Interview with MC Joint Ski (Broadway Production / The Diplomat MCees)

                           Interview with MC Joint Ski (Broadway Production / The Diplomat MCees)  

 

                                                              

     MC Joint Ski (Broadway Production / The Diplomat MCees)

                                       conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders / Germany)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where exactly in the Bronx did you grow up at?"

JOINT SKI:"I grew up in the North Bronx, in the Wakefield section. East 219 Street & Olinville Avenue off of White Plains Road up in the North Bronx."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, and when were you born?"

JOINT SKI:"I was born in 1964."

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

JOINT SKI:"I went to a party....I believe it was at the P.A.L.....the Police Athletic League Association. It was a rec room, almost like what they call a Boys Club sort of thing and they used to have parties in there and I went there one time and some DJs and MCees were there doing their thing." 

SIR NORIN RAD: "Do you recall who they were?"

JOINT SKI:"The L-Brothers......DJ Mean Gene and his crew. I  started out as a DJ ....and a lot of MCees then were DJs first because MCing hadn't really taken off yet, you know, being on the mic. Somebody was DJing and then we had the B-Boys...the Break Boys.  It was more DJing and dancing, that was the beginning of it. So yeah I was at the P.A.L. on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, not too far from Fordham Road. I might have been fourteen or fifteen years old." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you got into MCing later?"

JOINT SKI:"Yes. MCing advanced and became gradually more popular. When Hiphop started it blossomed from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. Like every neighbourhood had a faction of DJs and MCees and then as it grew it kinda merged at places like the Ecstasy Garage, The T-Connection and the Disco Fever. The spot in my neighbourhood was the T-Connection. I could walk from my house to the T-Connection. It's a walk of maybe ten blocks. So that's kinda where I came up."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I have heard that the T-Connection was one of the most prestigious clubs in Hiphop during the late 1970ies and early 1980ies...."

JOINT SKI:"If you got to play at the T-Connection then you knew that you had earned a certain type of reputation. I would say it's the equivalent to the Apollo in Harlem. What the Apollo was to Harlem, the T-Connection was to the North Bronx."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe how you felt the first time you were exposed to the sound of breakbeats at a jam."

JOINT SKI:"I mean it was incredible!!! When I heard those breaks for the first time it was so loud and so clear!  You would feel the beat in your body because of the soundsystem.  The DJ kept the same beat, going back and forth, not the whole song just the beat part of it. It was just the concept that made me say,"Oh, my goodness! This is hot! This hot!!!" (excited) So I wanted to be up there as a DJ and that's what I did like I said I became a DJ first."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I think it's important to stress the fact that it took incomparably more to become a DJ back then than it takes today."

JOINT SKI:"Yeah, that's true. There was a status symbol back then in the early days of Hiphop. It was how many crates of beats you had. If you only had two crates of records you wasn't considered a DJ. You still had a long way to go. But  you know, if you had a dozen or even fifteen crates of  records that was a status symbol! Some Crews would have dummy crates to make it seem like they had more records than they actually had. And you even had to have a soundsystem. The funny thing about is is, many crews were named after soundsystems. So the soundsystems had their own names. Like the Herculoids....that was Kool Herc's soundsytem. I grew up in a neighbourhood where there was a crew called the Kaos Crew. Their soundsystm was called the New Dimension soundsystem. Our soundsystem..the soundsystem of Broadway Production was the Black Shadow."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the process through which you became a DJ."

JOINT SKI:"Initially, how I first started .....'cause you know I was a teenager.....I think I had a part time job....delivering papers. That's where I got the money from to buy my first mixer and turntables. I started out on two different turntables. I think they were called BSRs where the arms comes over and the record drops down. So I started mixing on those first....mixing 45s. I got a mixer...I think I got it from a pawn shop. It was a very simple mixer. As far as  getting records I raided everybody's record collection. My uncle's, my aunt's, my cousin's. Every time I went to my aunt's house I went through theirs. And here's the thing I don't know if you have noticed it or not. You can take a record, look at the grooves and you can see if there's a break on there."    

SIR NORIN RAD:"Alright, so when did you start bringing your equipment outside in order to do parties?"

JOINT SKI:" I grew up in a home, in a house. So we had a backyard and my equipment was in the backyard in a garage. My garage just happened to be in the back of my house and I had a yard there so it was very private. So what I would do is I would bring the music out on a Saturday and then people from my block would just come in and they would be like,"Hey, I hear music!" They would come there and they would see me mix and then the word just kinda trickled out that I was playing music back there. You know me and my brother Grandwizard KC and my oldest brother T Ski (T Ski Valley) he was out there with us, too. My oldest brother is DJ/MC T-Ski and my youngest brother is Grandwizard KC who was my DJ."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Hold on! You're saying that T Ski Valley who did that famous rap record "Catch The Beat" is your brother?"

JOINT SKI:"Yes, that's my brother, my oldest brother."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I see. So I guess since he was down with the Erotic Disco Brothers as a DJ that also had a huge influence on you, right?"

JOINT SKI:"Well, we kinda had just like different factions, different crews. Erotic Disco Brothers was my brother T Ski and DJ Disco Prince and I don't know if you have heard about DJ Warlock. DJ Warlock lived across the street from us.  DJ Warlock was down with us, with Broadway Production and he was also my oldest brother's DJ. He was also down with the Erotic Disco Brothers. So he went between both crews and so he got the best of both worlds. So my brother T Ski was doing his thing with his crew and I was doing my thing with my crew. So then eventually we started to get good and people started to like us. Then when MCing started to grow, me and my youngest brother said, "We have to find some MCees!" So we would hold auditions in our basement. We would jam in our basement all the time, we had all kinds of jams there. I would let everybody know in the neighbourhood, "Hey, I'm looking for MCees. You should come and try this!" So MCees would try out and at that time I couldn't really find any good MCees. So I said, "You know, let me be an MCee myself!" So I started MCing and DJing."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What other methods of acquiring breakbeats did you use besides raiding the record collections of  your friends and relatives? Did you trade titles with other DJs?"

JOINT SKI:"No, we never traded titles. That was a no-no. What you would try to do is you would sneak and try to take a peek at what the other DJs were playing and then you would try to find it and that's when DJs would take black electrical tape and they would black out the labels on the records so other DJs couldn't see the record that they played. So it was always about finding beats that no one had ever heard! And there was a place down there in Manhattan in the 42nd Street area that was called Downstairs Records and everybody would go to Downstairs Records because there was just records everywhere!  There was just rows and rows of records and you would just go through them and see what you could find. So we would go there...any place where there was a record store...no matter if we were hanging out or  just walking by..if we saw a record store we would walk in and look around if we could find any gems. And after a while, you know, we started getting money because we were doing shows and we were getting paid. So you know, we started investing that money. Any money that we earned we would go and get more equipment, new microphones, more records...every cent that we earned we would put it right back into the soundsystem and what we tried to do. " 

SIR NORIN RAD:"How many crates of records did the DJ section of Broadway Production have back then? Like when you were at your peak?"

JOINT SKI:"Personally, I had probably about ten crates.  I'd say DJ Warlock maybe had about ten and my brother Grandwizard KC...he probably had about fourteen crates of records. So between us three we had crazy crates of records! We wouldn't even bring all the crates out to every jam. We would say, "Okay, let's just take these." We had our favourite crates. We used to line up the records in order so if we was doing a party we knew where to grab the record. So when we was coming out to do a show depending on where we were and how long we was gonna be on...sometimes we would go to a show and we were just part of the show...it wasn't us hosting the show so then we would only bring about six crates, that's all we would probably need. But if we were doing the show...like we rented the place out and we would sell the tickets and it was our show, we would bring all the crates because we wouldn't know which way the party was gonna turn in terms of what we needed to play! There were times when we would bring all of our crates just to show off. Like I said it was a status symbol and we would bring our crates just to let everybody know that we had them even if we didn't need them all."

SIR NORIN RAD:"DJ Tibbs told me that bringing out all of your crates to a battle in the park was actually part of your strategy to intimidate your opponent before the battle even started. He called it psychological warfare."

JOINT SKI:"That's absolutely true and I'll tell you another thing which we would do as psychological warfare: our amplifiers!!!! Like the physical amp.. Some crews had really huge amps. The mere sight of them would intimidate you. The Kaos Crew had its  amps on dollies. The dollies came into play because the amplifiers were just too heavy to be carried by hand. It was easier to roll them in. It was interesting, too, to see how everybody had a different soundsystem. It was really unique. Unique in the sense of appearance as well as type of sound and what you could afford. Remember back then crews were just figuring out what speakers sounded well with what amplifiers."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where did you get that name Joint Ski from? Was it given to you or did you choose it for yourself?"

JOINT SKI:" (chuckles) I haven't answered that question in many, many years! When I first started DJing and MCing...since my first name is Kevin ...I called myself Captain C or Cap C   and I had a guy with me whose name was Kenny. So we were the K-Crew. That didn't last long though. We were doing a party in the basement one time and there was a crew that wanted to battle us. I let them go first, they said their rhymes. So when I got on the mic I started rocking! I did a pretty good job. You know, the crowd was loving it. There was this phrase that they called, "The Joint Ski". Like, "Oh man, that's the Joint Ski!" It meant something like, "That's cool!"  So the crowd was like, "Oh man, that guy is the Joint Ski!!! He's good!" And then it just stuck. They started calling me Joint Ski."

SIR NORIN RAD:"When did that happen?"

JOINT SKI:"That was in 1979."

SiR NORIN RAD:"What was the reason why you called yourself The Diplomats?"

JOINT SKI:" It was a couple of things.  We wanted a name that was different. Everybody had a something something crew.  So we wasn't gonna do this. We wanted something that sounded more chic because...how can I say this kindly..... we weren't necessarily street guys. All MCees have different backgrounds. Some guys were in the street....scrambling, pimping or whatever. We were from a different kind of background. So we wanted our name to be a little more chic, a little bit more diplomatic. So it just kinda came. So we said, "What about the name The Diplomats?" It was also easy to rhyme to, you could write a lot of rhymes to it. So then we were just The Diplomats. There was another guy that was with us but he left the crew relatively early. So we would take off the number of our name and just leave it at The Diplomats." 

December 29th, 1980: Broadway Production rocks at the Sound Symposion in the Bronx

 

                                                          

SIR NORIN RAD:"So in the very beginning you called yourself The Diplomat Four?"

JOINT SKI:"There was four of us. Myself, Dollar Bill, Jimmy B and another guy, his name was Frankie D. As I said he left us relatively early. So essentially when we started doing shows and getting money it was three of us and then our DJs were Grandwizard KC and DJ Warlock."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, and when did Broadway Production form? Was that also in 1979 or later?"

JOINT SKI:"It was later....there was some kind of maturation period. I would say it was the summer of 1980 when we were really established."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"Would you still DJ at your shows after you had begun MCing? Or did you strictly focus on MCing?"

JOINT SKI:"Oh no I did both. We kinda had a format. I think other crews had that as well....  When we did a show...now I'm speaking of  we're hosting a show 'cause there's a always a difference..... sometimes someone else is  throwing a party and we're just appearing for a short time but when we were doing a party we always had a structure. So we would all take turns, doing a segment of 15, 20 minutes on the turntables. I would go, Grandwizard KC would go, DJ Warlock would go....each one of us would do a segment to get the crowd pumping. Then once we went on the mic, once we started MCing I would get on to get warmed up, doing solo stuff and then the rest of us would get on the mic as well. Once we all did that, that's when we were rocking with Grandwizard KC as our DJ. Doing routines..we had all kind of routines. That's when the show really started and I would focus on the MCing at that point. But I mean I had been DJing for so long that I could always get on the turntables and rock for like 20 minutes." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"You told me that your crew had a band of dancers that were called The Broadway Supremes. What would they do at your parties?"

JOINT SKI:" They had choreographed dance moves and sometimes we would join in with them and dance. We had a complete show way before everybody was putting complete shows together. Most times they would dance on stage in between our sets. Other times in the crowd. "

Broadway Production and The Broadway Supremes

 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which were the top DJ/MC crews in your area of the Bronx?"

JOINT SKI:"In my section it was Broadway Prouction, it was my brother T-Ski and The Erotic Disco Brothers, it was The Kaos Crew and there was DJ Basic. He was from our area but he was more towards Boston Road which is kinda close to my area and there were a couple of young crews coming up but they wasn't doing it on the level that we was doing it. We were more out there but they was doing their thing. Those who were really out there out there was us, Erotic Disco Brothers and The Kaos Crew. Those were the top 3 crews from my area but because we lived so close to T-Connection, the T-Connection was like our base and so many MCees would come to the T-Connection from different areas....from Downtown, Harlem....we got to see a lot of different DJs and MCees. We knew the owner so we could always get in. We were very fortunate that we were so close." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Would you say that you benefitted from the fact that you were constantly able to see all these different DJ/MC crews from all over the Bronx and Harlem perform at the T-Connection?"

JOINT SKI:"Absolutely! You wanted to see what the competition was doing. There wasn't any internet or youtube where you could watch these people. Even when Rap did start getting played on the radio, only very few of those crews had a record out and those Rap records were just recorded songs, not live performances. You got rappers that can perform very well in the studio but they are not that appealing on stage. We were that kind of crew that was into that real  MCing. So we always wanted to see other crews live, how they performed on stage and how they interacted with the crowd. That kind of stuff. We wanted to know where the bar was and get the ranking of these MCings. There were different styles. You had crowd pleasers, some guys would do reality rap. We got a taste of all of it."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was the main stomping ground of Broadway Production?"

JOINT SKI:"Our stomping ground was the T-Connection and the Valley. I used to live in the Valley as a young boy. I never lost my connections 'cause I still had friends out there. Even though I moved to the Wakefield section of the Bronx my roots was still in the Valley. The Come Off Crew (a Disco crew) they was out there. They had their system out most nights and we would rock on their system 'cause it was right in their backyard. Valley Park is where it's at! In summer time...Sunday night...it became a ritual, everybody looked forward to Sunday night in the Valley Park." 

August 17th, 1980: Broadway Production rocks at Valley Park along with Kool DJ Herc & The Herculords and Grandwizard Theodore & The Fantastic Five

 

SIR NORIN RAD:"How much time did you and your comrades invest into practicing?"

JOINT SKI:"An average practice session would be like three hours. We would come in, we would talk, eat pizza and we would hang out before we started working in terms of practicing. We would be together all day anyway. So we had to say, "No, we're not going to play basketball. We gotta have practice." Everything came out of us being together everyday. We were really, really loving this!! In terms of individual styles...my style was more of an aggressive style. I was rapping more about reality type stuff. Dollar Bill was more of a freestyler and Jimmy B was the crowd pleaser. "Hey, get your hands in the air!!" He would talk to the crowd and get the crowd pumping like Busy Bee Starski. He was more that kind of an MCee. We had three different styles individually but then when we came together and started doing routines we were like a unit. So yeah we had practice sessions, we had to show up on time and we had rhyme books. At the end of the month I would go through everybody's rhyme book to ensure that we were keeping up with writing new rhymes. One of the things that I've always noticed back in the day a lot of MC groups would use the same material over and over at every party and I didn't want to be that way for my crew so we was tasked with constantly coming up with new material, that was just my way to ensure that we were staying active with writing rhymes. It was so competitive in terms of the MCees who were doing stuff. It was very competitve. The crowd could tell immediately if you wasn't for real because they had seen good MCees and good groups. So if you came up short they would know. So you couln't fake out the crowd, you had to be able to rock the crowd. It definitely took a lot of practice."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did your crew have a leader? Like Grandmaster Caz was the leader of the Cold Crush Four? Or were you equals?"   

JOINT SKI:"No, I was the leader of Broadway Production. See, we were all equals because we saw each other as friends. In terms of the crew you had to have someone who would talk to club owners etc.  I would go and speak for us if there were any kind of negotiotaions to be held.  Getting gigs all of these things. Technically you would say that I'm the crew leader. I would say that every crew has to have a leader."   

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the process through which you would come up with new routines."

JOINT SKI:"Typically how we did it was......If a person came up with a concept for a new routine he would have to show us that he had put in some serious effort in order to make that new routine work. Let's say Jimmy B wanted to do something new. He would have come to practice and show us. Like Dollar Bill, he was great! He could sing. Out of all of us he had the best singing voice. I couldn't sing. So he would often come up with routines that were mimicking popular songs...like Stevie Wonder. So he would come to our practice session and he would say,"Look, I got a great idea. I wanna do something with Stevie Wonder." I would say, "Let me hear it!" Then he would go through the most of it, demonstrating it. Then I would say, "You know what? I think we can run with it. Jimmy, what do you think?" Most of the times he would say, "Yeah! Let's do it!"So then we would put our minds together and we would work on the lyrics. We would take all the rough edges, smooth it out and make it come to fruition."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the relationship between Broadway Production and the Erotic Disco Brothers, your brothers crew. Did you ever battle each other?"

JOINT SKI:"(laughs) We actually battled Erotic Disco Brothers one time. We lived on Olinville Avenue and the street down there was a group home and they had a big open space in the basement. That's where we battled one time. Let's just say it didn't go well for them. We didn't view them as competition. My brother T-Ski he was very fortunate that he had a hit record and that he became very popular but from a technical point of view we didn't see Erotic Disco Brothers as a threat. There was no real rivalry between us. As a matter of fact we did a lot of parties together. Our battle took place very early when we had just started but everybody battled everybody back then. " 

Grandwizard KC & The Diplomat MCees

                                                         

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did Broadway Production also rock at Olinville Park?"

JOINT SKI:"Oh yeah!  Olinville Park....like I lived on Olinville Avenue..Olinville Park is maybe a couple of blocks from my house but that was considered the Kaos Crew's stomping ground. That was their home turf."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Was it important to look fresh as an MCee back then and what did looking fresh entail?"

JOINT SKI:"Oh, you had to look fly! It was usually the latest shoes and sneakers....like Adidas shelltoes, British Walkers.....A.J. Lester's pants, Lees, designer jeans like Jordache, Sergio Valente..maybe with the creases. We used to get our jeans painted with graffiti letters down the leg. You had to look fly! Some people would wear the Kangol hats. Style was everything. Having style was part of the whole culture! Your style.....your appearance style and your charisma blended into your MCing style."

SIR NORIN RAD:"That's deep! Please highlight the way that MC battles went down back then."

JOINT SKI:"It was never ever violent. It was never like, "I'mma shoot you down! This and that!" We were just having fun, enjoying the party and we were really having a lot of respect for each other. We appreciated the different styles that everybody had. And if you got defeated it was like,"Okay, you got me this time. I'mma get you next time!" That sort of thing. It was never ever violent." 

May 24th,1981: Broadway Production participates in a DJ/MC Convention at the legendary Ecstasy Garage in the Bronx

 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What are your top 3 breakbeats to rhyme over?"

JOINT SKI:"Oh man! One of my favourite beats was "Catch A Groove" (by Juice). Another one of my favourite beats was "Funky Penguin" by Rufus Thomas.  I loved to rhyme over "Love Rap" ( by Spoonie Gee). I also loved to rhyme over "Get Up And Dance" by Freedom. When we did a Broadway Production and KC put "Funky Penguin" on everybody knew that I was going rock the mic to that. It was a given. That was my jam!!! My style went nice with heavy uptempo beats with heavy bass and heavy kicks."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was it like when you stood on the stage among your crew mates, riding the  beat and you had the crowd going wild?"

JOINT SKI:"It's really hard to explain. When you're up on stage and you notice that the people are feeling you because you're doing something that they really enjoy...it's hard to explain....it's very fulfilling!!! The interaction with the crowd, giving them something that they liked....that was very fulfilling. And it was also very fulfilling for me to see my crew rocking the crowd. When I rocked the crowd, when I did my thing I also took pleasure in watching Dollar Bill rocking the crowd. Dollar Bill was smooth now! You know it's a special kind of energy. It transforms and it goes across the room and you can recognize how it affects the crowd!!! Conversely I have been at shows where I said to myself,"What am I doing here?" because the guys who were performing didn't have that energy, they were not bringing the rhythm like that. They were rapping but I didn't feel anything." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Why did you call your sound system the Black Shadow?"

JOINT SKI:"DJ Warlock for the most part took care of our system. He went and bought woofers. Just regular woofers that wasn't in a box. He built our own speakers! Warlock could draw really well...he had really good free hand artistry and he would draw these pictures of guys smoking a joint, with the big hat and the glasses. You know, those graffiti B-Boy characters. He didn't do them on a wall but he could sketch very well. And he would draw these pictures of speakers and we would say, "That's black shadow!!! When we saw that picture we was amazed. It had a mysique to it. It was Broadway Production with the Diplomats and the Black Shadow soundsystem! It just fit together!" 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Would you like to give shout outs at the end of this interview?"

JOINT SKI:"Yes, I wanna shout out to my crew. To my youngest brother KC (Rest In Peace) and I wanna shout out my fellow Diplomat MCees. Dollar Bill and the original Jimmy B. Those are my boys and we had a great run. Memories, man....beautiful memories that I'll never forget."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Thank you! I wanna give a shout out to my Intruders Crew, to Pluto Seven, Troy L. Smith and to my mellow my man Sureshot La Rock."

 

    

 

         

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with DJ Kenny Ken (The Cheeba Crew)

                                             Interview with DJ Kenny Ken (The Cheeba Crew)

                                                 

DJ Kenny Ken (The Cheeba Crew)

                                    conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders /Germany)

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

DJ KENNY KEN:" Actually I was born in Manhattan, but we moved to the Bronx. So I basically grew up in the Bronx."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please elaborate on which area of the Bronx you grew up in?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"Actually I was raised on the edge of the South Bronx. I grew up on 1585 172nd Street which is Bronx River. It's one block up from Bronx River Projects, so that's the area I grew up.  Right across from 1585 is James Monroe High School."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Isn't Bronx River also considered to be a part of the East Side of the Bronx?" 

DJ KENNY KEN:"Yes, it is considered East Side and then there is the 3rd Avenue Bridge which is a little bit further down south.....maybe two miles and then you're in the South Bronx."

SIR NORIN RAD:"When were you born?" 

DJ KENNY KEN: "I was born in 1961."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall to what kind of music you were exposed to as a child?" 

DJ KENNY KEN:"As a child I was exposed to all kinds of music. Mostly R&B kind of things of the day. My parents would play music throughout the house....you know, they would play records.. whether it was 5th Dimension, whether it was Bill Withers. My uncle happened to be a musician. My father was a musician as well. He played with the Jimmy Castor Bunch initially and when I was born he had to get a full-time kind of job and he went to work in the post office and then he went to work in the New York City Police Department. My uncle on the other side was working with various people. He is the one that plays the bells in "Take Me To Mardi Gras" by Bob James (a legendary BX breakbeat). So when that Bob James album came out his name was on there. His name is Arthur Jenkins. My last name is Jenkins as well. I'm Kenneth Jenkins. He was into jazz and all kinds of things. He was a percussionist and he also played the clavinet. So yeah, we listened to a bunch of records.....to all that Soul and Funk music that was going on at the time. So we heard all of those things."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe your very first encounter with Hiphop Culture. Were you a B-Boy? Did you bomb the trains back then? Or did your first encounter with Hiphop take place through attending a park jam?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"It was very interesting 'cause one I was growing up in Bronx River and I was engaged with the precursor of the Zulu Nation which was called actually The Organization. I grew up in that neighbourhood. All that obviously started out with a gang...the Black Spades...before it started to elevate but I was around music and I remember being at Junior High School 123 with DJ Afrika Bambaataa. I saw Breakdancing in the street and there was a touch of gang to that but it was less of that and more of people being in the street and playing music and having a great time. So those were the first things that I started hearing and seeing as far as Hiphop is concerned. Bambaataa and them were in Bronx River and they played music outside in the park but they also played in 123 and I remember when it was like,"The place to be on Friday night is 123!"  So I was a young impressionable teenager at that particular time."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please describe what went through your mind and soul when you heard breakbeats for the very first time? You have just mentioned DJ Afrika Bambaataa who was widely known as "Master Of Records" back then since he had such a huge record collection and was also extremely knoweldgeable when it came to breakbeats. I was told that he actually enlarged the original first generation breakbeat canon which had been established by Kool DJ Herc by adding obscure African, Latin, Caribbean and European beats to it that nobody had ever heard before in the BX......"

DJ KENNY KEN:"Afrika Bambaataa was definitely a rebel when it came to identifying and finding those breaks. I mean we're talking about things like "Planetary Citizen" by The  Mahavishnu Orchestra.  I heard that beat nowhere else! When Afrika Bambaataa was doing his thing a lot of us would go to Downstairs Records which was at 42nd Street. That's where the record store was...People would go through 45s and albums to find those breakbeats and then the next thing you know the knowledge of those beats started to move around. Bambaataa was able to expand the foundation of Hiphop music. You're talking about records that were Rock records  like "Rocket In The Pocket" by Cerrone. DJ Charlie Chase of the Cold Crush Brothers would later speed up that record for his MCees. To be able to look at any piece of  music and to listen to the music and to find a beat out of that was a unique skill and Bambaataa had that skill. He also inroduced a lot of Jazz to Hiphop.....like "You And Music" by Donald Byrd. People like me were behind Grandmaster Flash, Grandwizard Theodore and those folks....again those were South Bronx folks. Most of us almost had something like a test record when we were warming up the sound system, you know when we plugged in to a street light or something like that. A lot of us would start with "Rock Creek Park" by The Blackbyrds just to get the people listening and then we went from there. I grew up in the Bronx but then we moved to Mount Vernon. So we moved to Mount Vernon when I was about sixteen years old but I still had all my connections. I mean I was sixteen years old, right?  I was in high school already. I was going to Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx. So I'm up in Mount Vernon but I'm actually  driving back down to the Bronx. I would also go to Manhattan to go to Downstairs Records.....We would take the train et cetera. We would be moving around, being in Co-op City. We would do parties there and we would also do parties in The Valley which is right across from Co-op City. The Kaos Crew was there, T Ski Valley and his crew was there.. all of those kind of folks. We would be in parks where shootouts would happen. It's interesting because I think that the people that owned the equipment at that time for people like The Kaos Crew they owned a reggae record store and they had the kick ass boxes in there...you know, the bass boxes... and they would bring them out so that the DJ of The Kaos Crew would be able to play different things.  They were actually connected to that reggae record store. So there are a lot of interesting things that happened in that era.We got to know different people, moving around in different areas and building a reputation for music and MCing. I also did a little bit of graffiti stuff with Blade (legendary BX Writer). He was one of my good friend's brothers and we would hang out with him and do some bombing and that kind of stuff on the trains. He's an incomparable, supertalented guy. I continued to be in contact with his little brother. He's a good friend. He was in my wedding." 

November 30th, 1979: The Cheeba Crew performs at The Edenwald Center in the Bronx

 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What exactly made you pick up DJing?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"You know what? I think it was an ecclectic group of people who inspired me to start DJing. DJ Breakout and DJ Baron were up on the 233rd Street / Gun Hill Road area. They were a major influence as far as making us say,"Oh yeah, we gonna make a crew!!" That we gotta do DJing and MCing. Another guy...Sir Rockwell.....he was a friend of mine at school...we both went to Fordham Preparatory School. He had some things going on as far as MCing was concerned. We were to match things up and we created this group..we created the Cheeba Crew. Him and my brother....Kev Ski... they were more into MCing and I was more of a smooth blending DJ at that particular time.  Then there was also MC A.J. Rock who unfortunately passed away at a very early age. He was from Burke Avenue in the Bronx. We had the music in the Bronx. You know, DJ Breakout, DJ Baron... all those folks that were doing their thing. And DJ Chuck Chillout! Chuck Chillout was a  friend of ours that was engaged with us before he went to a different level. At that time someone asked us to do a party. That party was supposed to be at a community center that was on 225th Street. You know, we were hanging out on 224th Street 'cause that's where Sir Rockwell lived at that particular time. We had friends in the neighbourhood and some of them asked us, "Could you do a party for us?" They said to us that they would put out flyers and all that but for whatever reason that party didn't happen. The community center didn't let us in. So what we did was we went down the block to the T-Connection and Ritchie Tee let us play there. So we moved the party from this little community center to the T-Connection and now we're connected to  Ritchie Tee and now we're with DJ Breakout, DJ Baron and all of these folks. So that's how that elevated. In my mind it wasn't a specific DJ that inspired me but it was more us performing together as a group. One night my MCees who would later call themselves The Awesome Four came up to me and they said to me, "Hey Ken, you need to be a little bit more snazy on the wheels of steel!" They asked me to elevate my style of DJing. So that's when I started doing all that cutting and scratching as opposed to blending beats together. I then also started using different kind of breaks. Going back to my musical background as I said I was exposed to different kinds of music from a very young age because of my father and my uncle. I mean it wasn't breakbeats but through them I certainly got into music. So that's where it started for me and I was able to sit and listen to a full record. That's how I found many breakbeats that other DJs didn't even know about. Many times DJs would just hear the intro of the song and that's where they would pick their beats from. Well, as you know, Norin, a lot of those beats are buried  in the middle of the song and if you don't listen to the whole record you might never hear that specific break." 

                                                             

The Cheeba Crew

SIR NORIN RAD:"Having a powerful soundsystem was an integral part of being a DJ back then. Please describe the soundsystem that the Cheeba Crew had!"

DJ KENNY KEN:"It's really interesting because my dad was a music afficionado, right? So he had a Kenwood amplifier. We would use his amp whenever we played somewhere. One day we went down to Crazy Eddie which was close to Washington Square Park and we bought a Kenwood system. When we bought this system the sales person played "Primal Scream" by Maynard Ferguson and that first trumpet sound in the beginning of that song was what sold us on taking those speakers that day. So my father's Kenwood amp was probably maybe 200 Watt  and we would use that as our bass amplifier. So then I started buying equipment. I bought two turntables and we bought microphones. We bought Shure microphones because Sha Rock and them (The Funky Four MCees) had Shure microphones. Most of us came from well-off families so we were able to say, "We can buy all these things." So we bought Shure microphones and mic stands from Sam Ash and all these folks on 47th Street in Manhattan. We went into different guitar stores and bought those kind of things and that's what we started with. We also tried to build a couple of ass-kickers and we would put them in the back of the car and drive them where we needed to go from a park perspective. It was nights with DJ Chuck Chillout and those folks in the Bronx, around Edenwald Projects. So we gradually built that system. My dad asked me one day,"Do you want to be a DJ or do you want to go to college?" I said,"Dad, I'm going to college eventually but I'm having a great time with this stuff!" He asked me this question because I was spending significant amounts of money purchasing all these things. When we played at the T-Connection and the Stardust Ballroom they had a house system. When I was about 19, 20 years old I eventually became the house DJ at this place called Cromwell's Pub which was on White Plains Road." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"When was the Cheeba Crew formed?"

DJ KENNY KEN:" 1977/78. That's when we formed the Cheeba Crew. Remember I'm a Bronx kid. When we moved from the Bronx to Mount Vernon we lived on that side of Mount Vernon which is closest to Pelham. In 1978/79 my brother Kev Ski was going to Mount Vernon High School, so we started giving parties in Mount Vernon High School and we also played in the Bronx."

                                                       

June 15th, 1979: The Cheeba Crew performs at the Saratoga Plaza in Mount Vernon

SIR NORIN RAD:"Why did you choose that name Cheeba Crew? Did that have anything to do with that famous Breakbeat "Smoke Cheeba Cheeba" by George Benson & The Harlem Underground Band?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"Yeah! (laughs) That's probably how it started. We were also doing a little bit of marijuana at the time and I think that's how it started. We were hanging out in the basement. We also had Ghetto Children Production. You'll find that name on a lot of our flyers. And I remember my mother looking at me and saying,"Ghetto Children Production! Really?" (Laughs). There was obviously another Cheeba Crew in Harlem but they had nothing to do with us."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Why is your brother Kev Ski always listed as MC / DJ Kev Ski on your flyers?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"Because he would DJ as well. At first he was doing it even more than our other DJ Mighty Mike. DJ Mighty Mike lived down on Burke Avenue in the Bronx. At first he didn't have any equipment at all. So he couldn't practice at home. Later on he got himself a pair of turntables. We had the equipment....Kev Ski and I had the equipment in our house. So we had the turntables set up all the time. That's why at first mostly Kev Ski would give me a break at parties and get on the turntables. Then later on DJ Mighty Mike would do that and Kev Ski focussed on MCing. I was the number one DJ of the Cheeba Crew. Basically, I didn't do any MCing at all. The Awesome Four were in charge of that. The original Awesome Four were Kev Ski, Sir Rockwell, A.J. Rock and Junie C. We also had a female MC by the name of Chocolate Chip for a while. She was the across the street neighbour to Sir Rockwell. She was still very young, so sometimes she couldn't go out and perform with us. Then after we had moved to Mount Vernon she wasn't able to come up to our apartment regularly where we had all of our equipment and where we were rehearsing. That's why Chocolate Chip wasn't able to elevate her skill level and we eventually parted ways. She wasn't as powerful as Hi-Cee (legendary female BX MC who rocked for Touch Of Class and Inner City Diso) though. Sir Rockwell and A.J. Rock were from the Bronx. Initially, Sir Rockwell, A.J. Rock, Kev Ski and I we all went to Fordham Preparatory School. Then Kev Ski got kicked out of school and then he went to Mount Vernon High School and that's where he met Junie C.  Oh, and there was MC Little Dee. Little Dee was from Mount Vernon as well. He was in and out of the crew."

Kev Ski (The Cheeba Crew/ The Awesome Four)

 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where did the Cheeba Crew perform at when it was spring or summertime?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"When were doing things outside we would be in the driveway in Mount Vernon up where Little Dee lived, right? So we did that kind of thing. Or we would play in the park in Traphagen in Mount Vernon. There was a park there. When we played in the Bronx during the summertime we played in Edenwald. We played in the park there and we played in the school across the street. I cannot remember the number of it but we did parties back there on the basketball court.  Many different times we played in The Valley. We would go around to a lot of different places and from time to time we would run into the Touch Of Class folks. We knew each other from playing basketball together and then the DJing and MCing became another occasion where we would see each other."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did the people in Mount Vernon react to your crew when you started playing music over there? Did they already know about that B-Beat Sound or was it totally new to them?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"We had a great reaction from every crowd there and yes, they were already  well familiar with Hiphop in Mount Vernon by the late 1970ies."

November 23rd, 1979: The Cheeba Crew performs at The NAACP in the Bronx along with Touch Of Class

 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What were the differences between playing at a community center like the Edenwald Center and playing at a club like the T-Connection?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"The biggest difference was when you played at places like Edenwald Center it was more raw because they didn't have a soundsystem. You brought your own soundsystem. So the sound was whatever you brought in contrast to the T-Connection that had a major soundsytem. You never brought your stuff to the T-Connection. We just plugged in our turntables. Most people didn't even bring their own turntables. They just brought their records and their needles. So to me the major difference was the sound. We played in many different community centers. We played in the Boys & Girls Club in New Rochelle. That's where we met the Collins Brothers....DJ Mark Cee and his brother. They had this tremendous speaker system!!! They had a wall of speakers! Actually, we wasn't playing that night when we first met the Collins Brothers. They were but we became really good friends and later on we would play together at places like Rod Benders. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who was the captain of the Awesome Four MCees?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"I don't think they actually had a captain. The person that would usually start rocking the microphone was Sir Rockwell and then he would pass the mic over to Kev Ski.  Then the rest of the MCees would join in and they would do their routines and all these things that they had going on at that time." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did your MCees also do dance steps on stage?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"They did not have choreography because MCing wasn't up to that yet. They definetely had a lot of different routines that they had put together. They would sit down together and work through those. I would back them up with the music. Each routine was based on a specific song. For us...."Got To Be Real" by Cheryl Lynn was our main breakbeat that we used for our shows but we also used such breakbeats as "Johnny The Fox" by Thin Lizzy or "I Can't Stop" by John Davis & The Monster Orchestra and many others. My MCees...they got their own thing going on and eventually they got into storytelling. MCing went from saying some raps in between to being the headliner of the show. At one point in time it wasn't about the DJ anymore. That was a drastic change. I mean people didn't go to Kool DJ Herc because of his MCees. They went there to see Kool Herc. In the beginning you had some MCees to let you know what was going on and to throw in some rhymes here and there. I remember the Soul Sonic Force having a whole bunch of different MCees in the 1970ies that didn't make it to recording "Planet Rock"." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the role of each MC within the Awesome Four. Who was in charge of hyping up the crowd? Which MC had the best lyrics and the best delivery? Who was the one that had the girls screaming because of his looks?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"You know something? If you asked each one of them they would all tell you, "Hey, I'm the good looking MC!" The hype person would have been Sir Rockwell.  Kev Ski was more of the smooth looking guy. Kev Ski and A.J. Rock would have been more of the lyricists. At that time the women came to see all of us but most of us were already in a long-term relationship back then. Kev Ski was the one who kept bouncing around."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please elaborate on how much effort went into putting a show together?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"That really depended on the time of the year.....like when things were happening. So if it was during the school year then our practice sessions would probably go to the  weekend. In the summer we would literally practice every day. Some of us had summer jobs and after those summer jobs were over we would come out and we would play ball somewhere and then we got home and started practicing. Those practice sessions could be a couple of hours...especially on the weekend you could do three or four hours of practice. It was work, hard work. You just didn't walk on stage and did your thing. From a group perspective you would make sure that you got together at least once or twice a week.....during the school time....most likely on the weekend." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"For how long did you rock at your parties?"  

DJ KENNY KEN:"At both of them ....clubs and community centers.... we..the Cheeba Crew...would perform for a couple of hours unless we were with somebody. Like when we did the Rod Benders with the Collins Brothers...we would go for an hour and then they would go for an hour. But when we were in the park by ourselves or in the club by ourselves the expectation was  that we would rock the whole party or maybe bring in some folks like Hi-Cee. Then would take turns but otherwise we would play for three or four hours. The same applied to the clubs. So if we would come to a club.....let's say we got there at 10.30 pm....we would perform till 2 am. That's more than three hours." 

March 28th, 1980: The Cheeba Crew performs at the legendary T-Connection in the Bronx

March 29th, 1980: The Cheeba Crew performs at Rod Benders in  Mount Vernon along with the Collins Brothers

SIR NORIN RAD:"What were your favourite breakbeats to cut up back then?" 

DJ KENNY KEN:"You know something....."Apache" (by The Incredible Bongo Band) will always be there. My own personal favourite is "Funky Drummer" (by James Brown) with the count. The thing back then was whether you were able to catch that. I also liked "Down The Avenue" (by Fat Larry's Band) and then of course..... because it was family.....I loved "Take Me To The Mardi Gras" and "Nautilus" by Bob James."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"Alright. How many crates of breakbeats did you have back then? Like at the height of your DJ career?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"(chuckles) I still have some!!! I think we got up to bringing in fifteen crates of beats."

SIR NORIN RAD:"And one crate could hold about eighty records.....forty doubles, right?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"Yeah!!!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Oh man!!!"

DJ KENNY KEN:"So we're walking into our parties with more than 800 records and out of those 800 records we played only maybe about 30 or 40 beats. But you never know when you wanna go into the bag and pull something out."   

SIR NORIN RAD:"Would you like to shout somebody out at the end of this interview?"

DJ KENNY KEN:"I certainly want to shout out my real good friend MC Hi-Cee linking me up with you and I also want to shout out all the members of the Cheeba Crew. I really appreciate you, Norin Rad."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Thank you! Much love and respect to MC Hi-Cee, my mellow Sureshot La Rock (thanks for all the flyer images), my Intruders Crew, Troy L. Smith and Pluto Seven."