INTERVIEW WITH B-BOY SKI JUMP (THE FLOOR MASTERS / HARLEM)




                                                       

B-Boy/MC Ski Jump

                                           conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders)


SIR NORIN RAD:"Where were you born and raised?"

SKI JUMP:"I was born and raised in East Harlem, New York. When I first entered the Hiphop era I was living in East Harlem but I was staying with my aunt in the Bronx back and forth."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where exactly in the Bronx did your aunt live at?"

SKI JUMP:"183rd Street & Valentine Avenue.... yeah, one block away from the Grand Concourse."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where and when did you encounter B-Boying for the very first time?"

SKI JUMP:"Staying with my auntie.....but before I learnt that type of B-Boying where you hit the floor....my brother who is right over me and his crew they were dancing a lot but they were doing a lot of Uprock B-Boying.  Those were pretty smooth guys, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where would you see your brother and his crew dance at?"

SKI JUMP:"Well, they would dance around, you know, the house and in the neighbourhood and I would follow them to a couple of parties and I was like,"Wow! Those guys are kool as hell!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"I guess that was during the era when the dance was still done mainly on top, correct?"

SKI JUMP:"Right." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"When exactly was that? Around 1973?"

SKI JUMP:"Between 1973 and 1974." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"So these parties that you are referring to were they outside events?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, little outside functions and then I'd see him in....it was like a bar scene..and they went there. It wasn't really crowded or anything, they were just playing some music and they would do their thing, you know, until the crowd got there." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"And you said they were really smooth with it?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, they were too kool to get down on the floor and get their clothes dirty or anything because they were always dressed real nice."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please describe the way they dressed?"

SKI JUMP:"Most of them used to go to A.J. Lester's on 125th & 8th Avenue and buy their clothes. If you bought clothes there, you know,  you were a baller back in the days. They wore the Overlap pants with Playboy shoes, V-neck sweaters with the mocknecks under them and  they wore brims and Kangol hats."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What kind of effect did watching your brother and his friends have on you? Did it inspire you to become a B-Boy?"

SKI JUMP:"Yes, because, you know, I wanted to be like the guys that were older than me because they looked so kool. I didn't know anything about dancing or anything like that besides what you see the kids on TV doing."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I see. So what was your next step towards becoming a B-Boy? Did you ask your brother to show you the ropes or would you try to imitate what he was doing?"

SKI JUMP:"Right, right. My brother....you know, I didn't hang out too much with them because they were on another level but when they would leave I would sit there and try to imitate what I saw. And then when I went to spend the weekends at my aunt's house in the Bronx...those guys up there they would hit the floor, you know?  They weren't doing too much but the stuff they was doing was pretty kool."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So your brother and his friends would practice at your house? How would that go down?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, they'd practice before they would go out and hang out somewhere. My mother had a record player...stuff like that, you know? They would put James Brown on the record player. You know, we had one of them long reord players, the radio was on one side and on the other side was the turntable. The records were kept in the middle in a little cabinet." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"I guess those B-Boys that you encountered in the Bronx had a style that was dfferent from that of your brother and his friends in that they were taking it to the floor?"

SKI JUMP:"Taking it to the floor but they didn't have but so many moves back then, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"When was it that you saw them doing it?"

SKI JUMP:"Around 1974 going into 1975." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"And where did you meet them?"

SKI JUMP:"There was a small park right outside of my auntie's apartment building. Everybody would sit on the benches, you know, somebody would play music out the window of the apartment.  We were outside, doing stuff. We had nothing else to do because we couldn't go nowhere because we were too young to be walking around the neighbourhood."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How old were you at that time in 1974?"

SKI JUMP:"74 I was about 12. I was born in 1962."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, please describe the process that lead to the creation of your crew?"

SKI JUMP:"Well, I would dance and some friends of mine in East Harlem saw me doing it and they would try to imitate the stuff I was doing because I started going down on the floor, you know? It was only a couple of floor moves that existed at that time. You know, people were doing the split. People would cross one leg behind the other one and your knee would hit the floor and they would spin when they came back up. It was a lot of gestures involved like acting like you hit somebody's head with a baseball bat......disrespectful little gestures, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Doing these gestures was like a remnant of the style of the first generation of B-Boys, right? All these intimidating moves..."

SKI JUMP:"Act like a dog and you walk over and you're peeing on him like he's a fire hydrant or a tree. Little stuff like that, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"When did you form your crew The Floor Lords which later became The Floor Masters?"

SKI JUMP:"I guess it had to be around 1976...somewhere around there 'cause I was coming out of junior high school, ready to go to high school and once I got to high school I met my boy E-Man and then I was in the same 9th grade class with MC Rayvon, MC Johnny Wa, DJ Spivey  (all from The Magnificent Seven from Harlem), DJ Master Don. All of us were in the same 9th grade class." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"The name of that high school was Julia Richman High School, right?"

SKI JUMP:"Yes. Once me and E-Man got together......you know, I wanted a crew and we had a few guys that liked what I was doing with the B-Boy thing and at the same time E-Man was pretty nice so we decided to get a little crew together and I just started calling us the Floor Lords. In fact, E-Man still calls himself "The Imperial Floor Lord". Then we had a little issue with a local gang that was called The Young Lords. Since they called themselves "Lords" they thought we were a gang, too. We didn't want to be associated with being a gang and so we decided to change our name to "Floor Masters" to avoid the beef. It's not that we were afraid of them or anything like that but it's no room for any problems like that. We're B-Boys, not gang members, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did E-Man get his name from that Jimmy Castor song?"

SKI JUMP:"I think so, yeah! E-Man stood for Everything Man. His real name is Eric, but I believe that's where he got this name from." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"How long did you run with that name Floor Lords before you changed it to Floor Masters?"

SKI JUMP:"We ran with that name for about a year or so but then once we started getting a bunch of members we soon had enough members to actually be a gang but we just weren't. We had a nice size crew because guys would come out of the woodwork wanting to be down with us. But we had to pick and choose who would be qualified to be in the crew. " 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What were you as the president and founder of the Floor Masters looking for in potential new members as far as skills and swagger are concerned? What were the criteria that had to be met?"

SKI JUMP:"The way you dressed... also your moves had to be different, we didn't want everybody to be dancing the same. Everybody had to have their own signature look and style. Not being afraid when you see that circle to get in the middle of that circle and throw down." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe E-Man's style of B-Boying!"

SKI JUMP:"He was aggressive with it, he would put it on you. We clicked as friends from the first day we met."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who were some of the other prominent members of your crew? I think you've already mentioned Ice Man to me  who was the cousin of the legendary B-Boy Sondance from the Rock City Crew."

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, the Ice Man."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall how you recruited Spivey? Had it something to do with him being your classmate in Julia Richman High School?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, that was one of the things but then he also lived in Schomburg Plaza. Him, Rayvon, Johnny Wa....all of them lived in Schomburg Plaza. So we would go over there and hang out. They had this little Plaza Park where they had the benches....it was a big open area. So we would take a Sanyo radio there and somebody would have a little tape. So somebody would play the tape with the beats on it and it was on from right there, you know? Spivey was the DJ of the Magnificent Seven (from Harlem)."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Was Spivey B-Boying before he became a DJ?"

SKI JUMP:"Yes. He was very good in gymnastics........he did the backflip, the frontflip, all kinds of flips. He was very good at that." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What about Skeeter, Ernie D and Swang? Where were they from?"

SKI  JUMP:"Yeah, Skeeter and Ernie D...they lived in some of the other projects in East Harlem. I got my guys from different projects: Jefferson Projects, East River Projects, Wagner Projects, Schomburg, I lived in UPACA Housing. In East Harlem everybody was everywhere so you got to know people in all projects."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did potential members have to go through some kind of initiation process like battling you or other members of the Floor Masters or would you decide whether they could join your crew from having seen them going off at a jam?"

SKI JUMP:"Seeing them going off at a jam, basically. We had a couple of guys who had to battle somebody to get in.  Like my boy Prince Haji. He battled Skeeter for his spot and he beat Skeeter but you know Skeeter was still our man so he was still down with us. It was just that Prince Haji came in the mix, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"How would you describe Prince Haji's style?"

SKI JUMP:"He was a kool cat. Originally his B-Boy name was Drac 'cause he had those fang teeth. His would stand out more than a lot of people's fang teeth....like a vampire. But he would dress really nice. He would dress in suits like Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours or whatever. He would wear those slim suits with the skinny ties. He was one of the best dressed kids in high school."

B-Boy Drac aka Prince Haji (The Floor Masters)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please name those spots that you and the Floor Masters would go to and dance at?"

SKI JUMP:"Chuck Center was one of the main spots when it came to B-Boys in Harlem. Mr. Souls, Clinton Center, down there by 1199...... Club 300. Then we would go to the project centers, we'd do something in UPACA, Wagner Projects, Johnson Projects...they threw a lot of parties.....Foster Projects really threw a lot of nice parties! That's Martin Luther King Projects but they called it Foster Projects. Taft, Jefferson....I mean there were a lot of spots. They would also jam in the parks in the same projects. Somebody would bring their equipment out and it was on from there."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"To hear all this about Harlem is really amazing to me because obviously there was a B-Boy scene as well in the mid- to late 1970ies."

SKI JUMP:"Right, you had other crews that started forming at that time. Then we would go to the Westside sometimes, they would have B-Boys over there, too. They would have the Renaissance Ballroom, the Audubon Ballroom....I mean they had a lot of places over there. The B-Boys from the projects of the Westside had a whole 'nother style. So we had to get in there and we had to prove ourselves 'cause them guys over there they didn't play games with you."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Let's talk about Chuck Center for a minute. Poison aka Clark Kent from the Herculords told me that he used to go there with the  (Ni**er )Twins and dance. It seems that place must have been one of the major spots in B-Boying back then."

SKI JUMP:"Yeah. Chuck used to have football teams for the youth to stay out of trouble. He gave them some place to go. Chuck won championships in every division. It was like sandlot football. He had the center afterwards and you didn't go to his center acting up. You had to respect the place, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe that place!"

SKI JUMP:"It was on the ground and it had enough room to fit a couple hundred people in there. You didn't have to go up or down no stairs, you would go straight in and when you went in there, you know, the DJ was on point. He was not cutting it up or nothing like that because that technique  hadn't developed at that time. The DJs at that time were still using the Disco style of mixing. The younger kids couldn't go into the nightclubs where the older people were 'cause the older people didn't want to see us dancing on the floor. They considered us to be cleaning the floor. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who were the DJs that played the music at Chuck Center?"

SKI JUMP:"I can't remember a lot of the names.  I only know one guy named White Cloud that used to play in there."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Were there also females in that Chuck Center party crowd or was it mainly males gathering there to test each others B-Boy skills?"

SKI JUMP:"There were a lot of girls in there!!! A lot of girls! That's what made the guys wanna compete and get in the middle of that ring! When you got the young teenage girls they were more impressed with B-Boying than the older girls." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"So trying to impress the girls was also an important part of B-Boying back then?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah....It was about how you dressed, the way you carried yourself...that swag, you know? You had to make them girls wanna come get you."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"What happened when a cat got destroyed in front of the girls? Did that lead to violence at times?"

SKI JUMP:"Every now and then you would get one of them guys, you know? Because anybody that got burnt.....that's what it was called back in the days...."burning somebody"..... if you got burnt, yeah, your pride was hurt. That would tell you that you needed to go back to your practice spot and develop your skills some more or get back on the floor and come up with something else."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the influence that James Brown had on the B-Boys in your era!"

SKI JUMP:"He was a huge influence because everybody wanted to know how to do the Split and stuff like that. James Brown, you know, he had the footwork! Nobody had better footwork than James!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"When you speak of footwork you don't refer to a three step or a six step which are done from a crouching position though, right?" 

SKI JUMP:"Dancing on top...it was about how slinky your legs can be, you know? Your feet moving at the same time.......You had to catch people's attention, you know? They would make a circle around you."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What's the story behind the inception of the Floormaster Tots? Well, first of all what is the correct name? Floormaster Tots or Tops?"

SKI JUMP:"Floormaster Tots! We had a bunch of younger guys that would follow us like Donald D, Dice and a couple of young latino guys like Lil Johnny Zip, Chino Chan.......they would always be around us because they lived in the same neighbourhood but they weren't old enough to hang out with us. They couldn't get into no parties so they couldn't go represent with us. You became a Floormaster if you were 13 or older....if you were qualified. I created the Floormaster Tots so that the younger guys had something going on and we could take our younger crew and battle other younger guys. You don't want to be no older teenager battling some 10-year-old kid, you know? So I got my Tots. Tots was more like when you eat tater tots. Like kids, you know? Some of them I guess they got the expression wrong and they started calling it the Floormaster Tops."

B-Boy Lil Zip (The Floor Master Tots) RIP

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you were also the one that created the Floormaster Tots?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, I created that myself."
 
SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you also pick their members?"

SKI JUMP:"In the beginning I selected the members.....all the guys I just named. My cousin Dice, Lil Johnny Zip and Donald D were like the top guys of the crew.  Johnny Zip....he lived in my building...he was more advanced than a lot of them because the boy can dance!!! He learnt real quick, you know? He became like the president of the crew. Some of their older brothers were some of the gang members in the neighbourhood but they was trying to do something to get away from the gang era, so you know they got their little crew." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall what made you recruit Lil Johnny Zip and Chino Chan?"

SKI JUMP:"Well, most of them would live in the same block and the same building. So we  outside just chilling in the block, they're in the block, too. I know a lot of them since they were in diapers. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"What were the hang out spots of your crew? And how did you spnd your time together besides dancing?"

SKI JUMP:"We had a couple of little spots, we would hang out in the projects....over in Jefferson Projects and Johnson, you know? Jefferson Projects had this cement bench that was half a circle. Everybody called it the half moon. We would go over there, you know, sit down as young boys, drink some beer, smoke a little bit and we would be in that half moon and breakdance. On my block on 119th Street & Lexington Avenue they had a building called 1800, they had a little area that you could sit upon that was gated in. They had a few tables and benches, we would sit in there and practice sometimes because everybody lived right there in the same block. So if you got tired all you had to do is go home. You didn't have to travel nowhere."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What are your top 5 B-Boy breakbeats?"

SKI JUMP:"I would say "It's Just Begun"....."Apache" of course, "Rock Steady" by Aretha Franklin, "Blow Your Head" by Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s, "Give It Up Or Turn It Aloose".

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the feeling that you had when you walked into a party back then and heard these beats?"

SKI JUMP:"That would get your heart pumping. You would try to see who's in there first, you don't even start dancing, you will go around and see who's there first. Seeing certain people there you knew you would wind up in a battle. When they would see the brother with the ski goggles and the wide brim walk in, they knew he was coming in to do it. They knew me just by that because a lot of guys didn't wear the wide brim and especially didn't wear goggles. People saw me, they knew it was gonna go down because I was always in the spotlight with dancing. I used to do the Hustle as well and I was very good at that. I used to teach the Hustle. You know, you had the guys in the black neighbourhoods that would do the Hustle, then you had the latino guys, they were always good at that. That was always their thing but after a while a lot of the blacks started to learn how to do the Hustle and we had a whole 'nother style than them. And the Eastside Hustle differed from the Westside Hustle  'cause the Westside had this bounce when they were doing it. It was a pretty nice style."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I was told by Chip that at Kool Herc's parties they did a specific type of the Hustle, too. They even did that to some of the breakbeats like "The Mexican". To what kind of songs did you do your version of the Hustle in Harlem?"

SKI JUMP:"A lot of the times it was original Hustle records until they started coming out with breakbeats that would go along with it, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"What kind of relationship did you have with the Executioners? Did you ever go against them?"

SKI JUMP:"The Floor Masters originally used to battle them and the Crusaders. The head of the Crusaders was actually my brother-in-law. A lot of us went to Julia Richman....as I said Julia Richman had a whole lot of Hiphop history. After a while Lil Zip and them they started having their own little battles and their own little things going on 'cause, you know, they were younger than us so they were more outgoing than us. After a while we started to lay back a little bit and we started travelling going to parties outside of East Harlem. We would go to the Bronx, go to the Westside. The Floor Master Tots would travel in a whole 'nother circle and they would get into all kind of battles."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please elaborate on the Crusaders?"

SKI JUMP:"They came from Carver Projects and Washington Projects.....stuff like that. They had this one guy, his name was Rock....he had a child by my younger sister. Him, his brother Smoke, they used to drive this van around, full of them guys. They would go somewhere and they would come out of this van and breakdance against people. They were pretty good though I'm not gonna take any credit from them. Just like I have seen a lot of clips where a lot of latino brothers trying to act like people weren't recognizing them back in the b-boy days. Yes, a lot of them were there but my thing is: What year were you there?  I'm not gonna say no crew didn't exist because you don't know every crew that's out. There may be a crew somewhere that didn't have a big reputation but they were there kicking butt, you know?  But they weren't there in the early 70ies. They came along during 1977....somewhere around that time. That's when a  lot of latinos started coming in and them boys were real nice! Before that they used to do what you would call a latin style of Uprock and of course they would also do the Hustle."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did the Floor Masters wear specific crew colors? Like sweatshirts with the name of your crew on them in Old English letters or regular letters?"
  
SKI JUMP:"We had that back in the days because our colors were black and gold. When we got the sweatshirts...of course you can't find no gold sweatshirts....we had yellow sweatshirts with black letters on them that said, "THE FLOOR MASTERS" and they would have our name on them and we would have on black jeans."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What mad you quit B-Boying and pick up MCing?"

SKI JUMP:"A lot of us wanted to switch over because you already done proved yourself on the floor. So basically you wanted to get into MCing and get your rhyming on because you had DJ Lovebug Starski and DJ Hollywood and DJ Donald D (The Sapphire Crew) and all of them. Harlem was doing the MC thing and a lot of guys were afraid to go to the Bronx back in those days. A lot of guys that claim that they hung out in the Bronx actually did not. It was a handful that did. When you went up in the Bronx it was a whole 'nother flava!!!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who were your major influences as far as MCing is concerned?"

SKI JUMP:"The Furious Four! I went to all the Flash parties! I would travel to the Bronx to see them. They were like The Temptations of Hiphop. Mele Mel was the baddest MC of the game! Everybody wanted to sound like Mele Mel! The whole Furious Four and then later the Furious Five was tight like that! You went to see the whole crew.  They were the first to do the steps, they were the first to have the five mics lined up on the stage. They just had a bad ass crew!  I also went to see The L-Brothers...before they became The Fantastic Romantic Five MCs.....Busy Bee, Master Rob, Kevie Kev and a girl named Smiley. And then I used to go to see DJ Breakout, DJ Baron and The Funky Four before they turned into the Funky Four Plus One More. Rahiem was down with the Funky Four. Those were my top three places to go."

June 6th, 1980: Ski Jump and his crew, The Gangster Five, compete in the "Battle of the Project DJs" at I.S. 201 (Shout outs to the flyer king Sureshot La Rock for hooking me up with the flyer!!)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you wish to give any shout outs at the end of this interview?"

SKI JUMP:"Shout outs to my crew.... the original Floor Masters and the Floor Master Tots and you know my Gangster Five MCs! Shout outs to all the guys that contributed to the whole Hiphop era! I don't care what color you were or what neighbourhood you came from. I wanna thank everybody for contributing to what we call Hiphop today."

                                                   Interview with Kool DJ Blue 

                                                  

Kool DJ Blue

                                                       

                                   conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders / Germany)


SIR NORIN RAD:"From which part of Harlem are you originally?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"So...I grew up on 1932 Second Avenue. That was between 99th street & 100th street and Second Avenue.  Right across from Metropolitan Hospital and Washington Projects."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please break down the geographical difference between the Eastside and the Westside of Harlem?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"East Harlem starts from anything after Madison Avenue. From the east side of the street of 5th Avenue all the way to The FDR. That's all East Harlem. Anything from Lennox Avenue all the way to Broadway...12th Avenue....that's all the Westside of Harlem. Then you got your Uptown of course....going up to Convent Avenue & 131st street......which they called Sugar Hill, they called it the Wild Wild West all the way up to 155th street. You had DJs like Master Don (RIP) who had the Westside and The Crash Crew and a lot of other DJs up on the Westside. Then you have the Eastside where you had DJ Kid Flash, you had DJ Dollar Bill, you had crews like The Crusaders and myself, Kool DJ Blue. Ski Jump who was with me when I DJed for the Gangster 5 MCs. DJ Louie Lou who was the DJ for Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. God bless his soul! He had passed away. A lot of times when they speak about Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde they don't mention him which I thought was kinda sad but I always mention him anyway. Then you got Spanish Harlem which starts from 110th Street all the way to 96th Street or something like that. They're on the Eastside."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was your first encounter with Hiphop? Where and when did it take place?" 

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Well, I started in 1979. I think I was 15, my first encounter with a DJ was my brother Lep Ski. He started it, he had equipment and everything and I would see him doing it and I started liking what he was doing on top of the fact that he had this here voice. They called him "The Golden Voice of the People's Choice - DJ/MC Lep Ski". So I would go out there and I would see him playing music. Now he had his own system and anytime he'd leave the house I would be on his system until he recognized that somebody was messing with his system.  So he knew it was me. Anytime he walked out he'd say, "Don't touch my system!" But I would touch it anyway. Once I looked out the window and I'd see him going down the block I would touch it anyway until I got busted! But I didn't know I got busted until later on when I realized how he knew that I was still messing with his system. All he had to do was come and put his hand on the amplifier and he would realize that it's warm. So I was busted all the time! In Washington Projects was my first encounter with playing music on my own. What happened was...my brother Lep Ski went out to play some music and I would just stand by his side. So he went to go mingle in the crowd but he told me,"Here you can take over!" So of course now I'm nervous!  I'm like maybe 13 or 14 like that there.  I said to him, "What am I supposed to do?" Now he looks at me like I'm crazy. He says,"You know what to do. You been doing it every time I left the house!" So he pulled out a couple of records and I jammed them! The crowd, you know, went wild to see this young little kid behind a DJ system and keeping everybody dancing. So that was my first encounter with Hiphop. As things went on....as 1979 got into the 1980s...I started playing music outside in Johnson Projects where I encountered DJs like DJ Louie Lou....Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde used to come over..... DJ Ronnie Green and a lot of other DJs. By that time I had my own system 'cause my brother got mad with me and said, "Listen,  you wanna be a DJ you get your own system!" Me and MC Priest...who was my MC at the time... MC Priest he also encouraged me to do it. He said,"Listen man, if you go ahead and do this I'll be your MC!" So when I started, it started out with DJ Blue and MC Priest. May he rest in peace! I said to him,"If I do that don't you back out on me!" 'cause MC Priest he would start something and then he don't finish it. So after that we started playing music outside like Johnson Projects, Jefferson Projects, Wagner Projects and the more you play outside, the more people get to know who you are , they like what you are doing and stuff like that. I went to Julia Richman High School and that's where I met DJ Master Don and he told me, "Come on down to the Ponderosa!" He was like the house DJ of the Ponderosa. I think it was on 144th and 143rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue or something like that. It was a restaurant...like a bar & grill. It's not there anymore. Like I said our name started growing and then going to school with DJ Master Don.....we had a school boat ride......and our names had gotten so big by the time of that boat ride that we had to take a vote on who was gonna do Julia Richman Boat Ride. The principal didn't want no ruckus over the fact that here are these two DJs that have been out there and have been doing their thing and got a name for themselves and now it's starting to be a problem with the students where they want DJ Blue or they want DJ Master Don & The Death Committee. Well, opposed to having a big problem the principal said, "We're not going to have neither one of the DJs!" Although Master Don got a lot of votes and I got a lot of votes, it just became a tie. So they said,"We're not gonna have neither of them!" and they went with DJ Spivey & The Magnificent Seven. Grandmaster Dee of Whodini went to Julia Richman, too. He also jammed in Julia Richman and he came by and said, "Hey, Blue! Can I get on those turntables?" And I was never the one to  say, "Nah, nah!" I said, "Go ahead! Get on, enjoy yourself! Pick whatever records you got and enjoy yourself!" I never treated anybody like I was more better. I was always like, "Come on in!" So as time went on I got connected with Kid Flash who became my brother-in-law and he hooked me up with Mike & Dave (Mike & Dave Productions)."

DJ/MC Lep Ski

SIR NORIN RAD:"From Lincoln...."

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Right. Mixmaster Mike & Disco Dave. Then you also had DJ Mr. Freeze and DJ Kenny Sex. DJ Mr. Freeze promoted a lot of my parties as well."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where would these parties take place at?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"With Mixmaster Mike & Disco Dave they would have parties at Randy's Place...that's like on 125th Street.....they had some at Celebrity Club and they would promote them at the schools like I.S. 201 and they promoted this one party "East versus West" or something like that. To my knowledge at that time it was said that whoever win get paid, whoever don't win don't get paid. It was all cool and everything, it was all in fun. They promoted that party where you had a lot of DJs......like DJ Pernelli-O and them (The P-Brothers Disco) , DJ White Flash, The Magnificent Seven.... a lot of them....I don't remember right now because I don't have the flyer in front of me but it also was DJ Blue & The Gangster 5 MCs. Then they promoted another party called "Battle Of Harlem's Best".....that was on Old Terrace Ballroom...I think it was an old masonic building or something like that...right on 125th Street off of 5th Avenue. That was also one of the biggest parties that they had given. A lot of their parties were also given in the Lincoln Projects. At that particular party at the Old Terrace Ballroom it was DJ Blue & The Mafia Family which consisted of MC Al Capone, MC Joe Ski- RIP, and MC Kool Joe- RIP. Those were the MCs that I DJed for. D.J. Blue & M.C. Priest had parted ways by that time. M.C. Priest stayed with the Gangster 5 M.C.'s. At this party we stepped out a midnight blue stretched limousine and everybody was like,"Look who pulled up in a limousine?!?" At that particular party at the Old Terrace Ballroom I remember it well, all of us were wearing godfather hats. M.C. Kool Joe had on a black godfather hat, he stepped out the car holding the left turn table and stood to the left. Joe Ski also wore a black godfather hat, he stepped out to the right, holding the right turn table. Al-Capone wore a white godfather hat, he stepped out holding his personal mic and stood to the left. I wore a blue godfather hat with my set of headphones and I walked up the middle as the crowd parted."

May 24th, 1980: DJ Blue & The Gangster 5 MC's participate in the "East vs West Battle" at the legendary I.S.201 in Harlem

SIR NORIN RAD:"What caused you to move on from MC Priest to the Gangster 5 and from them to the Mafia Family?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"It started out as DJ Blue & MC Priest. After a while Priest started seeing his girlfriends and stuff like that. Then we had a party at a place called We Are Somebody which was at 110th Street & Avenue which was an old film studio. People like DJ Mr. Freeze jammed there...MC Priest stepped down from rapping at that party. But then he came and started hanging out with Ski Jump (legendary Harlem B-Boy / MC), Prince Haji and a kid by the name of Kendu. They got together and became the Gangster Five MCs. There was fifth guy, I don't remember his name off hand. They would join forces with me and that's when we went to the I.S. 201 party with Mixmaster Mike & Disco Dave that I told you about. We did that, then once again everybody went their own separate ways. Later on I was introduced to MC Al Capone who was cousin with MC Joe Ski and MC Kool Joe. They needed a DJ so when we got together they was called the Mafia Family so then we called ourselves DJ Blue & The Mafia Family. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall how that "East vs. West Battle" at I.S. 201 went down? How well did your crew perform in that battle?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Oh well, listen! They did a routine with a song that was called "Gangster Boogie" (by the Chicago Gangsters). What happened was they said, "Listen Blue, we gonna start off with "Gangster Boogie"!" First of all, Ski Jump would say an introduction in terms of who he was and they would go down to  the next MC, then to the next MC and by the time they got to the fifth MC they would all say, "We are the Gangster 5 MCs!" and that's when I was to supposed to drop the "Gangster Boogie" beat. Instead of them saying "Gangster Boogie!", they would say "Gangster Five!" So that record was like hot! Then from there so that they could go off and do their thing I dropped "Groove To Get Down" by T-Connection. Well, of course they also had steps and all that stuff and each one of them went off on the mic and did their thing. The crowd was loving it! But how it turned out the Eastside did win!"

September 20th, 1980: Kool DJ Blue & The Mafia Family participate in the "Battle Of Harlem's Best" contest at the Old Terrace Ballroom

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe your method of acquiring new breakbeats back then!"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Wherever you can find records, that's where you go get them. It was Cheap Records on 23rd Street between Lexington Avenue and Park Avenue. I shopped there. I shopped at Downstairs Records at 43rd Street or something like that. It's been so long.....Al Ski worked there and anytime I went there I said,"Okay, Al Ski! What new you got?" He'd be like,"Blue, check this out!" He would throw the beats on and he'd say, "This just came in!" So when he played those beats for me I'm registereing in my mind like,"Okay, okay...." I'm listening to it, seeing what kinda beats he's going through and I would say, "I want it." So he would put it to the side and he'd throw the next one on.  Whatever he had I would get, on top of the fact that I was also registered with those record pools. I was registered with Mojo Records. The director of Mojo Records was a man called Stan...I don't recall his last name.  Howie Dee  turned me on to Mojo record pool and I got in with that so of course when you're in that you get all kinds of records. Stuff that wasn't even out yet! So every week you gonna get records and you have to do a write-up on those records to see how well they do in the clubs........Like would you play this record? Would you not play this record? Would you promote it? There were records that were like not that good but you could make that record good depending on what you mix it with. In order to get into a record label you had to be a house DJ somewhere. That's the way it was supposed to be but with these directors...as long as you were paying dues it was like, "Listen, we need the DJs to come in." So, say you didn't have a club you was jamming in...as long as you were jamming in the park you were a active DJ they would be like, "Yeah, come on in!" because when they give you the records they give you paper work with it that you have to write up to say how well these records do. Those were the terms and conditions of being in a record pool, you know? By the time you came in to pick up your next shipment of records...if your paper work wasn't in they wouldn't let you pick up that shipment of records for the week. So you had to stay up on that paper work. It wasn't just spinning records you had to fill out this here questionnaire. Let's say they gave you 15 records.....there were 15 records in your bin....when you go to the record pool you have a bin with your name...."DJ....whoever you are" and you might have anywhere fom 5 to 15 records which means now you have to do paper work for each record. If you came in one week and you didn't have it they may say, "Alright, I'mma let you pick up your shipment today but now you know you owe me a double package!" Cause that's how the record pools stayed up. They had to get that paperwork to who they was dealing with."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you have certain beats that made you stand out from your competitors? From the other DJs that were rocking in the parks in Harlem at that time?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Well, what made you unique back then..you know, back in the days DJs would cover the label of the records that they were playing. So you wouldn't know what it was. We all would do the same thing...shopping for different records...it could be some type of western music but if it had a so many seconds or minutes beat you would take that and you would say,"Okay, they (the other DJs) don't know what the rest of this record is. I'm gonna jam this and mix it with this or with that. " So anytime you could come up with something that nobody else got and then turn into something special that always made you different from the next DJ.  What happens is partygoers they go and they hear these beats over and over again though they still like them like "Before I Let Go" (by Frankie Beverly & Maze)....now you can play that record and I don't care who you are you play that record at any party and people gonna be like,"Yo!" and they gonna party and you will still get the crowd pleased because that's a record they can identify with but anytime you get a beat and you turn it into something that's what makes you stand out. The crowd would say, "I haven't heard that before!" and they would remember that, especially if you made them dancing off of that. They would remember that and if they ever heard it again...I guarantee you..they would say,"I heard that beat before and the first person I heard play that record was DJ Blue."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"Would you say that there were people in Harlem who came to the parties specificially to hear new beats being spun by the DJs in the park?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Well, you gotta remember you had the MCs who were hyping things up so half of the time the crowd was into the MCs doing their thing and they may not even recognize that record right then and there. It's only until that MC would say something like, "You're listening to the sounds of Kool DJ Blue! Hit it!" and then you'd drop the beat and then they would give you that minute and let you cut that beat up. That's what made them hyped off of that record especially if it was something new."

SIR NORIN RAD:" What made you pick the name Kool DJ Blue?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"My mother used to call me Baby Blue. So when I was younger before I got into the DJ thing she would always call me, "Baby Blue, come here!" Of course it's from that little nursery rhyme..."Baby Blue go blow your horn..." That's where it probably came from. As I got older and started doing music it was DJ Blue, right? Then the way I would play music was too kool. I wasn't the Flashes of the world, I wasn't the Theodores of the world......Did I scratch?  Yeah, I scratched and stuff like that but it was more of a smooth type of way of jamming that record to the point where it became Kool DJ Blue."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which influence did the Boogie Down Bronx have on you?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Well, one thing about my MC Priest. Priest was dating a girl from the Mill Brook projects (South Bronx) and he was hanging out in the Bronx. So we would go up there to hear different DJs like C.C. & Company which was MC Money Mike's crew, Grandwizard Theodore and stuff like that. Getting from borough to another we didn't have no car and back then...I got to be honest....if we didn't jump the turnstile we walked because basically the Third Avenue Bridge was right there. We would walk right across the bridge. As a DJ or MC of course you are always listening to other DJs and MCs. I looked at it as a learning lesson. I'm not better than you, you're not better than me. If you can move the crowd, you can move the crowd. However, there was a little twist in there and it was all in good fun. We would go to different places and of course we didn't carry no equipment. So if we see a DJ there we would ask, "Hey, can we get some? Can we get a little bit of that?" And they either let you or they don't for several reasons because they don't want nobody coming in there and after they been rocking and they get the crowd and then they let you get a little bit of those turntables or that mic and then you kinda make it look like you're better than them. They was often kinda staying away from that. One incident...I remember we went to Mill Brook projects and MC Money Mike and his crew was down there. They was playing music in the park and Priest said to me,"Yo Blue, let's go over there and see if we can get on!" So we made our way through the crowd, I went to the DJ...stuff like that....MC Money Mike was rapping on the mic...so Priest said, "Hey, Money Mike! What's going on?" We didn't know each other like that but Priest asked, "Yo, can I get some of that mic?" Money Mike said, "No!" (laughs) He said, "No!" So Priest said, "Yo, check this out! I can't get none of that? I mean, come on man! You know we're out here doing this." Money Mike said, "No." So Priest said, "I tell you what. Let my DJ battle your DJ and I'm gonna battle you!" Priest was good for doing crap like this. He'd done this with Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde when we went over to Schomburg and battled them for the first time. So Priest said,"I tell you what, Mike. Let's battle over this mic. If you win I'll never rap again but if I win you don't touch this mic no more tonight. " He gambled but Money Mike wouldn't challenge him because..and I don't wanna put him down but from what I have heard...he didn't have too much. He would go, "This is Money Mike, y'all!" Then he would spell his name out or whatever the case was and then he'd go into "Throw your hands in the air!" He didn't have too much coming behind that so I guess Priest already knew he had him beat anyway. Back then they walked around with their little books of rhymes and stuff like that there, you know? So he already knew what time it was. He also did the same thing with Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and DJ Louie Lou over at Schomburg...I think it was Schomburg. Did Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde let Priest get on? Yeah, they let him get on. Now, did Priest win? No, but he put up a hell of a fight. Why? Not that he wasn't good, it was just that Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde had their crowd there already. Was the crowd fair?  They was very fair, they gave Priest his props 'cause Priest did do his thing but Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde they still won that battle."

MC Priest (The Gangster Five)

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did these MC battles go down in Harlem back then? Was verbally abusing your opponent and threatening him part of it like it is today?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"It was definitely a whole different genre from what it is today. They were talking about fly girls....at that time the word "fly girl" came out....they talked about how beautiful the fly girls was, how they (the MCs) dressed, how they would talk to the fly girls, they talked about the O.J.'s (luxury car service)  in terms of, "I pick you up in a fly O.J." The MCs talked about how good they was on the microphone. They would never talk about nobody's mother or their family and they were never talking about killing and stuff  like that. That's why it's so crazy today to hear how they talk more about death...like dying is not a problem, almost like they are rapping about they live to die. No! They got it twisted. I say, "Bring the party back!  'Cause back in our days when we was  jamming we was more into the music, into the dressing.....like the Cortefiels, the Playboys, the British walkers, the Kangols. You get out of the O.J and you're looking dapper. That's how you roll up in a party! You go up in there, you're looking to talk to some female, get your little dance on and stuff like that. That's why I'm trying to tell you, "Bring back the party 'cause y'all so caught up in doing all this gangster stuff  that y'all forgot that Hiphop is about the party!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"That's a powerful statement!" 

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Yeah, you know, me and DJ Dollar Bill battled and we are still friends today. There was no animosity, we did that battle to entertain the people."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe how that battle went down!"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"That battle took place in East River. There was a park over there....between East River projects and Wilson projects just next to the FDR Drive. It was me, MC Priest, DJ Mr. Freeze and it was DJ Dollar Bill. We got on the turntables and the way it went down was he would take a certain record and cut it up and also do some scratches and mix it with other records. Then after that he would stop and then MC Priest would say something about me like, "A lady had a baby that's pretty and brand new. The doctor slapped him on his ass and called him DJ Blue!" And then he'd go,"DJ Blue!" Now anytime he said, "DJ Blue!"I would cut it after what he would say, right? And then he would say,"You go on and on and on and on! The beat don't stop till the break of dawn!" and I would drop that record "Scratching" (by the Magic Disco Machine) and cut it up. Then I started getting faster.....BAM, BAM, BAM and then DJ Mr. Freeze got on and he would work one turntable side and I would work one turntable side and we would still hit that BAM every time. That was backspinning. He would backspin...BAM....I would backspin...BAM. Then after he let go I kept working both sides of the turntables and then the crowd just said, "Yo, DJ Blue got it!" 

SIR  NORIN RAD:"So what was your stomping ground back then?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Being that I was from Johnson projects, Johnson Park became my stomping ground. That was the home, that was the home of DJ Blue. Then from Johnson I would go over into Jefferson and jam. Then after meeting DJ Kid Flash and all that I went to Wagner projects and I started rocking more in Wagner because that was the home of DJ Kid Flash, DJ Kid Swift....DJ Mr. Freeze would jam there although DJ Mr. Freeze was from Jefferson and we would do that right there on 124th Street Park. I even played in Brooklyn, New Lots one time... It was a bit scary because around that time Brooklyn and Queens they was all known for systems that looked like housing projects. They would have like five big speakers on the right and five big speakers on the left looking like towers and stuff like that. But they didn't have no music (in terms of breakbeats). They had Brass Construction, Crown Heights Affair, El Coco, MFSB but they didn't have what Harlem and the Boogie Down (Bronx) had. So when I went out there I played that record "Walks like sex, it talks like sex".......I played that in Brooklyn and they looked at me like, "What the hell is this record?!?!" So to get them back into their comfort zone I threw on "Cocomotion" by El Coco and they got back into doing the Hustle because you can't take Hiphop and bring it to an environment that isn't ready."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you describe the process by which crowds were drawn to the parks?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"You see this the thing about the projects...you didn't have to put out no flyers or nothing like that, if they heard some music and if it was louder than a boom box they knew somebody brought a system out somewhere and it would just automatically draw a crowd. Now if you're doing it right there in the Wagner projects people would be like, "Yo, they got the music out!" So now they gonna come it's just a matter who it is that got the music out. They won't know until they actually come out and then they start telling their friends and everybody always made their way up to the DJ. Then they would see who it was..whether it was Kool DJ Blue, whether it was DJ Kid Flash, whether it was DJ Kid Swift....whoever it was they would know once they got up there and then they was out there. Sometimes the MC would be testing his mic, "One, two...one, two." and if they heard a beat drop after that "One, two, one, two" and they heard the MC going off people would just come. So no matter what project you went to all you had to do was bring your set out. Once you brought that set out people would come."

January 9th, 1981: Kool DJ Blue & The Mafia Family perform at Twin Disco

SIR NORIN RAD:"What do remember about East Harlem B-Boys going off at the park jams? Like the Floormasters, the Crusaders or the Executioners?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Listen, anywhere were there was music and it was outside and you were playing all the Hiphop records they would show up. That was their thing! Once you played "Apache" and stuff like that..."It's Just Begun" by The Jimmy Castor Bunch. Once the beginning of "It's Just Begun" came out, the B-Boys would start forming because they knew what time it was and then they would go off. After "It's Just Begun" you played "Apache" that was the continuation to let them continue to get theirs off. After "Apache" you played "Shaft In Africa" (chuckles).....mmmh, yeah I mean listen, man.....you better believe by the time you finish playing "Shaft In Africa" people was sweating!!! It was over!"