April 13, 2023 • 30 mins
Hip Hop has officially arrived with songs like ‘The Message’, from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, ‘Rapper’s Delight’ by the Sugar Hill Gang, and artists like Kurtis Blow. This episode explores how Hip Hop made its way to be heard outside of the Bronx and New York City. Episode guests include Fat Joe. Kurtis Blow. Ed Lover. Peter Gunz. Kwame. Karl Kani. Russell Simmons. Grandmaster Caz. Grandmaster Flash. Grand Wizzard Theodore.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
From a Heart Podcasts. I am Fab five Freddy and
this it's fifty years of Hip Hop podcast series. Hey guys,
I just want you all to remember this amazing fact
that hip hop music is the most listen to music
around the world on all streaming services combined. It's pretty
incredible fact. But right here, baby, on the fifty Years
(00:24):
of Hip Hop podcast series, we're taking you back to
how this all began. And you know, it's really amazing
that hip hop is just so New York. Before rapping
and hip hop music exploded, you can only experience the
elements of this exciting culture. I'm talking about the breakdancing, djaying,
the graffiti art that M seeing in New York City.
(00:45):
To know the real deal about this burgeoning cultural revolution,
you were either there, I mean at early park jams
and the block parties, or you heard the word on
the now extinct cassette tapes blasting from somebody's boombox, or
maybe you were lucky enough to home on yourself. That's right,
from the Bronx to Queens to Brooklyn, the hip cutting
(01:08):
edge teenagers. Don't forget hip hop was invented by teenagers.
They were all plugged into this potent flavor going on
at these park jams and block parties, and those cassette
tapes would passed from hand to hand and it was
basically that early version of the Internet, aka the Grapevin
tell a friend to tell a friend something hot was
(01:28):
going on, literally on fire and about to bubble over
all over the stove. Fat Joe recording artists, Bronx hip
hop legend and at the way you heard new music
is you would venture out, you would go to other
parts of town. You would go to other like fat
Pop Freddy. I don't believe it's from the Bronx right
(01:48):
where using yes, Fat Joe, you're right, I'm from Brooklyn
do a die bed style to be specific by brother
Great Russell Simsy from the Bronx using the feed every day.
Right So now it's nothing for me. But when you
were a teenager, going to where cou Herk was from
was a mission. You had to take two trains, the
(02:09):
five train of one forty nine, then the four trains.
You know, it's the West Side, you know, and when
you're a teenagers like take you ten hours, like you
were in an old different place. But the first time
I heard rock Kimmer, Eric being rock Kimmy. They were
playing Boom Bong Boom and on the west side they
had already did the why dud and it was like
(02:32):
ten of buts, and we just kept studying the mold
the why. We was trying to blind how to do
the why there was already up on the box. The
next day were back in our hood to South Bronx
and were in the jam doing the Why, and kids
were looking at us like, oh, it's the why, and
that's how you know. Hip hop was really really word
(02:56):
of mouth. Was really all about word of mouth, the hunting.
So the gyms, most of the jams used to be
out across the street Elementary. I went to we in
a project, my projects, like twenty buildings. They all got
fourteen floors and one hundred and forty four apartments in there,
and everybody got nine kids, so every builder got fifteen
(03:19):
hundred people. Right but cross the street in the park,
that's where they used to jams, the premium hunt. So
it was right out of my window. Then middle of
the night when the big guys, you know break night.
You know, we had a phone, a public phone, you know,
a regular phone in front of my building. They would
(03:41):
break this that says phone and they would have like
a plug out of it, so they were plugged the
boombox and they would listening to Awesome Too all night.
And that's where I would listen to, like Crash Crew
or that we don't want to be left behind. All
we want to do is just blow your mind just
(04:01):
one more time. And then I was doing I wasn't
supposed to do. I was a kid, Bob six seven
years old, staying up all night just listening to hip
the window like it was. It was crazy. Grandmaster Caz rapper,
extraordinary songwriter and DJ, member of the legendary hip hop
(04:22):
group the Cold Crush Brothers. Now, I wasn't No ambassadorship
is concerned. You did what you did where you did
it at, you know what I mean. And the scope
was limited. It grew after a while. But if he
was in Brooklyn, you was in Brooklyn. You're in Bronshire
in the prom definitely on Brooklyn, and Bronze wasn't mixing
at that time. Anyway. Queens is somewhere far out to us,
(04:45):
you know what I mean. Manhattan is Manhattan. We could
haul them, but Manhattan is that's downtown. How how hip
hop spread is by word of mouth and by cassette
takes all right, and then when the flyers, because there's
those three ways that hip hop spread Flyers, word of mouth,
and cassette tapes of the recordings of those live parties
(05:08):
that started to get circulated. And even if you weren't
privy to a party to be there alive, you heard
this cassette tape, you got an idea of what it was.
You're like, oh shit, that's what they're doing. And people
were traveling around. You've got people going into the service
who take their music with them, and they're exposing their
music to people from all over the world. There's some
camp based or army base in South Carolina somewhere, and
(05:29):
people from all over the world are stationed at that base,
so they're sharing each other's culture. So that's another way
hip hop spread, not just here domestically, but globally. Peter
Guns hip hop artists and Bronx representative. Well, you know,
while my older brother Rick needs to bring home a
lot of mixtapes, but you know they didn't call them mixtape.
(05:52):
They went damn, you know, damn tape from the Jam
the pop dam And I would say my first introduction
of hip hop was a Cold Crush. Whether you know,
Easy A d lived on the block, Grandmaster cassn't lived
too far, and I had alized the Cold Crush brother,
you know what I mean. I was there to see
them perform at the Boys Club. Whenever they performed, you know,
(06:14):
when it was in the park, I was out there.
I was. I formed the group called the Baby Cold Crush,
and we ended up changing our name to the Vicious Street.
But I had alized of the Cold Crush, and I
had alized Grandmaster Cast so much that I named my
son Cat. That's how much the inspiration they named me.
If it wasn't for the Cold Crush, I wasn't I
wouldn't be. I probably wouldn't have thought about rapping. I
(06:36):
was already doing the all. I was a musician, droms keyboards,
messing with the guitar a little. But I was on
some music. But when when I and I was a kid.
But when I heard the Cold Crush, that was it
had changed everything for me. Grandmaster Flash a pioneer of
hip hop, Djane cutting and mixing, the actual Courier or
(06:58):
the Flyer tweeking outside of the Bronx was what we
call the mixtape and that of the cassette tape. Somehow
another emitted from Bronx to Brooklyn, the Queens to stat
Now into Long Islands of Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia to
Virginia and Virginia and then it went down south and
then it went overseas somehow another what we were doing,
(07:20):
people was like, oh my god, listen to what they're doing.
Some people are saying the sounds like three people was
DJ at the same time all my tapes. It is like,
how is he doing that? Because we have this same
record and this drum break is not this long on
the records of my mom's house, you know. So this
thing went super global. And then with the inclusion of
(07:42):
the speaker, the human being to put a lyric on
top of this area of music, which was possibly the
greatest drummers in the world, and you put a lyric
a lyricists over the top of this, then this thing
was out of here, totally out. And that's when people
were off coming into the Bronx and looking for people
(08:05):
to sun love. Hearing all this talk about how important
you know, the cassette tape was to spreading hip hop music.
I was a cassette tape boombox person my whole time
growing up. You know what I'm saying, At mad cassette tapes,
different boomboxes, big take about ten or twelve deep batteries.
Sometimes boom boxes got so big. Cats would put them
(08:26):
on Little Dolly so they can wheel them around town
and blast that hip hop music that nobody else had
access to. But the tricky thing about them cassette tapes,
after you played them a lot, they were sometimes pop
and you had to perform delicate surgery to open the
tape up and get some scotch tape and piece it
back together. If you were lucky, man, it was a
delicate procedure. By the way, my boombox, my last major
(08:50):
boombox that I still had up until about ten years ago,
I donated it to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Grandmastercats.
I knew in my heart when I was practicing the
elements of hip hop. At some point it did hit
me and I was like, you know what, if other
people got to see this, they would love it. Now.
(09:12):
I wasn't thinking globally. I wasn't even thinking, you know,
like the country from state to state. I was just
thinking like, you know, just parts where nobody had heard
of this before, Like if people got to see this,
witness it, because a lot of people around here is like,
that's this book. Why y'all doing that? Y'all wasting your time.
(09:32):
You'a aren't gonna get nowhere of doing that. Why are
you stepping up your sneakers spinning around on the goddamn flow, Yo.
You can't come in here doing that's you got to
take that. Get out to the park, yo. Why are
you writing all over the goddamn change vandalizing the mother
to the city, and this and this and that. Everything
got vilified, Everything was bellified. Dan said, why are you
can't sit in the street? You know what I mean?
That got dualified? Graffiti? That got delified, all right, DJ?
(09:55):
And if you played music too loud to to you
know what I mean, that got devilified. All that's not music, okay,
you're just using other people in the yeah, mother, and
that's an art form unto herself? What's wrong with you?
All right? And then when rat came along Bloom they're
not really saying anything. It doesn't mean anything. That's bulls doing.
They're just talking about partying and how many girls they
have until the message came out. That was the first
(10:16):
record that kind of validated the spoken word aspect of
hip hop Fat Joel. Before that, it was all about
having a party, happy birthday. They been in Dan It
was all about a party, you know. To the hit
Ho Hi, you know, everything was it was all a party.
(10:42):
And so that was the first consciousness in hip hop.
And if you notice at the end of that video
they get locked up for no reason and put me
on him a police car and for the lord the
same we're talking about two days, the same exact aggression.
(11:03):
We're talking about two days. And so they were at
every time and they change the message in the hip hop.
They definitely did that one million percent. About a dozen
rap singles have been released locally in the New York
area in the late seventies on independent labels like Enjoy Records,
(11:27):
Sounds in New York, and Paul Wembley. No marketing or
promo behind these records, just that local love and listeners.
In nineteen seventy nine, a Handpick rap group was put
in place and given the name of the record label.
They were on Raps first national hit, Rapper's Delight by
the sugar Hill Game became a national sensation, but hip
(11:50):
hop music true pioneers was shocked, confused, and surprised, especially
Grandmaster Cats. However, in the summer of nineteen eighty two,
the Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five featuring
Duke Booty When that drop, it was a game changing
earthquake of a song. Along with its rough edge music video,
(12:12):
it painted a vivid picture of what inner city slum
living was like in New York ghettos at the time.
Released on sugar Hill Records, it took rap from the
party to the streets to hardcore reality. Curtis blow legendary
rapper and hip hop's first rap superstar, The Message was
(12:33):
one of the greatest songs. I would say it was
a significant great song in hip hop and then came
out in nineteen eighty two. But along with that song
also came Planet Rock, which was incredible too. You know,
I had a lot of songs that were socially relevant
(12:57):
as far as messages are turned like the breaks throughout
your years. Hard times tough, a big one, a lot.
I want just enough ones. It got to be so
damned tough. But speaking on the Message, I think that
song right, there was a revolutionary song that really expressed
(13:22):
the trapmatic, the cultural trauma that we were faced with
doing the sixties and the seventies, and it was so
relative to you know, the oppression and the pain and
the racism. And yeah, great song. Great song is rated
(13:47):
the number one song and history of hip hop off
All Times or by Rolling Stone magazine. And shout out
to Duke Body rest in peace, my man, and of
course the Grand Master Mellie Mel, who we met in
a gang in nineteen seventy five and it will always
(14:09):
be my brother, my friend for life, grand Master Mellie Mel,
Grand wizit Did or pioneering hip hop DJ credited as
the inventor of the scratching technique. When the message came out,
that's when I can see that hip hop was taken
a pivotal term because the DNA hip hop DNA finally
(14:32):
was able to record something and actually able to see
and hear what we were going through in the bronx.
You know, not to take anything away from rappers delight,
but once the message came out, that's when everything started
to change. Man, That's when all the goose and the
Bronx was like yeah, like this is our time because
Big Bang Hey, God Bless him was saying rhymes that
(14:56):
was written by grand Master Cash, which is hip hop
dna if my bloodline. But once the messages came out,
that's when I could feel and see that everything started
to change in the world of hip hop, the culture,
the art form, everything started to change when the message
(15:18):
came out. From the impact of the message, that was
like a giant media landing in the whole pop culture spectrum.
That was a big inspiration for the whole conscious rap
movement and also for Nway's impactful record After Police. You
(15:38):
can draw a line right back to the message that
hard reality of this is what's going on. This is
what we're living through right here right now. It's like
a jungle. Sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep
from going under Ed Lover rapper, actor, radio personality, and
former MTV VJ. In my opinion, probably one of the
(16:04):
most important songs in the history of HEPP is the
message Rappers, The Light gave us the opportunity to know
that we can rap on record, But as great and
as many records as they sold, nobody took them three
mcs like they would end all be all was he right,
nobody's putting none of them on the top ten of
rappers of all time, just you're not going to do it.
(16:25):
So that being said, when the message came out, it
gave you that glimpse, the first real glimpse into the
inner city right of what was going on in the
in the city. It opened the door up for reality rap,
which later on gave way the gainst the rap. So
nobody was talking about that. They was. They was not
talking about that with the message brought to the table,
(16:47):
They wasn't. Nobody was talking about that. Nobody was talking
about broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the steps. You know,
they just don't can't. Nobody talked about anybody being a
thug and they're going to jail and hanging themselves in
the cell because they got turned out in jail. That
was reality, right, bro. If he the curse, curse, curse,
curse them have been the same thing as gangs. But
(17:09):
that gave birth to everybody that came after that. Everybody
that says I could talk about what I see, but
was really you know, I'm sneaking to Ouzy on the
island and my army jacket line that could have never
been said if it wasn't for the message, everything that
Jay Z said two twenty two, twenty twos and all
of that, you know, rolling in the Lexus load with
(17:32):
you know, with all of that, anything Biggie said, none
of that could have been ever said on the record
without the message being success. It was reality at its finest.
It was blunt, It was in your face. It was
what you've seen in the ghetto every day, which gave
an open door to everybody that come behind him to
(17:54):
do reality. Besides the groups that dominated early rap like
Grand Master Lashing, Furious Five, Cold Crush Brothers, Treacherous Street,
the Funky four plus one, Mercedes Laden's Fantastic Romantic Five,
and others, solo rappers would also want a strong come
up at that time Spooney G and Super Rhymes. They
(18:16):
were two local soloists making noise. But it was Curtis
Blows the break some Mercury Records that made him raps
first solo superstar and also the first on a major
record label. Kawam rapper and record producer Curtis Blow and
He's like He's the King of Rapper. Curtis Blow was
the first solo everybody was in a group. Everybody was
(18:38):
a part of the group. Here comes Curtis Blow producing
the records. He's rapping, he's singing. He has videos. He
has like clean videos like you know you have the
message which is like grainy, grimy, you know, cheap video
in the streets. But Curtis Blow guy like pull on
fly videos. He signed to a major record label. He's
(19:00):
making selling platinum records as a solo artist. He's showing up.
You see pictures of him and had a shirt on
he had all these chains on its where the change
is starting at this point, you know, he got his
disc of chains on hook and then on top of that,
just when you think it's over, he's a star. But
one way he comes to Crush Grew and it's like
Curtis blows the man. And even though run DMC and
(19:22):
then you got B Street as well, but B Street,
you know, even though like you got you see one
DMC and Mellie Belle them in these movies with Crush
Grew though it was about Run DMC and it was
a vehicle for Running MC, it was clear that they
followed behind Curtis Block. I definitely give him that title,
(19:42):
like the first king of rap. Like you know, if
we had to name kings, he would be in the
first wood Fat Joe. If you're talking about fifty years
in hip hop. The man really had it. He was
the first platinum solo whist he was superstar, was the
first I saw with Jerry on the shirt, open looking,
(20:04):
squagged out. You know, he had he saw all the praise.
He had uh uh rule the world and then he
had the king celebrate kN kn't celebrate. He did this
up dedication to Martin Luther King. They're up under him.
His camp was the brother hey Jay opening the Bronx
(20:30):
up up in the Bronx, hey day they had like no,
Curtis Blow is a living legend. He's the first y'all
saying the class in the rap movie. He was you know,
he was a legend. He deserves it. He was the
Blue Pray And if you ask the prioneers, if they
be truthful, they'll tell you he was the first like
rap star. Now did Mellie Melvin come bigger than Curtis Blow?
(20:52):
I think so, But Curtis Blow was, you know, the
first superstar. Curtis Blown Blow as the first rap superstar.
You know, I always said yes, but in my humility
and just thinking about it more as I read these
(21:16):
interviewers and listened to these interviews, the modest situation is
to be transparent and tell my real truth of the matter.
I think that the sugar Hill Gang was the first superstars.
I was the first solo superstar in hip hop. Yes,
(21:39):
that is true. But I stood on the shoulders of
the sugar Hill Gang. And I must say that because
that song Rappers Is a Light started it off for
a whole lot of people. So the message, without question,
one of raps most important songs was sugar Hill listed
it as being by Grandma to Flash and the Furious Five,
(22:01):
when in actuality it's just Mellie Mell on the record
rapping and Duke Booty rest in Peace on the chorus
Grand Wizard Theater. Or when Rappers Delight came out, it
was like everybody was bumping Rappers Delight and they caused
on the streets everywhere. Man crazy man. So it had
(22:24):
to be between Rappers Delight and Curtis Blows Christmas Rapping,
because I think they came out like months apart from
each other. When Rappers Delight came out, it was like
It opened up a door for everyone in the world
to see and hear a culture, you know, a culture
that I was locked in a certain part of the
(22:45):
world that eventually became worldwide. You know, it doesn't matter
where you live. You can live in Japan or Australia,
or you in Africa, you're in Malaysia, you in Canada,
you're different part of the world. But everybody's going through
the same thing. They're trying to get their government to
do the right thing. Some people are single parent homes,
(23:09):
going to school, you know, drugs. All of this was
coming out of hip hop. You know, it was the
voice of the voiceless. And that's what happens when when
hip hop became worldwide, and that's when the first record
actually came out. People seeing a way for their voices
(23:30):
to be heard. Carl Cannin fashion designer and the godfather
of urban street wear, Rapper's Delight. You know, I'm saying,
Rapper's Light came out. Everybody wants to be like one
to Mic Big Hank, and we all started on Little Crew,
were always trying to imitate them. You know, it was
the coolest thing out Like, they gave us a sense
of pride, sense of feeling a sense of unity and
(23:53):
just repeating those rats were back to front. It informced
us to started on DJ Crew because you know, growing
up a staff in East New York, we always part
of the five percenters. That's just what it was in
our projects, and mulesn't down to five percenters, you know,
get r an Ova. So we all had knowledge itself
at a very young age, which helped us a lot too,
because he made us look at the world a little
(24:15):
bit differently. So all those things, all those factors played
a role into building the character of who I am today.
Fat Joe the biggest it was. It was one of
the biggest songs ever created. Shuggarho as a label label
was the first the creators. It was the first to
take rec artists and put them on Vining til Via
(24:38):
Robinson and so she was beyond ahead of a time,
and she knew stuff about music business that nobody else knew.
She was ahead of a very intelligent But years later,
if you would have asked me this ten years ago,
I would have been like, yo, shig. But years later
you realize day they took a verse from Grandmaster Cass.
(25:04):
They jacked his verse and never gave him money, never
gave him publish it, never gave him nothing. That don't
sit right with me no more with that record, you know.
And it's sad because you know, I love that record,
that records my childhood. That record is one of the
greatest records and hip hop visitery. But to know that
they did that at the time where I just explained
(25:26):
to you that an MC got it right there on,
Oh no, that's a crime. But is it one of
the biggest hip hop songs of all time? Yes, some
people would say it's the biggest grand Master Cass. That
was a template for hip hop, for rap music, hip
hop culture. You know, it's a lot more than you
know a song. No matter how how big that song became,
(25:49):
it was just one element of the culture of hip hop.
So it definitely led the charge as far as rap
music and the recognition of rap music and culture of
hip hop. The part I had I played as I
wrote by the third of Rappers Delight. I wrote all
the Big Bang Hank's lyrics that he recited in Rappers Delight,
which inadvertently bade me hip hop's first ghostwriter. Unpaid, unpaid
(26:14):
coast in No way wasn't collaborative. These are rhymes that
I had written, you know already. These were in my
repertoire rhymes and they were on tapes. So Hank was
just mimicking the rhyme from the tape. When when they
auditioned him or for Rappers de Light, he didn't tell
them that he didn't rap, that he was my manager.
That's how that was supposed to go. Okay, Hey, hey, guys,
(26:37):
we're making a record and we heard that you rapped.
You know what I mean. You're in the piece of
shop at your boom box, you know what I mean,
And guys are rapping, you know. Would you like to
audition for this record that we're doing now? If you
managed me, what are you supposed to say to her?
I don't rap, man, but I manage casting Ova Fly
one of the best rappers in the Bronx or MCS
(26:58):
at the time. He was to calling ourselves rappers. That's
what he was supposed to do. But he didn't do that.
He just got in the car with them and started
reciting by rhymes from the tapes, and they loved it
and made him part of the sugar Hill Okay, in
reference to Grandmastercaz, who wrote all of Big Bank Hank's verse,
which was basically stolen from from Kaz. He's so gracious
(27:20):
about how he speaks about this. Tens of millions of
dollars should have gone two Grandmaster casts for his efforts
on that important record. And it's interesting how Jay Z
on his big hit Izzo, drops a line where he says,
I'm overcharging for what they did to the Cold Crush.
He's really speaking about what happened to Grandmastercas, how they
(27:43):
stole his lyrics on sugar Hill Russell Simmons Record Executive
and Entrepreneur. The first thing paused, and then we played
a lot and people talked about it, but then really
wrapped the light. I opened the door. They didn't open
the door really because I had Priston wrapping on the
shelf while the light without it. Nobody wanted it. And
I told you how we got it, you know, and
(28:03):
everybody who existed, like Black, we don't want that. There's
only one record. I don't know how it got here.
And then I remember when he had Rappers Delight first played.
All the rappers were mad. We had an armory and
I first heard Rappers Delight and there was like thousands
of kid a couple of thousands, and all the big
stars were played, but not Hollywood and not a Chief
and not thoughts, but you know, like the flashes of
(28:25):
the world. Flashes stob that from the ground. I mean,
he was the big ticket seller of that world. So
all those guys were there and it was at an armory,
and he played Rappers Delight, and many of us felt
that they had stolen off future that we would have
rappers Delight, not me of the rapper, but the rappers
up with big but their music and rappers the Light
(28:45):
came from artists who would not from the community, and
we were light shocked by that. That was seventy nine,
or at least every nine, and caused Christmas Rapp, who
was laked every nine, so it was as she felt
that they stole everything. They opened the doors, but no
one wanted to play another rapper after. I remember that
radio was forced to play Rapping the Light. It was
just so big they couldn't get away from it. Just
(29:07):
as the following year, Christmins Rapping played the B side
played all year long, and then Christmith came along again.
They played Pristmith Rapping nineteen eighty coursing eight one or
eighteen end of a deal maybe eighting one that came
the breaks and he played that Christmas rapping the breaks
of both Curtis Glove. On the next episode of the
(29:30):
Fifty Years of Hip Hop podcast series, we go back
to a time when rap was not played on the radio,
with the exception of New York City, which had a
couple of stations WBLS and WHBI that would play rap
on the weekends or late night during the week and
this episode is going to dive into the rise of
(29:50):
rap hitting the airwaves and causing a major shift in radio.
Coach to coach. This episode has been executive produced by
Dolly S. Bishop, hosted and produced by your Boy Fab
five Freddie. Produced by Aaron A. King Howard, Edit, mixed
sound by Dwayne Crawford, music scoring by Trey Jones, Talent
(30:11):
booking by Nicole Spence.
From a Heart Podcasts. I am Fab five Freddy and
this it's fifty years of Hip Hop podcast series. Hey guys,
I just want you all to remember this amazing fact
that hip hop music is the most listen to music
around the world on all streaming services combined. It's pretty
incredible fact. But right here, baby, on the fifty Years
(00:24):
of Hip Hop podcast series, we're taking you back to
how this all began. And you know, it's really amazing
that hip hop is just so New York. Before rapping
and hip hop music exploded, you can only experience the
elements of this exciting culture. I'm talking about the breakdancing, djaying,
the graffiti art that M seeing in New York City.
(00:45):
To know the real deal about this burgeoning cultural revolution,
you were either there, I mean at early park jams
and the block parties, or you heard the word on
the now extinct cassette tapes blasting from somebody's boombox, or
maybe you were lucky enough to home on yourself. That's right,
from the Bronx to Queens to Brooklyn, the hip cutting
(01:08):
edge teenagers. Don't forget hip hop was invented by teenagers.
They were all plugged into this potent flavor going on
at these park jams and block parties, and those cassette
tapes would passed from hand to hand and it was
basically that early version of the Internet, aka the Grapevin
tell a friend to tell a friend something hot was
(01:28):
going on, literally on fire and about to bubble over
all over the stove. Fat Joe recording artists, Bronx hip
hop legend and at the way you heard new music
is you would venture out, you would go to other
parts of town. You would go to other like fat
Pop Freddy. I don't believe it's from the Bronx right
(01:48):
where using yes, Fat Joe, you're right, I'm from Brooklyn
do a die bed style to be specific by brother
Great Russell Simsy from the Bronx using the feed every day.
Right So now it's nothing for me. But when you
were a teenager, going to where cou Herk was from
was a mission. You had to take two trains, the
(02:09):
five train of one forty nine, then the four trains.
You know, it's the West Side, you know, and when
you're a teenagers like take you ten hours, like you
were in an old different place. But the first time
I heard rock Kimmer, Eric being rock Kimmy. They were
playing Boom Bong Boom and on the west side they
had already did the why dud and it was like
(02:32):
ten of buts, and we just kept studying the mold
the why. We was trying to blind how to do
the why there was already up on the box. The
next day were back in our hood to South Bronx
and were in the jam doing the Why, and kids
were looking at us like, oh, it's the why, and
that's how you know. Hip hop was really really word
(02:56):
of mouth. Was really all about word of mouth, the hunting.
So the gyms, most of the jams used to be
out across the street Elementary. I went to we in
a project, my projects, like twenty buildings. They all got
fourteen floors and one hundred and forty four apartments in there,
and everybody got nine kids, so every builder got fifteen
(03:19):
hundred people. Right but cross the street in the park,
that's where they used to jams, the premium hunt. So
it was right out of my window. Then middle of
the night when the big guys, you know break night.
You know, we had a phone, a public phone, you know,
a regular phone in front of my building. They would
(03:41):
break this that says phone and they would have like
a plug out of it, so they were plugged the
boombox and they would listening to Awesome Too all night.
And that's where I would listen to, like Crash Crew
or that we don't want to be left behind. All
we want to do is just blow your mind just
(04:01):
one more time. And then I was doing I wasn't
supposed to do. I was a kid, Bob six seven
years old, staying up all night just listening to hip
the window like it was. It was crazy. Grandmaster Caz rapper,
extraordinary songwriter and DJ, member of the legendary hip hop
(04:22):
group the Cold Crush Brothers. Now, I wasn't No ambassadorship
is concerned. You did what you did where you did
it at, you know what I mean. And the scope
was limited. It grew after a while. But if he
was in Brooklyn, you was in Brooklyn. You're in Bronshire
in the prom definitely on Brooklyn, and Bronze wasn't mixing
at that time. Anyway. Queens is somewhere far out to us,
(04:45):
you know what I mean. Manhattan is Manhattan. We could
haul them, but Manhattan is that's downtown. How how hip
hop spread is by word of mouth and by cassette
takes all right, and then when the flyers, because there's
those three ways that hip hop spread Flyers, word of mouth,
and cassette tapes of the recordings of those live parties
(05:08):
that started to get circulated. And even if you weren't
privy to a party to be there alive, you heard
this cassette tape, you got an idea of what it was.
You're like, oh shit, that's what they're doing. And people
were traveling around. You've got people going into the service
who take their music with them, and they're exposing their
music to people from all over the world. There's some
camp based or army base in South Carolina somewhere, and
(05:29):
people from all over the world are stationed at that base,
so they're sharing each other's culture. So that's another way
hip hop spread, not just here domestically, but globally. Peter
Guns hip hop artists and Bronx representative. Well, you know,
while my older brother Rick needs to bring home a
lot of mixtapes, but you know they didn't call them mixtape.
(05:52):
They went damn, you know, damn tape from the Jam
the pop dam And I would say my first introduction
of hip hop was a Cold Crush. Whether you know,
Easy A d lived on the block, Grandmaster cassn't lived
too far, and I had alized the Cold Crush brother,
you know what I mean. I was there to see
them perform at the Boys Club. Whenever they performed, you know,
(06:14):
when it was in the park, I was out there.
I was. I formed the group called the Baby Cold Crush,
and we ended up changing our name to the Vicious Street.
But I had alized of the Cold Crush, and I
had alized Grandmaster Cast so much that I named my
son Cat. That's how much the inspiration they named me.
If it wasn't for the Cold Crush, I wasn't I
wouldn't be. I probably wouldn't have thought about rapping. I
(06:36):
was already doing the all. I was a musician, droms keyboards,
messing with the guitar a little. But I was on
some music. But when when I and I was a kid.
But when I heard the Cold Crush, that was it
had changed everything for me. Grandmaster Flash a pioneer of
hip hop, Djane cutting and mixing, the actual Courier or
(06:58):
the Flyer tweeking outside of the Bronx was what we
call the mixtape and that of the cassette tape. Somehow
another emitted from Bronx to Brooklyn, the Queens to stat
Now into Long Islands of Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia to
Virginia and Virginia and then it went down south and
then it went overseas somehow another what we were doing,
(07:20):
people was like, oh my god, listen to what they're doing.
Some people are saying the sounds like three people was
DJ at the same time all my tapes. It is like,
how is he doing that? Because we have this same
record and this drum break is not this long on
the records of my mom's house, you know. So this
thing went super global. And then with the inclusion of
(07:42):
the speaker, the human being to put a lyric on
top of this area of music, which was possibly the
greatest drummers in the world, and you put a lyric
a lyricists over the top of this, then this thing
was out of here, totally out. And that's when people
were off coming into the Bronx and looking for people
(08:05):
to sun love. Hearing all this talk about how important
you know, the cassette tape was to spreading hip hop music.
I was a cassette tape boombox person my whole time
growing up. You know what I'm saying, At mad cassette tapes,
different boomboxes, big take about ten or twelve deep batteries.
Sometimes boom boxes got so big. Cats would put them
(08:26):
on Little Dolly so they can wheel them around town
and blast that hip hop music that nobody else had
access to. But the tricky thing about them cassette tapes,
after you played them a lot, they were sometimes pop
and you had to perform delicate surgery to open the
tape up and get some scotch tape and piece it
back together. If you were lucky, man, it was a
delicate procedure. By the way, my boombox, my last major
(08:50):
boombox that I still had up until about ten years ago,
I donated it to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Grandmastercats.
I knew in my heart when I was practicing the
elements of hip hop. At some point it did hit
me and I was like, you know what, if other
people got to see this, they would love it. Now.
(09:12):
I wasn't thinking globally. I wasn't even thinking, you know,
like the country from state to state. I was just
thinking like, you know, just parts where nobody had heard
of this before, Like if people got to see this,
witness it, because a lot of people around here is like,
that's this book. Why y'all doing that? Y'all wasting your time.
(09:32):
You'a aren't gonna get nowhere of doing that. Why are
you stepping up your sneakers spinning around on the goddamn flow, Yo.
You can't come in here doing that's you got to
take that. Get out to the park, yo. Why are
you writing all over the goddamn change vandalizing the mother
to the city, and this and this and that. Everything
got vilified, Everything was bellified. Dan said, why are you
can't sit in the street? You know what I mean?
That got dualified? Graffiti? That got delified, all right, DJ?
(09:55):
And if you played music too loud to to you
know what I mean, that got devilified. All that's not music, okay,
you're just using other people in the yeah, mother, and
that's an art form unto herself? What's wrong with you?
All right? And then when rat came along Bloom they're
not really saying anything. It doesn't mean anything. That's bulls doing.
They're just talking about partying and how many girls they
have until the message came out. That was the first
(10:16):
record that kind of validated the spoken word aspect of
hip hop Fat Joel. Before that, it was all about
having a party, happy birthday. They been in Dan It
was all about a party, you know. To the hit
Ho Hi, you know, everything was it was all a party.
(10:42):
And so that was the first consciousness in hip hop.
And if you notice at the end of that video
they get locked up for no reason and put me
on him a police car and for the lord the
same we're talking about two days, the same exact aggression.
(11:03):
We're talking about two days. And so they were at
every time and they change the message in the hip hop.
They definitely did that one million percent. About a dozen
rap singles have been released locally in the New York
area in the late seventies on independent labels like Enjoy Records,
(11:27):
Sounds in New York, and Paul Wembley. No marketing or
promo behind these records, just that local love and listeners.
In nineteen seventy nine, a Handpick rap group was put
in place and given the name of the record label.
They were on Raps first national hit, Rapper's Delight by
the sugar Hill Game became a national sensation, but hip
(11:50):
hop music true pioneers was shocked, confused, and surprised, especially
Grandmaster Cats. However, in the summer of nineteen eighty two,
the Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five featuring
Duke Booty When that drop, it was a game changing
earthquake of a song. Along with its rough edge music video,
(12:12):
it painted a vivid picture of what inner city slum
living was like in New York ghettos at the time.
Released on sugar Hill Records, it took rap from the
party to the streets to hardcore reality. Curtis blow legendary
rapper and hip hop's first rap superstar, The Message was
(12:33):
one of the greatest songs. I would say it was
a significant great song in hip hop and then came
out in nineteen eighty two. But along with that song
also came Planet Rock, which was incredible too. You know,
I had a lot of songs that were socially relevant
(12:57):
as far as messages are turned like the breaks throughout
your years. Hard times tough, a big one, a lot.
I want just enough ones. It got to be so
damned tough. But speaking on the Message, I think that
song right, there was a revolutionary song that really expressed
(13:22):
the trapmatic, the cultural trauma that we were faced with
doing the sixties and the seventies, and it was so
relative to you know, the oppression and the pain and
the racism. And yeah, great song. Great song is rated
(13:47):
the number one song and history of hip hop off
All Times or by Rolling Stone magazine. And shout out
to Duke Body rest in peace, my man, and of
course the Grand Master Mellie Mel, who we met in
a gang in nineteen seventy five and it will always
(14:09):
be my brother, my friend for life, grand Master Mellie Mel,
Grand wizit Did or pioneering hip hop DJ credited as
the inventor of the scratching technique. When the message came out,
that's when I can see that hip hop was taken
a pivotal term because the DNA hip hop DNA finally
(14:32):
was able to record something and actually able to see
and hear what we were going through in the bronx.
You know, not to take anything away from rappers delight,
but once the message came out, that's when everything started
to change. Man, That's when all the goose and the
Bronx was like yeah, like this is our time because
Big Bang Hey, God Bless him was saying rhymes that
(14:56):
was written by grand Master Cash, which is hip hop
dna if my bloodline. But once the messages came out,
that's when I could feel and see that everything started
to change in the world of hip hop, the culture,
the art form, everything started to change when the message
(15:18):
came out. From the impact of the message, that was
like a giant media landing in the whole pop culture spectrum.
That was a big inspiration for the whole conscious rap
movement and also for Nway's impactful record After Police. You
(15:38):
can draw a line right back to the message that
hard reality of this is what's going on. This is
what we're living through right here right now. It's like
a jungle. Sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep
from going under Ed Lover rapper, actor, radio personality, and
former MTV VJ. In my opinion, probably one of the
(16:04):
most important songs in the history of HEPP is the
message Rappers, The Light gave us the opportunity to know
that we can rap on record, But as great and
as many records as they sold, nobody took them three
mcs like they would end all be all was he right,
nobody's putting none of them on the top ten of
rappers of all time, just you're not going to do it.
(16:25):
So that being said, when the message came out, it
gave you that glimpse, the first real glimpse into the
inner city right of what was going on in the
in the city. It opened the door up for reality rap,
which later on gave way the gainst the rap. So
nobody was talking about that. They was. They was not
talking about that with the message brought to the table,
(16:47):
They wasn't. Nobody was talking about that. Nobody was talking
about broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the steps. You know,
they just don't can't. Nobody talked about anybody being a
thug and they're going to jail and hanging themselves in
the cell because they got turned out in jail. That
was reality, right, bro. If he the curse, curse, curse,
curse them have been the same thing as gangs. But
(17:09):
that gave birth to everybody that came after that. Everybody
that says I could talk about what I see, but
was really you know, I'm sneaking to Ouzy on the
island and my army jacket line that could have never
been said if it wasn't for the message, everything that
Jay Z said two twenty two, twenty twos and all
of that, you know, rolling in the Lexus load with
(17:32):
you know, with all of that, anything Biggie said, none
of that could have been ever said on the record
without the message being success. It was reality at its finest.
It was blunt, It was in your face. It was
what you've seen in the ghetto every day, which gave
an open door to everybody that come behind him to
(17:54):
do reality. Besides the groups that dominated early rap like
Grand Master Lashing, Furious Five, Cold Crush Brothers, Treacherous Street,
the Funky four plus one, Mercedes Laden's Fantastic Romantic Five,
and others, solo rappers would also want a strong come
up at that time Spooney G and Super Rhymes. They
(18:16):
were two local soloists making noise. But it was Curtis
Blows the break some Mercury Records that made him raps
first solo superstar and also the first on a major
record label. Kawam rapper and record producer Curtis Blow and
He's like He's the King of Rapper. Curtis Blow was
the first solo everybody was in a group. Everybody was
(18:38):
a part of the group. Here comes Curtis Blow producing
the records. He's rapping, he's singing. He has videos. He
has like clean videos like you know you have the
message which is like grainy, grimy, you know, cheap video
in the streets. But Curtis Blow guy like pull on
fly videos. He signed to a major record label. He's
(19:00):
making selling platinum records as a solo artist. He's showing up.
You see pictures of him and had a shirt on
he had all these chains on its where the change
is starting at this point, you know, he got his
disc of chains on hook and then on top of that,
just when you think it's over, he's a star. But
one way he comes to Crush Grew and it's like
Curtis blows the man. And even though run DMC and
(19:22):
then you got B Street as well, but B Street,
you know, even though like you got you see one
DMC and Mellie Belle them in these movies with Crush
Grew though it was about Run DMC and it was
a vehicle for Running MC, it was clear that they
followed behind Curtis Block. I definitely give him that title,
(19:42):
like the first king of rap. Like you know, if
we had to name kings, he would be in the
first wood Fat Joe. If you're talking about fifty years
in hip hop. The man really had it. He was
the first platinum solo whist he was superstar, was the
first I saw with Jerry on the shirt, open looking,
(20:04):
squagged out. You know, he had he saw all the praise.
He had uh uh rule the world and then he
had the king celebrate kN kn't celebrate. He did this
up dedication to Martin Luther King. They're up under him.
His camp was the brother hey Jay opening the Bronx
(20:30):
up up in the Bronx, hey day they had like no,
Curtis Blow is a living legend. He's the first y'all
saying the class in the rap movie. He was you know,
he was a legend. He deserves it. He was the
Blue Pray And if you ask the prioneers, if they
be truthful, they'll tell you he was the first like
rap star. Now did Mellie Melvin come bigger than Curtis Blow?
(20:52):
I think so, But Curtis Blow was, you know, the
first superstar. Curtis Blown Blow as the first rap superstar.
You know, I always said yes, but in my humility
and just thinking about it more as I read these
(21:16):
interviewers and listened to these interviews, the modest situation is
to be transparent and tell my real truth of the matter.
I think that the sugar Hill Gang was the first superstars.
I was the first solo superstar in hip hop. Yes,
(21:39):
that is true. But I stood on the shoulders of
the sugar Hill Gang. And I must say that because
that song Rappers Is a Light started it off for
a whole lot of people. So the message, without question,
one of raps most important songs was sugar Hill listed
it as being by Grandma to Flash and the Furious Five,
(22:01):
when in actuality it's just Mellie Mell on the record
rapping and Duke Booty rest in Peace on the chorus
Grand Wizard Theater. Or when Rappers Delight came out, it
was like everybody was bumping Rappers Delight and they caused
on the streets everywhere. Man crazy man. So it had
(22:24):
to be between Rappers Delight and Curtis Blows Christmas Rapping,
because I think they came out like months apart from
each other. When Rappers Delight came out, it was like
It opened up a door for everyone in the world
to see and hear a culture, you know, a culture
that I was locked in a certain part of the
(22:45):
world that eventually became worldwide. You know, it doesn't matter
where you live. You can live in Japan or Australia,
or you in Africa, you're in Malaysia, you in Canada,
you're different part of the world. But everybody's going through
the same thing. They're trying to get their government to
do the right thing. Some people are single parent homes,
(23:09):
going to school, you know, drugs. All of this was
coming out of hip hop. You know, it was the
voice of the voiceless. And that's what happens when when
hip hop became worldwide, and that's when the first record
actually came out. People seeing a way for their voices
(23:30):
to be heard. Carl Cannin fashion designer and the godfather
of urban street wear, Rapper's Delight. You know, I'm saying,
Rapper's Light came out. Everybody wants to be like one
to Mic Big Hank, and we all started on Little Crew,
were always trying to imitate them. You know, it was
the coolest thing out Like, they gave us a sense
of pride, sense of feeling a sense of unity and
(23:53):
just repeating those rats were back to front. It informced
us to started on DJ Crew because you know, growing
up a staff in East New York, we always part
of the five percenters. That's just what it was in
our projects, and mulesn't down to five percenters, you know,
get r an Ova. So we all had knowledge itself
at a very young age, which helped us a lot too,
because he made us look at the world a little
(24:15):
bit differently. So all those things, all those factors played
a role into building the character of who I am today.
Fat Joe the biggest it was. It was one of
the biggest songs ever created. Shuggarho as a label label
was the first the creators. It was the first to
take rec artists and put them on Vining til Via
(24:38):
Robinson and so she was beyond ahead of a time,
and she knew stuff about music business that nobody else knew.
She was ahead of a very intelligent But years later,
if you would have asked me this ten years ago,
I would have been like, yo, shig. But years later
you realize day they took a verse from Grandmaster Cass.
(25:04):
They jacked his verse and never gave him money, never
gave him publish it, never gave him nothing. That don't
sit right with me no more with that record, you know.
And it's sad because you know, I love that record,
that records my childhood. That record is one of the
greatest records and hip hop visitery. But to know that
they did that at the time where I just explained
(25:26):
to you that an MC got it right there on,
Oh no, that's a crime. But is it one of
the biggest hip hop songs of all time? Yes, some
people would say it's the biggest grand Master Cass. That
was a template for hip hop, for rap music, hip
hop culture. You know, it's a lot more than you
know a song. No matter how how big that song became,
(25:49):
it was just one element of the culture of hip hop.
So it definitely led the charge as far as rap
music and the recognition of rap music and culture of
hip hop. The part I had I played as I
wrote by the third of Rappers Delight. I wrote all
the Big Bang Hank's lyrics that he recited in Rappers Delight,
which inadvertently bade me hip hop's first ghostwriter. Unpaid, unpaid
(26:14):
coast in No way wasn't collaborative. These are rhymes that
I had written, you know already. These were in my
repertoire rhymes and they were on tapes. So Hank was
just mimicking the rhyme from the tape. When when they
auditioned him or for Rappers de Light, he didn't tell
them that he didn't rap, that he was my manager.
That's how that was supposed to go. Okay, Hey, hey, guys,
(26:37):
we're making a record and we heard that you rapped.
You know what I mean. You're in the piece of
shop at your boom box, you know what I mean,
And guys are rapping, you know. Would you like to
audition for this record that we're doing now? If you
managed me, what are you supposed to say to her?
I don't rap, man, but I manage casting Ova Fly
one of the best rappers in the Bronx or MCS
(26:58):
at the time. He was to calling ourselves rappers. That's
what he was supposed to do. But he didn't do that.
He just got in the car with them and started
reciting by rhymes from the tapes, and they loved it
and made him part of the sugar Hill Okay, in
reference to Grandmastercaz, who wrote all of Big Bank Hank's verse,
which was basically stolen from from Kaz. He's so gracious
(27:20):
about how he speaks about this. Tens of millions of
dollars should have gone two Grandmaster casts for his efforts
on that important record. And it's interesting how Jay Z
on his big hit Izzo, drops a line where he says,
I'm overcharging for what they did to the Cold Crush.
He's really speaking about what happened to Grandmastercas, how they
(27:43):
stole his lyrics on sugar Hill Russell Simmons Record Executive
and Entrepreneur. The first thing paused, and then we played
a lot and people talked about it, but then really
wrapped the light. I opened the door. They didn't open
the door really because I had Priston wrapping on the
shelf while the light without it. Nobody wanted it. And
I told you how we got it, you know, and
(28:03):
everybody who existed, like Black, we don't want that. There's
only one record. I don't know how it got here.
And then I remember when he had Rappers Delight first played.
All the rappers were mad. We had an armory and
I first heard Rappers Delight and there was like thousands
of kid a couple of thousands, and all the big
stars were played, but not Hollywood and not a Chief
and not thoughts, but you know, like the flashes of
(28:25):
the world. Flashes stob that from the ground. I mean,
he was the big ticket seller of that world. So
all those guys were there and it was at an armory,
and he played Rappers Delight, and many of us felt
that they had stolen off future that we would have
rappers Delight, not me of the rapper, but the rappers
up with big but their music and rappers the Light
(28:45):
came from artists who would not from the community, and
we were light shocked by that. That was seventy nine,
or at least every nine, and caused Christmas Rapp, who
was laked every nine, so it was as she felt
that they stole everything. They opened the doors, but no
one wanted to play another rapper after. I remember that
radio was forced to play Rapping the Light. It was
just so big they couldn't get away from it. Just
(29:07):
as the following year, Christmins Rapping played the B side
played all year long, and then Christmith came along again.
They played Pristmith Rapping nineteen eighty coursing eight one or
eighteen end of a deal maybe eighting one that came
the breaks and he played that Christmas rapping the breaks
of both Curtis Glove. On the next episode of the
(29:30):
Fifty Years of Hip Hop podcast series, we go back
to a time when rap was not played on the radio,
with the exception of New York City, which had a
couple of stations WBLS and WHBI that would play rap
on the weekends or late night during the week and
this episode is going to dive into the rise of
(29:50):
rap hitting the airwaves and causing a major shift in radio.
Coach to coach. This episode has been executive produced by
Dolly S. Bishop, hosted and produced by your Boy Fab
five Freddie. Produced by Aaron A. King Howard, Edit, mixed
sound by Dwayne Crawford, music scoring by Trey Jones, Talent
(30:11):
booking by Nicole Spence.
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