07:13):
His name was disco King Mario. Oh yes, okay, so
this was another address that should be remembered with fifteen
twenty cents a consider seventeen fifteen Bruckner Boulevard in the
bronx Dale Projects. And I heard the music coming from
the door. I cracked the door open and there he
(07:34):
was disco King Mario with two turntables and a Bozac
mixer with a knob, and he was playing a song
I think called Gotta Get a Nut, oh by a.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
New Birth and then then yep, the infamous Yeah I
sold Can You Keep a Secret?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Drum breaking?
Speaker 7 (07:53):
And then right I was standing there with my jaw like,
oh wow, what does he do to those records? Like
you know what I mean?
Speaker 6 (08:03):
And he was like, man, come in and close the door.
Speaker 7 (08:05):
I came in and I sat down and I was
surrounded by stacks and crates and equipment and speakers and records.
And you know, he uh had a bad habit of
when he DJ, he didn't put the record back in
the cover.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
So his records was all over the place. They were dusty.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And because.
Speaker 7 (08:30):
So, because my mother had conditioned me to wipe the
records and put them back in the sleeve, I systematically
started organizing Mario's records.
Speaker 6 (08:40):
I was seven years old and I wiped them records.
Speaker 7 (08:47):
You better not touch my record the floor okay, you
know what I mean, in horrible condition, And I said,
I came in with the kit. You know, they had
the alcohol in it, remember that with the velvet, and
they wiped the record.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
He loved it. I organized his crates and that began
my journey as a real DJ.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
I want to do a slight sidebar because okay, so
as a family, we've been together for seven years, but
I don't even know your actual journeys. If we can
keep it under three minutes, Like what was your first
hip hop moment?
Speaker 9 (09:23):
I would say my first hip hop moment was my
uncle taking me to the Fresh Fest at the Greensboro
Coliseum in like eighty This was eighty five A six.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I was like six years old. Did you not hear
rap music before that?
Speaker 6 (09:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I heard rap more did Okay?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
So what was the most impact, like your first impactful?
Like me hearing rappers delight was like what is this?
I think probably the first we're talking just hearing the music.
It really wasn't rap. I mean it was like records
like you know, Nucleus Jam on it and it was
those kinds of records because my mother would take me
(09:56):
with her to the park and DJ's will be out
playing those records.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
You know he should have win last, but seeing it
and some bullshit, but not.
Speaker 9 (10:02):
Seeing it that was like that was It was eighty
five run DMC, Fat Boys and Houdini and that was
just that was it for me.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
It was done.
Speaker 6 (10:12):
I knew what I want to be, all right? So
like you next?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Now, first of all, we're in d C. Or were
you in Philly?
Speaker 6 (10:20):
In Atlanta, d C.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
That's where I worked for fifteen years of my life.
But I mean, I feel like mine is more disconnected
through TV because I was babysat by the TV, so
it was through movies. It was Beach Street, it was
breaking one Breaking two, Breaking Book. I'm gonna tell my truth.
Breaking Boogloo was my ship man.
Speaker 6 (10:36):
Let to judge.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Okay, Okay, I saw the movie three times when I
went to the theater. All right, Steve, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Besides, you know smoking with Snoop Dogg at the studio. Well, now,
did you want to tell me you stole we from Snoop?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Okay, but he's so smoking right now.
Speaker 10 (11:01):
I think I told that story when we interviewed Snoop.
But it was a Fat Boys and that first run
DMC album rock Box. And but the thing was, I
heard all this stuff at my Jewish summer camp where
there were no black people. I didn't know what was
going on or what I was listening to necessarily, but
then you know, everything happened in I guess high school breakdancing.
(11:22):
I mean, you can tell me what year was that
was that first run DMC album eighty three.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Wait, this is weird.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I'm noticing now, And you know, we should probably try
to get cool rock Ski on the show. That the
Fat Boys is actually a lot of people's first introduction
to hip hop, which is kind of crazy to me.
But even jay Z said the very first hip hop
(11:48):
tape he ever brought was the Fat Boys. So it's
almost like because hip hop was kind of contributing, you know. Again,
my parents went to that ye Christian Berry, like, yeah,
you ain't listen to that whatever, But they had no
problems with me having the Fat Boys.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Because they were too funny. It was funny. They were
too funny to be threatening, you know, whereas all Right
on paid Bill. Yeah, I think the Fat Boys. I
think Heavy D in the early days, and then like
I came up in like the Vanilla Ice, Teenage Munan
Nina Turtles era, but then Ninja I did. But then
(12:24):
I know it's hard to say out loud.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I don't want I don't want to dismiss that because
only because LLLL and I were talking about this on tour. Well,
concerning Hammer and Vanilla Ice both selling ten million units,
like between licensed to Ill, Hammer's second album and Vanilla Ice,
like those three records were the first three albums to
sell more than ten million units, and for a lot
(12:49):
of people that are in the hip hop now, like
that was their fat which then led them to everything else.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
So I can't even be dismissive. I mean, I don't
like the mag goodness of.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
X Clan's first tour was with the Ghetto Boys and
Vanilla Ice. What what was that like? Man? One day
I was in my room.
Speaker 7 (13:11):
We would go on stage, rock and bounce, you know,
so we didn't know what was going on with the
other we know, you.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
Know, Scarface and the Ghetto Boys was one of our favorites.
Speaker 7 (13:20):
But the first time I even heard the name, this
beautiful girl was knocking on my hotel room after the
show opened the door. I was like, wow, She was like,
where's Vanilla Ice? I was like, I don't know what
chocolate is?
Speaker 6 (13:40):
Right here? Babies, now we use it.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Because I know this is actually a subjective fact. If
that's such a thing in your opinion, When did hip
hop start? Because I keep hearing from many a person that, no, no,
it wasn't August nineteen seventy three. It was Da da
Da Da da da.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Honestly, who's gonna win this tug of war?
Speaker 6 (14:11):
I have no idea, okay, but I will be honest.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
August eleventh, nineteen seventy three is an arbitrary date, okay,
but we had to say it started somewhere. But I
believe that hip hop started when the first man walked
hip hop started when the first person rapped. Hip hop started,
when all the elements were developed hundreds, maybe even thousands
(14:38):
of years ago by our ancestors. For us to say
that we created hip hop from nothing in the Bronx
in nineteen seventy three is totally disrespectful to James Brown,
George Clinton, sline of family, Stone, pig Meat Malcolm, you
know what I'm saying. It's disrespectful to at Hotel Malik
(15:01):
el Shabaz, to Muhammad Ali, to the Black Arts Movement,
a Mary Baraka, Sonya Sanchez, you know, to watch prophets,
the Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, you know, the Jubile Ayers,
Pigmy Malcolm.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
You know, can I ask you so?
Speaker 1 (15:19):
When I was a kid and I was eight years
old when Rappers Delight came out, and you know, for
a line's share of America, Rappers Delight was for a
lot of us our first hip hop experience.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
We never heard of anything beforehand.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Even though I lived next door to a DJ, so
you know, I would hear like, let's dance to the
drummers beat and he had like two turns in, but
I thought he was a disco DJ, right, although he
wasn't scratching.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Before nineteen eighty three, every DJ was a disco dj.
Speaker 7 (15:52):
Okay, if you was not a disco DJ in New York,
you wasn't making no money. And hip hop is the
bastard child of disco, funk, R and B, gospel, jazz
and everything that came before it, But it's closest related
to disco.
Speaker 6 (16:09):
Think about it.
Speaker 7 (16:10):
First rap record you said was important was What Delight.
It was a san but it was a disco record,
Good Times, you know what I'm saying. As matter of fact,
every record that came out in nineteen seventy nine was
a disco record that people was rapping over, with the
exception of Grand Master Flash and the Serious five Freedom,
(16:31):
but rapping and wait right, even Super Dune that all
of those are disco beats. You know what I'm saying.
Rapping and rocking the House that was a disco beat,
or you know King Tim the Third that was a
straight disco record.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
If you look at the.
Speaker 7 (16:51):
Video to the sugar Hill Gang and you turned the
volume down, you would not believe they was rapping.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
They got silk shirts on with big old collars. You
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (17:02):
They wearing dress, slacks and slippery bottom shoes. It wasn't
no Adidas, it wasn't no Pumas. It wasn't you know,
no Nikes, no Gazelli's, no Kingos, none of that. If
you went in the club, our elders was in the
club with slippery bottom shoes, gators, jackets, and hats on.
Speaker 6 (17:25):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
The question I'm asking you is that I'm under the
impression that this culture got its name only because it's
the very first two words that Wonder Mike says on
the very first hip hop record that anyone ever heard.
I would agree with that, yeah, because my parents used
to always be like, you better hip hop, your hands
(17:46):
in bed, you better hip hop, and this is hippity
hoppy and to.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
Hip hip hop, and then Dad would do exactly the
same thing, right.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
So I was asking you, was were you guys even
calling it hip hop?
Speaker 8 (17:56):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Okay, I get it, no more than like the first
two words.
Speaker 6 (18:01):
And that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Even I didn't know the song was called Rappers the Light.
The first day I brought it, I went to the store, like,
you got hip hop?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
He's like, and he hands me a you know record.
Speaker 10 (18:11):
What were they calling it?
Speaker 6 (18:12):
Then?
Speaker 7 (18:14):
Well, we was calling it jamming. We was you know,
we're gonna jam today, you know we're gonna go out.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
We even call it rap music, the rap music. Well
because they called the song Rappers the Light.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Then it's like, oh my god, yeah, like Rappers of
Light contains a lot of the elements that we still
use now, like.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Writing, fiting, the the label label, ribbon off, the artists,
the foundations.
Speaker 7 (18:45):
But you know what those Sylvia Robinson does not get
as much credit as she deserves. You know, she was
the one that saw Hollywood and loved Bug Starsky in
Harlem and say, yo, this is important.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
You know, do you know that little note?
Speaker 7 (19:00):
First of all, Sylvia was the first hip hop mobile, yes, period,
you know. And second of all, she engineered this song
and mixed it.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I heard she played bass on it.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
She probably did. I heard she got so much skills
and talents.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
And are we to assume that her business acumen came
from like the men and the people that came before her.
Speaker 7 (19:20):
The most to the business acumen came because she owned
seven labels.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
I was just thinking she ran with Mars Levy.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
If you know about Mars, like mars Levy was the
Jewish night the word first YouTube was like, huh what
I heard?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Levy?
Speaker 5 (19:40):
And I was like, Bill too.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Young, Mars Levy owned, uh, you know Roulette Records, read
the book Hitman for real.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Gangs that stuff. Can you just describe as visually as
you can.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
What an average jam was like in the Bronx, like
sound wise, because you know we'll see you know, sort
of like not revisioned or you know, like people will
give their stories or tells of it.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
But I want to know.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
I have watched sue footage from nineteen eighty three really
of me and my crew DJ Playboy Paradise and the
Brothers three and my other rap group to throw Down
four in nineteen eighty three, and we're dancing, we're doing graffiti,
and we're DJing and rapping organically without Beach Street, you know,
without Hollywood. And one of these days I'm gonna screen
(20:46):
the footage that we found and then interview. Almost every
single one of my homies in video is still alive.
It's a miracle, yes, sir, but guess what the miracles
called hip hop? Every single one of my homies that
rap danced dig graffiti, except a few, very few.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
Of us perished by natural causes or by murder.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
But the friends of mine from Highbridge who didn't rat
and wasn't in hip hop man decimated.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Is what you witnessed in terms of any park gyms
you went to, was that the only existence of that
culture in that particular thing.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Or on a Sunday, could there be nine block parties happening?
Speaker 6 (21:32):
You just good?
Speaker 7 (21:33):
Well, the first block parties were live bands. We had
a lot of live bands in Highbridge, which is where
I moved after I moved from the Bronxdale projects. I
lived less than a mile from fifteen to twenty Sedject
considered okay and quite honestly, in their early years, there
was a lot of other teachers that were rocking simultaneously
(21:56):
with Cool Hurt, and before Cool Hurt, in my neighborhood,
we had a DJ named Pete DJ Jones.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
So can you explain who DJ Jones is for our audience.
Speaker 7 (22:07):
Yeah, Pete DJ Jones was a mobile DJ. He was
one of the top two mobile DJs in New York
City period. The other one was Grandmaster Flowers from Brooklyn,
hip hop's first grand Master. And a lot of people
may say, well I never heard of him, Yeah right,
I got one hundred fliers with him on the same
(22:30):
flyers with Hurt and Flash and Bam and all of them,
you know. And he opened for James Brown as a
DJ at Yankee Stadium in nineteen sixty eight. Oh wow,
So you know, hip hop just crushed August eleventh in
the Yankee Stadium. But Yankee Stadium has deeper history in
(22:55):
the Bronx, you know. And there's a lot like a
lot of people's say, well, Pete DJ Jones, he was
a disco DJ. Once again, we can't do that. He
mentored Hollywood Loved Buck Starsky, Curtis Blow, and grand Master Flash.
Get that, man, it is hip hop credentials.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Today or no.
Speaker 7 (23:17):
He passed away a few years ago, but there's some
footage on it on YouTube with him stealing it speaking
with his own words. He was amazing dj. He was
great at mixing. He did not cut, he did not scratch,
he didn't do any of that. But he played breakbeats
two and he ushered in Hollywood Loved Buck Starsky, Curtis Blow,
(23:39):
and grand Master Flash.
Speaker 9 (23:40):
I wanted to ask, of Paradise, how does the DJ
somebody like Larry Levan, How did they someone like him
that played the Paradise Garage.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Was that in y'all's kind of radar at all time?
Speaker 1 (23:51):
It?
Speaker 7 (23:51):
Well, it definitely was, because we loved disco music and
dance music and actually, you know, disco to us, that
word is what stops a lot of people from understanding
what we're talking about, because when we say disco, it
wasn't a genre of music. It was a place to
(24:13):
be tech. It was a disco tech. It was the
place where they played music at and when we went
to the clubs, the disco techts, they are a shout
to DC. We played Go Go too in the beginning
of hip hop, and a lot of Chuck Brown and
the Soul Searchers and a lot of those EU and
(24:33):
all of those guys. They contributed to the to the
creation of hip hop too. You know a lot of
people from Philly contributed greatly to the creation of hip
hop and they don't get the credit for it.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (24:47):
The Juice Crew and Cold Chilling records that came out
with Rock, Sanne Chante, Bismarck, Big Daddy came in.
Speaker 6 (24:54):
The Juice Crew that we know that started as pop
art in Philly, you understand, So exactly.
Speaker 7 (25:02):
There's so you know, we migrated from the South and
we brought a lot of these things with us. There's
a rap group that was a gospel group in the
twenties and thirties named the Jubile Airs, who rapped with
the same cadence as the Sugarhill Gang.
Speaker 6 (25:21):
Yep, you know. So if we.
Speaker 7 (25:23):
Ignore our elders and ancestors and don't speak of their contributions,
they taught us hip hop. We learned hip hop from
our elders and ancestors, and if we eliminate them, then
we got to write for young people today to not
remember us or attribute our accomplishments to us. Because we
(25:43):
disrespect our ancestors, we deserve to be disrespected too.
Speaker 10 (25:48):
So I'm trying to think of the proper way to
ask this question though. But is it because disco was
the current music of the time? Is that why it became?
You know, let's say beginning of hip hop was because
disco is funky and disco is that shit?
Speaker 6 (26:05):
Man?
Speaker 7 (26:07):
Come on, one of the biggest greatest breakbeats in the world,
Frisco Disco.
Speaker 6 (26:12):
Come on? Come on? You know brown, Yes, you know
what I'm saying. Come on, where would hip hop be
without the Isley Brothers. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (26:25):
We where would we be without Motown, Stacks votes, you
know what I'm saying. Mcfatten and white Head, all of
these guys were geniuses. We learned hip hop from them
and we remixed it, we sampled it. Hip Hop is
a sample of Afro indigenous culture worldwide. It's the best
(26:48):
of everything that ever existed. If you make a beat
that we like, we don't care if you're corny white
rock group.
Speaker 6 (26:55):
With long hair. We didn't let it go that far,
but we love give me that. It's hip hop now.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
Hip hop is a cultural and musical version of Star
Trek's Borg.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
New generation and after you.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, the things I learned about you? When do you
say that?
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Hip hop started making its uh sort of its trek
into nightclub culture where it starts as block party culture.
Speaker 7 (27:35):
That's where Cool Hurt, the Zulu Nation, Grand Master Flash,
the l Brothers, Graham with the Theodore, That's where the
Disco Twins come in. These guys took it to those places,
you know what I'm saying. And we use disco records
as break beats. Come on, what would hip hop be without?
Speaker 6 (27:58):
I want to thank you having for all the you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (28:02):
I mean just there was just some amazing music being
made by some of the greatest cultural geniuses who ever lived,
and we got to call them out and give them
credit for what they created.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
Bob James, are you kidding? Meet?
Speaker 7 (28:20):
You know, we had amazing the meters. You know, we
had amazing teachers who taught us to beat, and thank
god Jane Brown put it on the one baby.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Can you talk about any historic first that you've seen
in the first fave, pre pre Latin quarter of your
hip hop experiences as far as like shows are concerned
or not clubs you've been to or any of those things.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
We hung out at the Fever, the Disco Fever Halem World,
the Renni which was called the Renaissance Harlem World, I
mean the Disco Fever. The Fever was in the Bronx
right down the stairs, down the Joker stairs from my
community high Bridge. It was at around one hundred and
sixty seventh Street, not far from Yankee Stadium, right by
(29:14):
River Avenue.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
So that's where you had to go to hear those
particular non main street.
Speaker 7 (29:20):
So if you was open enough to go there, we
got everything we needed right in the street for free.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
You know, we speak on it.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
There was the pa L, the Police Athletic League.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Denzel always talks about that.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
Yeah, there was a lot of venues.
Speaker 7 (29:38):
We even had a disco called burger King, which basically
was a Burger King restaurant.
Speaker 6 (29:44):
At night, one of the brothers that worked there would
move the tables.
Speaker 7 (29:48):
And chairs and we would charge twenty five cents and
we would do hip hop parties in Burger.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
King and nobody would be the wiser.
Speaker 6 (29:57):
Nah, they cleaned it up and and you know, nobody
knew anything about it. You know, we did.
Speaker 7 (30:03):
We used school yards, we used talent shows. We was
in the streets. You know, we did see the park.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
You know, there was hundreds of parks all over the city,
from Brooklyn to Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx where
you know, DJs would just come bring their equipment out,
set up and get it cracking. And it was illegal.
Speaker 7 (30:26):
Everything about hip hop was illegal. We stole most of
our equipment in the first place. We were stealing ship
way before that. But that gave a lot of They
gave a lot of people who wasn't as bold or
as good thieves like we was an opportunity, but uh,
you know, we we brought our equipment out in the
(30:46):
park and we partied without a permit.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
When you say we are you speaking? Were you associated
with Black.
Speaker 6 (30:55):
Spades or like I was a Baby Spade when I
lived in the.
Speaker 7 (31:02):
Crew culture the Black Spades, A lot of people say
they were a Black Spade, But the Black Spades is
from the sixties. Have you ever seen the movie A
Bronx Tail That was a story of the Black Spades
and the Bronxdale projects. They organized very similarly to the
(31:25):
US group on the West Coast, and very similarly to
the Black Panthers. It was out of necessity. The white
kids used to live right above where we was in
the suburbs. There was a couple of blocks that separated
the projects from the suburbs. And the white kids were
(31:47):
sons and nephews of Italian mobsters. And they wore thelether
coats like Phronsie with the collars, you know what I'm saying.
They had the grease hair bag, and they had revolvers, chains, bats,
and switch blades, and they would come down into our
community and pray on us, beat us up, and rob
(32:08):
us and do whatever they wanted.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
So the Black Spades, my dad.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Is from New York and he's about ten fifteen years
your senior, and it was different for them because they
used to throw bottles off the top of the of
the buildings and hitting the kids on the ground in Manhattan.
So it was, you know, it's interesting to hear the
Bronx verst of what was going on in.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
The other boroughs.
Speaker 7 (32:26):
So the Black Spades fought back against these white gangs
and pushed there but was way up off us, and
the crew got so big that it became the biggest
black gang in the Bronx. In Brooklyn, they had the
Jolly Stompers and the Tomahawks, and they were represented by
(32:53):
the Black gang in the movie The Warriors. Okay, the
group at the end that was the Tomahawks and Jolly Stumpers,
which later were organized into a black movement by my
elder Sonny Carson in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
To your knowledge, because to my ears, when I'm listening
to Justice Doing Going Way Back or listening to Karaswan,
do the roll call of like what the South Bronx like,
all the.
Speaker 6 (33:22):
Names and mc shann who did the roll call from Queens.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Well, that's why you get the bridge. You know what,
do the other girls have their own tails?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Hell to the year that just didn't have good marketers,
yeas the Bronx did exactly.
Speaker 6 (33:36):
So who was first like Chicken on the egg.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Or I'm asking, like, you know, because I hear of
Queen's having a history that we don't hear about. I
don't know much about Brooklyn's history. I know about Grand
Master Flowers.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
But my boya and there was a bunch of them.
Speaker 7 (33:54):
And there's a DJ that moved from Brooklyn who used
to DJ Whip Flowers to the Bronxdale Projects who actually
predated Mario even but he wasn't a cutter or scratcher either.
But they they played break beats and they blended and
they did the things that were the predecessor. The DJ
(34:15):
culture is the foundation and the predecessor of hip hop
and rap music, and we really have to really do
a better job of shouting these people out and researching.
Me and my partner, Prime Minister Pete Knights from Third
Base mar Cole curator at the Hip Hop Museum, we
found the earliest flyer that we could find with the
(34:38):
words hip hop on the fly and the flyer was
from nineteen seventy nine and it was from Brooklyn.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
So you see what I'm saying. So another battery exactly.
Speaker 7 (34:54):
So there was many DJs, and include Eli Tubo, the
great legendary hip hop producer that produced Eric B and
Rock Kim you know, and engineered those sessions. He was
a popular DJ in Queens. Russell Simmons was a popular
(35:16):
DJ in Queens.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
He actually knew how to DJ.
Speaker 7 (35:19):
Yeah, he wasn't cutting and scratching, but they would dat.
Ralph McDaniel's from Video Music Box, very popular DJ.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Was Hollywood's Terrain in a nightclub only or was he
also a street DJ?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
And is there a difference between.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Street block party culture versus nightclub cultures?
Speaker 6 (35:39):
There Most of the time street DJs didn't make no money.
We did it for the popularity, for the culture, for
the love, you know.
Speaker 7 (35:50):
But we spent way more money than we made, you know,
buying big speakers and records and turntables that was crazy
expensive on young people. That's why I was telling you
it was illegal, you know. Those that didn't steal. We
pieced our sound system together. I had one turntable, He
got one turntable, he got a mixer, he got some records.
This guy got a speaker. Somebody else had the power amp,
(36:13):
so we would form Voltron to even create hip hop.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
How are those speakers being built? Do you have any
knowledge of is it as loud or.
Speaker 6 (36:24):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (36:25):
Herk had some monster speakers and he was running through
people in the Bronx until he ran into Breakout and
Barren with the Mighty Sasquatch sound system. So Herk was
killing him with the Herkalrre sound system. And then he
ran into the Mighty Sasquatch, so.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
The loudier system, the louderier base that like you would win.
Speaker 6 (36:48):
I tell you why.
Speaker 7 (36:49):
There was a DJ by the name of DJ smoke
or DJ Smoky in the Bronx not far from where
Herk was.
Speaker 6 (36:58):
Who was DJing and popular at the same time HRK was.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
He played break beats and he had his version of
bee Boys, which were called Smoka Trons. Had Dj Smokey
been able to defeat Herk, we would be calling the
bee Boys and breakdancers Smoka Trons today because it was
the same thing, right. Smokey battle Hirk on numerous occasions.
(37:25):
He lost every time because every time he'd set up
his equipment, Herk would turn the knobs on him and
blow them out.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
You couldn't even hear them.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
So what constitutes a battle?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Like do you guys choose a ground and then this
guy sets up his speakers over there?
Speaker 3 (37:41):
This guy says, speakers over there is Jamaica styles in
like five minutes you and five hours.
Speaker 6 (37:47):
It depends. It just depends, like hirking them. They ain't
have no rules. You'd be in the park jamming and
they come and they set up they shit right across
from you.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Oh, disrespect you.
Speaker 7 (37:57):
They just turned the knobs up and you can't even
hear your headphones. And you got to pack your ship
and leave tail with your tail between your legs.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yes, that's what you mean.
Speaker 7 (38:12):
When when Hirk started battling Grand Master Flash, Flash had
a great sound system too, plus he was a way
better DJ. So Hurt had to recruit one of my
favorite mentors and DJs of all time, the Grand Imperial
dj JC, which most people never heard of because he
(38:34):
left the Bronx and moved to Yonkers at an early age,
but him and Grand Mixer d x T were the
two best DJs back in the day period, hands down,
no question.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
That was literally, what'll going to be my next questions?
Speaker 6 (38:48):
Like, you know why what?
Speaker 7 (38:50):
Because they related to you? What do they were both drummersids.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Off the books?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Can you talk about your relationship with I'm about to
say Lou Adler Lou Waters, the owner of the infamous
Latin Quarter nightclub by that point, how did you bring
your vision ad mission to the Latin Quarter Nightclub?
Speaker 6 (39:25):
First of all, I never met Lou Walters, Barbara Walter's.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Father, right, I know he owned the spot, so I
didn't know.
Speaker 6 (39:32):
Right, But the guy that bought it off of the
people that brought it off of them is my people.
Speaker 7 (39:42):
I first went to Latin Quarters with the Awesome Two
DJ Teddy Ted and Special K. Yeah, and actually Donald B.
The Awesome two was Special K and Donald B with
DJ Teddy Ted Okay, So they were on WHBIM, the
same radio station made popular by the Supreme Team UH
(40:05):
and UH surch Use missed the Magic and they would
have a show that they played rap music Saturday nights
four o'clock in the morning and they would play anything demos,
h mixtapes. They didn't care if you send it to
'em they would play it. So I went down. I
(40:26):
was promoting records at the time. I was working with
Russell Simmons and Rush Productions and Early Death Jam, and
I would promote records and I would listen to their
radio show and they wasn't playing the stuff that I
was promoting. So I was called a request line over
and over trying to get them to answer, and they
never answered the request line. So me being me, I
(40:48):
got on the train and went up there, knocked on
the door, introduced myself and I said, why don't try
to answer the request line. They said, oh, well, cause
we ain't got nobody to do it. I rolled my SLA,
was up, went and sat.
Speaker 6 (41:00):
Down and there you do.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Now it is organize their records on the floor.
Speaker 6 (41:06):
Know what that organized? Organized the call to people who
were calling in.
Speaker 7 (41:11):
And what we did was we were able to filter
out all the horrible stuff that they was playing and
started playing the most requested stuff. But anyway, they got
a gig working at the Latin Quarters on Tuesday nights
and they called it Celebrity Tuesdays, and they invited me
to come to the club to be a judge. It
was like showtime at the Apollo for rappers. You know,
(41:34):
you get stuff thrown at you, you get booed right
on stage, you get a bottle like he ever was
one second.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
So, but the thing is is like how open is
the establishment to this culture coming into to play?
Speaker 7 (41:51):
Because well, a very interesting and wonderful Jewish man bought
the Latin Quarter. Okay, his name was Mike Goldberg, and
he was a hustler. You know what I'm saying, say Steve, Mike,
sorry everybody, But the Lant Quarter was Mike Goldberg's train set.
(42:17):
It was his play thing, his playground.
Speaker 5 (42:20):
You know.
Speaker 7 (42:20):
He was a multi millionaire that managed the magician David Copperfield,
who was making twenty million a year on Vegas a loon.
So this is just a side thing. Yeah, okay, this
is a side thing. And Mike would just be all
up in it. He would go stand in front of
the box office and collect the money himself.
Speaker 6 (42:41):
Don't even let you put it in there to the lady.
He's standing there and give me.
Speaker 7 (42:44):
You know, he'd got a fistful of money.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Sorry everybody.
Speaker 6 (42:50):
Hey, he just had so much fun doing it, you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (42:53):
So one night I decided, like the celebrity Tuesdays that
the Awesome Too was doing was cool, but it wasn't
packing the club, you know what I mean. And it
was nothing like what was going on at the club
on Fridays and Saturdays. So we used to go to
forty second Street to the kung Fu house called Sinny
forty second and we used to get three Kung Fu movies.
Speaker 6 (43:16):
For five dollars, you know, and you get like three movies, popcorn,
hot dog, and a drink ten bucks, you know.
Speaker 7 (43:25):
So we all hung out down there watching Bruce Lee,
Jackie Chan, you know, the Shaw Brothers movies. And that's
why hip hop became so synonymous with Kung Ko movies
in those early days, because it was all concentrated right there.
So I come out to Kung Fu movie and I said,
let me see what's going on at the club, because
(43:46):
I've never been there on.
Speaker 6 (43:47):
A Friday or Saturday.
Speaker 7 (43:48):
So I go to the club. There's a Jamaican after
work dance party and it's so packed that you can't
even walk around in the club, and the floor was
undulating with sex and bass. The bass was turned up
(44:10):
so much sex that if you stood on the dance floor,
you would probably be dancing without moving.
Speaker 6 (44:16):
It was just undulating.
Speaker 7 (44:18):
It was like watching the matrix, you know, that singing
and zion at the end. That's what it looked like
to me. I was like, there's no place in hip
hop that you can go and have this experience where
every party's on the dance floor and all the dudes
are dancing with women.
Speaker 6 (44:39):
You know.
Speaker 7 (44:40):
So it gave me the idea of epiphany that this
could be an actual hip hop dance club. You know,
we were going to those clubs and my man was
talking about Larry Levon and those DJs and stuff. There
was another movement of freestyle dancing that was going on
in New York at the time, around eighty five eighty six.
(45:02):
People wasn't break dancing in New York no more. All
the rock STEADI Crew, the Dynamic Breakers, all those dudes
was on tour in Europe, China and Japan. They was
rocking over there, but nobody was in the club b
Boy no more in nineteen eighty five eighty six. So
the new style was the style that they was doing,
dancing to disco and dancing to club music. They went
(45:27):
back in time to win the Latin Quarter was the
Cotton Club, and they borrowed the old dancers from Sammy
Davis Jr. The Nicholas Brothers and Cab Callaway and they
modernized those dances and danced hip hop with it.
Speaker 6 (45:46):
If you look at.
Speaker 7 (45:49):
The way Salt and Pepper danced Store, if you look
at epmds you got the Chill video, you know. If
you look at Big Daddy Kane to see Schoob and Scrap,
you know what I mean. You look at Houdini and
you see Dot the Ice and the Kango Kid and
the young Jermaine Duprie. Those were the dancers that were
being done in the Latin Quarters. The ghosts of the
(46:12):
Cotton Club was reborn in the dancing at Latin Quarters.
And we had a group called the Iou Dancers and
the jac Dancers and the Jason Dances. Was Buddha Stretch
who went from dancing at the Latin Quarter to choreographing
Michael Jackson's.
Speaker 6 (46:30):
Remember the Time video and being the lead dancer in
that video.
Speaker 7 (46:35):
You know, because those doing that Egyptian style, all those
interesting dance styles were coming out of the Latin Quarter,
you know. So fifteen year old Queen Latifa was working
at Burger King in New Jersey when she decided to
go to the Latin Quarter to do dancing and she
(46:55):
saw MC light for FUM.
Speaker 6 (46:56):
It was like, oh my god, I want to do that.
So that's how the club was.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
When do you mark the grand opening of the Latin Quarter?
Speaker 6 (47:06):
Well, in my era, the one that that I did,
that's called you know that made it be renamed.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Yeah, it's not calling the Latin I know, it's a history.
I just spent. Like the name of your parties was
was called it was LQ. Well, I'll just say the LQ.
When do you consider the LQ.
Speaker 7 (47:23):
Period of the Latin I say, no tricks in eighty
six is time to build because by eighty six rap
music had blown up internationally. And if you went to
the Latin Quarter on the weekend, Curtis blow Run, DMC,
the Fat Boys, Houdini, all of them would be hanging
out there because they were my friends, and I would
let them in free and give them drink tickets, you know.
(47:45):
So all the hip hop would convene there. But I
couldn't put Melly Mel on stage to do a show.
He would get on stage even though he would get
on stage and do a little impromptu stuff, and he
was at actually the catalysts that help turn it into
the Golden era hip hop because he was the filter.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
If these legends.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
And I mean, you know, I understand that one year
here also to represent the opening of a museum, which
is like, hey, preserve the culture. But I mean even
you have to admit that hip hop is very big
on this sort of disposable adult culture and like the
youth run it and once you hit a certain age
then it's like, all right, well that was then.
Speaker 7 (48:30):
But that's because of the record labels man and the
music industry. When when black artists and hip hop get older,
you got pay him. They know the game. They're not
seventeen eighteen years old. You're not gonna just run some
bull crap contract on them.
Speaker 6 (48:45):
No more, damn.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
So when it came that, yeah, it was all economics.
They're like, you know what, y're old, We're not paying y'all.
You know, kick rocks and kind of the way that
that I really transform here pop at the Latin Quarter
was for the same reason. It was economics. I had
Mellie mal Houdini run DMC in the club, but I
(49:08):
couldn't put him on stage.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
So if if Grandmaster Flash in the Furious Five wanted
to perform.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
At the Latin Quarter, I would have gave him the stage.
Speaker 6 (49:17):
Great gladly passed them to mic.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (49:24):
They getting arena money now, they wore no club money
no more. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (49:31):
So so so I put biz Monkey on stage, Roxanne Schaan,
Te mc shan, Big Daddy, Kane, Salt and Pepper Kid
and play E P M d Eric Ben rock Him,
stets of Sonic, just Dice care us one.
Speaker 6 (49:46):
They was all hungry and they weren't They didn't have
record deals.
Speaker 7 (49:50):
You rocked the Latin Quarter on a Friday or Saturday,
you had a record deal Monday morning. Not that A
and R's was in the crowd. Russell Simmons is in
the crowd. Tom Silverman is in the crowd. Fred Maneo
is in the crowd. Aaron Fuchs is in the crowd.
You know, they knew where the bread was buttered, and
(50:12):
they knew that if they did not show up that
they were going to miss out on the next big hit.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Okay, without the threat of getting hit with a lawsuit,
anytime I mentioned these two names, can you clarify to
me what exactly is Aaron Fuchs's role in hip hop?
Because I know of him only when I see a
relatigious situation happening.
Speaker 7 (50:34):
Right on Tough City Records. He was an independent record
owner at the time when we started Latin Quarters, the
majors hadn't come in and dominated and buy out all
the independent labels. But because all these new artists were
emerging every week, the majors was getting wiped out, and
(50:56):
they say, you know what we better get in this game.
You had Jive RCA, Fourth and Broadway, Columbia, you know,
start to actually recruit and sign these artists, and we
replaced the whole generation of artists because of economics and sound.
You know, the new artists at Latin Quarters they started
(51:19):
making hip hop dance music. And if Red Alert who
was my DJ on Friday nights or Chuck Chillout, who
was my DJ on Saturday nights, if they played your
music in the Latin Quarter and the IOU and JC
dancers didn't rush the dance floor and start tearing it up,
you might not hear your record again.
Speaker 6 (51:39):
So people changed the sound.
Speaker 7 (51:41):
They made it more up tempo, we went a little
more James Brown heavy, a lot more boomed back, and
you know, a lot of new artists started emerging.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Okay, so we also live in a time now. Now,
we live in a time where it's really hard to
break a new artist out. Like you know, as a DJ,
I'll play if I think something is dope, I'm gonna
play it, and you'll clearly see an energy shift where
it's like I don't know this song, so let me
(52:12):
go to bathroom or whatever, and then it will wind
up being a hit later, you know, once it goes
through the system, if they pay for it to go
through the system. But you know, to hear me tell it,
a lot of what we consider just the classic bread
and butter basic food groups of hip hop nightly are
(52:32):
just getting debuted, like play.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
Top Building for the first time and the audience is
going crazy. But you had to how how okay?
Speaker 6 (52:41):
So how are you telling me that a.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
Deaf jam rep can go up to the booth to
red Alert and be like, hey, rock this join like
there's no because people do that to me a lot.
Thank God for like the system of Sarato now where
it's like, you know, I don't my hard drive them Like,
I can't immediately play it. I don't like playing some
unless I hear it first.
Speaker 6 (53:06):
Right, Well, we had.
Speaker 7 (53:09):
A great sound system in the DJ booth, and you
could bang something and listen to it in the DJ
booth without playing it out to the house. But what
I mean more or less, it's like if DMC walks
in the club and say, yo, this is our new ship,
you know you're going to give it a chance.
Speaker 6 (53:26):
But if if if MC butter Butt come in with it, you.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Know whatever, and you know who who Audio two is?
Speaker 6 (53:34):
I did or is it?
Speaker 7 (53:35):
I hated the Audio two at the time, but I
loved them as human beings, as people, but they had
horrible music.
Speaker 6 (53:42):
I like Cherries.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
I was gonna say, I was going to say, let
me take Cherries.
Speaker 6 (53:47):
Was the A side?
Speaker 7 (53:49):
No, No, the A side was making it that was
produced by Daddy, right, okay, you know, and the B
side was Top Villain and it was it.
Speaker 6 (54:00):
It was only like about two minutes in the beginning, right.
Speaker 7 (54:04):
So what happened was Matt Robinson Milk's dad, who owned
First Priority Music record label. He had every DJ in
New York playing Make It Funky except one Cool DJ,
Red Alert and my partner rests in peace to Robert
Lamma Carson aka Procesess, an ex. He was Nat Robinson's
(54:29):
good friend for years and years, so he would always
come in back, Paradise, please get ready to.
Speaker 6 (54:36):
Play that record? Man? Where gotta play it? You know?
You know they're right there, They're almost there. They just
need Red Alert.
Speaker 7 (54:44):
And I wasn't feeling milking kids myself, so I wasn't
pushing red I do not ask Red Alert to play
anything because you will get embarrassed.
Speaker 6 (54:55):
Red Alert is unbiable.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
I was just about to ask that you.
Speaker 7 (55:00):
Cannot offer Red Alert no drugs, no women, no money.
Red Alert had the most integrity.
Speaker 3 (55:08):
But if he said no, no said are you right
there now?
Speaker 6 (55:15):
Where?
Speaker 3 (55:15):
Okay?
Speaker 6 (55:16):
He don't care. He wouldn't play Bam bodis record. And
he was a zulu.
Speaker 7 (55:21):
If he wasn't feeling it, he ain't playing it, you
know what I mean, no matter how much peer pressure come.
So Nat Robinson came one day and he was like, Paradise,
please get ready to play it, man.
Speaker 6 (55:32):
We got this people listening for it, you know, and
it'll take us over the hunt.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
Please.
Speaker 7 (55:39):
I was like, I took the record in the in
the DJ boot before Red Alert got to the club,
and I was just dropping the needle all over the record,
like there gotta be something that's playable on this, and
I flipped it over to the B side and I
couldn't believe my ears.
Speaker 6 (56:01):
I was like, oh my god, this is dope.
Speaker 3 (56:04):
The initial thing was it's dope.
Speaker 1 (56:06):
It's dope, okay with time out pause of the thing. Now,
when I heard it, it was such an unorthodox song.
Lady B premiereda in Philadelphia, so I'm certain whatever Red
Alert was doing, she co signed it.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
Next it is an unusual song.
Speaker 6 (56:23):
Yes it is. That's why how did you see the light?
You know what made me love that song? Milk is Chilling?
Speaker 7 (56:29):
Spending uncounted hours in the studio with Rick Rubin.
Speaker 6 (56:35):
Rick Rubin.
Speaker 7 (56:36):
If you look at the early records that he produced,
it doesn't say produced by Rick Rubin, it says reduced
by Rick Rubin. And Milk is Chilling was bare bones, raw,
uncut hip hop that I was used to from being
a street DJ in the Bronx. That it reminded me
of a street jam and somebody put a beat on
(56:59):
and somebody it's sellaneus MC came running out the crowd
and put it down on the mic. It was so
catchy and so sing songie. I knew it was to
hit the first time I heard it, so I gave
it to my house DJ DJ Roman. He played it
about five or six times before Red Alert even got
to the club on the Latin quart.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
Of sound system.
Speaker 6 (57:20):
That beat hit so hard. Right.
Speaker 7 (57:24):
So Red Alert shows up after coming off with Kiss FM.
He's headed for the DJ booth. I'm like ecstatic. I
go running over to him with two copies of this
record and I.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Was like, yo, Red Yo, you gotta check this out.
Speaker 7 (57:39):
And he snatched it out of my hand and threw
it across the room and it smashed on the wall.
He was like, Yo, this cit is a Frisbee. I
wish y'all was stopped coming at me with this frisbees man.
I told him I'm not playing it.
Speaker 6 (57:54):
I don't like it. I was like, Red, why you
do me?
Speaker 7 (57:57):
Like? I was like, dud ever tell you to play
something that's whack. He was like no, but I don't
like that. I said, you ain't even hear it yet.
So when he went to go to the DJ booth,
I beat him to the booth, and I made sure
that the last thing that played was Top Villain was
Top Villain.
Speaker 6 (58:14):
I put it on and he walked into booth.
Speaker 7 (58:16):
And the crowd was going banana. They were bouncing all
over the place to it. And I walked away and
I said, Yo, that's yours. And you know, I tell
the story that after that they started banging it.
Speaker 6 (58:30):
It was a big hit. Milk tells the story. Yo, Dice,
he still hates it. He still don't play it. He
might have played it a couple of times for you
after that, but he still hate us.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
Still.
Speaker 6 (58:43):
Yep, that's what all that says. I love that.
Speaker 11 (58:47):
Okay, QLs listeners, this is where we're cutting it. Please
come back next week or check your podcast for you
for part two of our again, the Studio Conversation with
Paradise Gray. In that episode, he speaks more about the
glory years of the Latin Quarter, his action of hip
hop artifacts, and so much more.
Speaker 9 (59:03):
Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast
is hosted by a Mere Quest Love, Thomas boss Man,
Like Here, Saint Clair So Black, Andy Black, Myself, Fontidelo,
Fonte Goldman, Sugar, Steve Mandell, and unpaid Bill Sherman. The
executive producers are Amir Quest, Love Thompson, Sean g and
(59:23):
the Unbothered Brian Calho. Produced by Brittney Benjamin, My Dog Cousin,
Jake Pam My Motherfucking Man and Like he Is Saint
Clair My work Wife, Edited by Alex Conroy. Produced for
iHeart by Noel Brown and Mike Johns. Audio engineering by
Graham Gibson aka double G at Iheart's LA Studio.
Speaker 3 (59:46):
Thank you for tuning in. Check us out next week.
Speaker 1 (59:52):
What's Up Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Laiya St. Clair
Questlove
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