May
2009: Just added a 1988 interview with the WBLS and Juice Crew legend Mr. Magic.
""It took three years for Magic to convince a major New York station that it was crazy of them to ignore rap music and the huge audience it could reach. Finally in late '83 "The Mr Magic Rap Attack" started running every Friday and Saturday night on WBLS. It was there that he met up with a young scratch DJ by the name of Marlon Williams who impressed Magic with the range of his abilities. "Marlon's strength was that he mixed disco and rap DJ styles: he could scratch, blend, edit, splice, anything! And so, in the early part of '84 "Mr Magic and his Engineer Allstar Marley Marl" established what was then a unique format for a rap show on a major station."
February
2009: Just added a 1988 interview with the Godfather of Rap, Spoonie Gee.
"Rapping's the closest I could get to singing so I started out rapping at local jams, on the street, in the parks, anywhere, you know. Anyway to cut a long story short my uncle, Bobby Robinson, who was president of Enjoy Records, had this record store up in Harlem and back in '79 this guy Peter Brown came by looking for rappers to put on his label, the Sound Of New York U.S.A. Well my brother worked in the shop and he told Peter Brown that I was a rapper and the next thing that happens is that I sign a deal with Sound Of New York U.S.A. and go into the studio an' cut "Spoonin Rap" without a single rehearsal. After that I went to Enjoy and did "Love Rap" and then onto Sugarhill to do "Spoonie's Back" before moving to Tuff City who I am still with."
Click
on the Spoonie Gee image above to get there.
October
2008: Just added a 1988 interview with New York graffit artist and hip hop legend Rammellzee.
"John Michael produced nothing. What he did was pay for it. I produced the words, some other people produced the beats. K-Rob was basically portraying a kid coming home from school and I was portraying a pimp on the corner and the kid asked me about what should I do 'I don't want to go to school' and I was saying to him, 'Yo you better stay your ass in school.' And all the things I went through in the subways underground. But I've done a few more records since then."
June
2008: Just added an interview with LL Cool J from 1988.
"Left to itself, rap's been the fastest evolving music for a long time - listen to The Sugarhill Gang and compare it with today's rap, they sound like disco music... they had a house band. It'll always survive if it goes on changing like that."
April
2008: Just added an interview with Kurtis Blow from 1980.
"We, the deejays, had to do something to make our shows a little bit different... a little unique. Rappin' really started on the instrumental breaks. It began as ego-trippin'... y'know, childish and quite irrelevant, but pretty soon it became an accepted thing, almost expected in fact, and those clubs who had rappin' deejays started to pick up."
Click
on the Kurtis Blow image above to get there.
April
2008: Just added an interview with Public Enemy from 1987.
"We used to make tapes to fill the void from not having enough records to play. At this time, ’84, there just weren’t enough records to play. When we did “Public Enemy No.1” it was a radio promo for WBAU in 1985 – the record everybody heard in 1987 was two and a half years old."
April
2008: Just added an interview with Marley Marl from 1987.
"Well, I started off in 1978 D.J.ing in clubs and parks around where I live in the Borough of Queens here in New York. During the day though I was at school in Manhattan and that’s where I started hearing these really def rap tapes that kids from the Bronx were bringing to school."
September
2007: Just added an interview with The Funky Four Plus One from
1981.
"It
was DJs and B-boys. All the groups had MCs but the MC wasn't
into rhyming or unity yet, they were just talking, like radio
announcers. Then it got to a point where somebody started "Hip,
hop, hip hipity hop" and "To the beat y'all, freak
freak y'all." And people started wanting to hear that."
Plus
a short interview with Sylvia Robinson dishing the facts on
Sugarhill Records.
The
lowdown on a US Rap obscurity from 1984 -
Irvington, New Jersey's one and only Rapping Police Officer...
Click the 'Cracker Rapper' link on the left and check him out!
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Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message (Live on The Tube 1983)
