Interview with MC Shelt La Rock (The Mark V MCees)

                                          Interview with MC Shelt La Rock (The Mark V MCees)

          

MC Shelt La Rock (The Mark V MCees)

                                             conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders / Germany)

SIR NORIN RAD:"When and where were you born?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"I was born in Harlem, USA in 1961 and then when I was eight years old I moved to the Bronx."

SIR NORIN RAD:"In which section of the Bronx did you grow up?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"Castle Hill. That's like the Southeast Bronx. Not the South, South Bronx but the Southeast Bronx. That's where Remy Ma, Just Ice and Jennifer Lopez come from."

SIR NORIN RAD:"To what kind of music were you exposed as a young child?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"Beautiful music. Motown Christmas Special came on the other day with Smokey Robinson. So I had to look at it 'cause Smokey Robinson was a classic. So I used to listen to Smokey Robinson, The Chi-Lites, The Stylistics, The Temptations, Al Green. All beautiful music. I hear it nowadays and I can transfer back to a time period where I used to sit on the floor and my sisters..I have five sisters...and they used to be hidng my basketball jersey 'cause I was waiting for the center to open at 7 o'clock. I can hear certain records like Gladys Knight & The Pips "Midnight Train To Georgia"..I can hear stuff like that and I can just transport to the time when I was twelve years old. The music can transport you back. It was beautiful music back then." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"When and where did your first encounter with Hiphop take place? I guess that took place before the culture was called Hiphop."

SHELT LA ROCK:"No, it wasn't called Hiphop then. There was just jams. People would be like, "Yo, where they jamming at??" And then it was called Hiphop later on in life. So the first time I heard MCees rapping over a beat......A good friend of mine he lied to me....he told me the truth later on....he would let me hear a tape and I was like, "Yo, that's dope! What is that?" And I asked him, "Who is that?" He said, "That's me! That's Rapping and everything...." Then later on he said, "No, that's not me. That's Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Four!" I was like, "Oh, okay!" And ever since then I was hooked on it. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"You had been a member  of The Sound Masters Crew before you joined DJ Kenny Ken & The Mark V MCees. Could you shed some light on that crew, please?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"Okay, the Soundmasters formed in 1975. There was three DJs. It was DJ Pill, DJ Shondu and DJ Dee. In 1977 DJ Dee went out to Compton 'cause he got family out there and he brought that breakbeat DJing out there. So they was loving it so much that they became the Soundmasters of the West. Coolio (RIP) was a member of the Soundmasters. He always used to say, "I'm a Sound Master for life!" I started out as a DJ but I couldn't really DJ so I became an MC. At one point the Sound Masters had like six DJs and twelve or thirteen MCees. When we started coming outside...of course we played on our block first....Castle Hill.  So we played for a couple of years. We did a whole lot then. Just Ice joined the group later on 'cause he was in Brooklyn. He joined like in 1977. He wasn't an original Sound Master.  I met Master Tee in Stevenson High School and we later formed the Mark V MCees. DJ Kenny Ken.. our DJ..he came from DJ Mario.  They lived in the same building on the East Side of the Bronx. In 1979 he broke up with DJ Mario and we became his MCees. That's when we became DJ Kenny Ken & The Mark V MCees. The Grand Imperial....that was his name....The Grand Imperial DJ Kenny Ken!!"

                                                     

Coolio (The Compton Sound Masters)

                                       
SIR NORIN RAD:"What was it like to be at a Sound Masters park jam in Castle Hill during the mid-1970ies?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"The scenery was great! It used to be like...you'd hear the breakbeats come on and you'd see a crowd gather around. You'd think it's a fight because as soon as you'd see a crowd gather around you'd automatically think that a fight had started. Then once you got to the crowd you'd see people breakdancing. So it was a fight, but it was a breakdancing fight...a battle!!! So as soon as "Apache" came on or "Indiscreet" or "The Mexican" that's when you knew that the B-Boys would be getting on the dancefloor!!! They would be rocking!!! It was a beautiful atmosphere!!! That was the best time growing up! Me I tell people Hiphop was a spiritual thing 'cause when Hiphop was really formed it was after they had killed Martin Luther King and Malcolm X so there was no voice of the movement any longer. So Hiphop became that voice! I loved to listen to the breakbeats. We used to be walking, "Yo, where they jamming at today?" We didn't know so we just walked. And while you were walking you would hear those beats and you knew they was jamming over there. You would hear the beats from blocks away, vibrating off the buildings." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What's the story behind the name Sound Masters? Did you call yourselves that because of your soundsystem or because of your breakbeat arsenal? "

SHELT LA ROCK:"Well, it was actually a little of both. We had a very nice soundsystem and we also had a lot of beats. We would chip in every week to get new breakbeats from Downstairs Records 'cause you know when you're young you got your little hustle, you worked in a supermarket packing bags, selling newspapers. Me I worked in a meat department when I was 15 years old. That was my first job. So we was getting money and everything.  And then we was putting money in every week, buying records and turntables and stuff like that. That's where the name Sound Masters came from. The masters of the sound."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who were the best B-Boys out of Castle Hill in the 1970ies? Cholly Rock told me that he battled a B-Boy called Peppy in 1974 in St. Andrew's Church in Castle Hill."

SHELT LA ROCK:"Peppy was good! He was one of the older cats. But to me the best B-Boys out of Castle Hill were Raydeen and Izicataa., they were brothers. They were the first Zulus in Castle Hill, too. I brought Raydeen  to the Mark V MCees. He became an MC.  Raydeen and Izicaataa lived in building 2245."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Was the whole Sound Masters Crew part of the Zulu Nation?"

SHELT LA ROCK:" Not all the Sound Masters, at that time it was only just Tre Dee, Izicataa and Raydeen. Bronx River had the Zulu Nation. Bronxdale had the Black Spades and Soundview had the Cozy Corner. A lot of hustlers and killers used to hang over there. So Castle Hill.. we was just Castle Hill.  We fought against the Black Spades one time. That's when we started to get our reputation."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What is the story behind the name Mark V MCees? Was it inspired by that car by Lincoln?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"I don't know why we came up with that name. I just know we adapted to it. They might have had that name before I got with them. Master Tee came up with that name. There were like five different Mark V MCees. The original Mark V MCees was Master Tee, me, Terrence Tee, R. Cee...those are brothers..and then Teddy Ted. They was from the west side of the Bronx. I think Master Tee had known  them before and I think Teddy Ted was down with DJ Charlie Chase for a moment. They wanted me to get down with the Mark V MCees. We was in high school but Master Tee was with them already. Terrence Tee and R.Cee wanted to hang in the street too much. They was wild. So that's when him and his brother left. That's when I brought my friend Dr. Kik down. And then Kid Shadow got down with us, he was before Raydeen. So I brought them down and to me that was the best Mark V. We had like four or five different sets of the Mark V. Donald D was down  with the last set before DJ Afrika Islam brought them out to Califorina and a whole lot of shit happened. Everything happens for a reason though because I'm sure I would have been in that car with Raydeen that blew up. You know about that, right?"

                                                                 

The Mark V MCees......(top left to right:) Master Tee, Shelt La Rock, Teddy Ted (bottom left to right:) Dr. Kik, Kid Shadow

               
                                                      

SIR NORIN RAD:"No, I don't."

SHELT LA ROCK:"Raydeen died. He had a car accident out there. The car flew off a cliff and blew up."

SIR NORIN RAD:"May he rest in peace! What caused you to leave the Sound Masters?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"'Cause me and Master Tee was good friends.....number one.  I knew him from school and me and him we always got along well. And number two the Sound Masters they wasn't really going nowhere like that. We were just doing our thing in Castle Hill and a lot of them just wanted to hang out. I couldn't really run behind nobody all the time. If you wanna be a group you gotta dedicate yourself to the music. It can't be, you know....half ass. I took it very serious and they was just playing around. Then it became a lot of us and everything so I was like,"That's too much!" Then when the opportunity came to form the Mark V MCees I was like,"Alright, bet!" Me and Master Tee was good friends anyway. So I said,"Let's do this!" That's when I brought DJ Lightnin' Hands Billy Boy down with us. Him and DJ Lil Dee would also DJ for us. Lightning Hands Billy Bill was one of the fastest DJs on the cut back then." 

MC Master Tee (Founder of the Mark V MCees)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which MC had the biggest influence on you?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"Melle Mel was the first one to influence me with the words. Still to this day nobody ever said rhymes like he did in Beat Street. Nobody did no rhyme like that to this day!! Like I said The Furious Four were the first group I heard. Soon as I heard it I fell in love with it. I had a spiritual awakening."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So would you go to see Grandmaster Flash & The Four perform live?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"Hell yeah, I have seen all of 'em. The Funky Four,  Flash and 'em, The Fantastic Five, The Cold Crush Brothers. Yeah, I have seen them all. Then later on we performed with them. We was playing with them at the Ecstasy Garage, The T-Connection..."

November 21st, 1980: The Mark V are rocking at the legendary T-Connection in the Bronx

SIR NORIN RAD:"Ok, and what exactly was the K-Connection Crew about? I have seen that name attached to DJ Kenny Ken and the Mark V MCees on many flyers. However, I have also seen K-Connection Crew flyers without any reference to the Mark V MCees."

SHELT LA ROCK:"That's Kenny Ken. The K-Connection is DJ Kenny Ken. That's what the "K" stood for. There's a lot of shit that happened back then. Many people were jealous of DJ Kenny Ken because he broke up with DJ Mario and DJ Afrika Bambaataa and he formed his own group which was us The Mark V and we was a threat. A lot of people would envy us. We used to do shows and it used to be like eight performers. Everybody was doing good until we got on. Then somebody pulled the plug. So the crowd would react like, "Oooh man!!!" A lot of us believed that it was the Jazzy Five from Soundview. It was a lot of competition back then 'cause we was all friends at the same school.  We were from the same area. They felt they was better and we felt we was better but we had some stuff." 

The Grand Imperial DJ Kenny Ken 

                                                         

March 21st, 1980: DJ Kenny Ken & The Mark V MCees are rocking at 1965 Lafayette Ave in the BX

                                                      

SIR NORIN RAD:"So please describe the efforts that went into your group's live performances!"

SHELT LA ROCK:"Oh, we practiced every day! We used to have Shure microphones and we used to have them in a case like it was a gun. And we used to walk from Castle Hill to where Master Tee lived in Carrol Gardens which is like a minute away from Monroe Projects where DJ Kenny Ken lived. We used to walk there and practice every day!!! So we was tight. That's what it took......when Melle Mel and them said,"Take five MCees and make 'em sound like one!" That comes from practice and that's how we was. We had good rhymers and then we also had good harmonies. Nobody had more harmonies than us."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please elaborate on that because I feel that a lot of the components of original MCing have faded into oblivion."

SHELT LA ROCK:"When we were rehearsing in Monroe Projects we used to do tapes. We used to have like two or three people in the house that were like good friends, like my boy Andre.  So we used to listen to ourselves to see where we could improve it or where we messed up. That's why we used to make tapes all the time. I wish I kept those tapes, man! We practiced a lot. We used to do rhymes, we used to do routines..like we used to do shows. From the person who would rap first to the one who went second....my place in the order was always the fourth.  I think Master Tee was first, then it was Dr. Kik, then it was Kid Shadow and then it was me and then Teddy Ted. My thing was always fourth. And then we used to sit down at a table and we used to write together. We used to write harmonies or I would write the first two sentences and then another MC would write right behind me. That's how you keep it tight and how you keep flowing in a line! We had a whole lot of ways to pass the mic. Plus we liked each other, we were good friends, you know? We used to write our rhymes in Master Tee's house then we went over to DJ Kenny Ken to practice."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which beats would you prefer to write rhymes to?"

SHELT LA ROCK: Like most of our harmonies we did to "Love Rap" and our best harmonies was off  "Seven Minutes Of Funk". That was the shit!!! We also did routines to "Freedom" and we definetely used "Got To Be Real" and "Catch A Groove" a lot. After like doing five harmonies in a row we would hit them with lyrical content before we went back to doing harmonies again."

November 28th, 1980: The Mark V MCees are rocking at the Ecstasy Garage in the Bronx

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the role of each MC of the Mark V MCees! Like who was your top lyricist? Who had the girls go crazy? Who was your crowd pleaser?" 

SHELT LA ROCK:"Our crowd pleaser..that would be Teddy Ted. He was like the weakest link but he was still good because he was like Cowboy of the Furious Four / Five. He had a good voice and he'd get the crowd hyped up. The rest of us would just drop bombs! Dr. Kik was like Easy AD 'cause he used to get all the girls! He used to ask the girls, "You wanna go to my house, to your house or to the roof?" So we used to call him "Pigeon Man." That was his nickname. He used to get girls on the roof! (laughs) That was my best friend, too. I taught him how to rap. He's Puerto Rican. So when I first brought him down they used to try to make fun of him like, "Oh shit, Shelt, you got your boy down! His name is Ricky Ricardo!"  'Cause you know he had a Spanish accent back then. But he looked black. You would definetely think he was black. He's not a light skin Puerto Rican, he's brown skin.  Then eventually, you know, he still had a little accent but he started getting better and better.  I was mostly writing his rhymes, too. Then he started writing his own shit. So I got him down like that. Master Tee was a good rhymer. This is why.. I'm not trying to brag...but this is why I feel we was better than a lot of these groups because if you look at the Furious Four...Melle Mel was a dope lyricist. The rest would just rhyme, they was alright. Grandmaster Caz was a dope rhymer with the Cold Crush Four.  The second best was Almighty K.G. But we could have dealt with them. And then J-DL was their crowd pleaser. Easy AD would get all the girls. We had four good MCees that could rhyme. Any group that I named they only had on or two at the most. We also had more routines and harmonies than everybody else. We was the truth. Afrika Islam broke that shit up when he went to California with Master Tee, Raydeen and Donald D. That was the time when they was making records. We wasn't making records. It wasn't meant to be. Once Donald D came down you knew that he would bring Afrika Islam with him because they was in the same group..the Funk Machine. It was Donald D, Kid Vicious and El-Roy. Jazzy Jay and Afrika Islam were their DJs. So then Afrika Islam took who he wanted to California. Master Tee's mother Ms. Carne was like,"How you gonna take them to California and leave Shelt La Rock? Shelt La Rock is the best in the group." And then he was like, "Yeah well, it's my connections, my contacts and my money. I take who I want out there."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was the main stomping ground of DJ Kenny Ken & The Mark V MCees?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"100 Park."

September 6th, 1980: The Mark V MCees are rocking at 100 Park in the BX

SIR NORIN RAD:"What did it take back then to become a dope MC?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"I mean good lyrics, you know what I'm saying? The people in the crowd know if you're a good rhymer. To me the Golden Era of Hiphop was before rap records. Like The Furious Four, The Cold Crush Four, The Fantastic Five, The Funky Four, The Mark V MCees, The Treacherous Three, The Fearless Four...that was the Golden Era of Hiphop to me 'cause in order to be out there..like when the breakbeats came on you had to be nice!  If you're a bum they let you know, just like the Apollo. "Get him off the floor!! Next! Next!" The people in the crowd wanted to be entertained. That's why I know when we first started out in 100 Park... we was good because the crowd was loving us and that's when we started going around to other places. Like 63 Park and Rosedale Park. You know, all the parks that people played at. We got our rep up until that shit happened in 1981. So we was together for a good two years until Afrika Islam came along and split us up. That's when DJ Kenny Ken got together with these other crews like the Serious Five and that's  when Kid Shadow got into service." MCees and DJs that made a name for themselves in the parks they're legit!! Real proofs....Back then everything was authentic. DJs and MCees did it because they loved the art. I wrote a rhyme about that two weeks ago,"Rap buffoonery, sheer lunacy, tarnishing the legendary Rap legacy, I heard Hiphop since the year 73 and  it don't sound the same to me." That's why I wrote this hook because Hiphop just ain't the same no more. Now it's Rap buffoonery."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did the MC battles go down back then? Were they similar to what is going today?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"No!!  Back then it was like a real battle. It was like, "Let me hear your rhymes!" It wasn't about, "I'm gonna kill you!" It's just so disrespectful right now. Those are not real battles.  Back in the days you had like thirty minutes to go and then the crowd would be on your side and then when your thirty minutes was up the other crew would turn their music on and the crowd would go to their side. Then the crowd would usually be the judge. That's how a DJ/MC crew battle was, you know what I mean? It was like that! Now the battles are just mad disrespectful. It's no real battles anymore, it's just rap disrespect. "

                                                       

December 20th, 1980: The Mark V MCees are rocking at The Double 6's Club

  

                                                                

December 27th, 1980: The Mark V MCees are rocking at the Soundview Community Center in the Bronx

SIR NORIN RAD:"Would you say that those classic Soul bands like The Temptations, The Chi-Lites etc. were a huge influence on the original MC crews from the Bronx and Harlem?"

SHELT LA ROCK:"Oh of course yeah, we all was influenced by that! We were also influenced by James Brown and Sly & The Family Stone. That's another reason why a lot of people believe that Hiphop is not the same anymore because it ain't really the soul beats no more. Music affects people in different ways. I was dong an interview the other day and one dude tried to argue with me and said that he don't believe that music influences people. I said, "Of course you do! If you gonna listen to Smokey Robinson or The Chi-Lites...you know, the slow music...we called that love making or baby making music back then.....you wanna make love.  When you hear Disco music you wanna go to the club and party. When you hear gangster music you wanna fight and shoot at people. It makes you become aggressive." This goes for the beats and the lyrics. All music affects you in a different way. Like I told him..when they got King Kong down from top of the Empire State Building in the original King Kong movie of 1933 they got him down by playing music 'cause they say music calms the savage beast. So right now this Rap music that we got...they call it Drill Music or whatever...that's really just gangster music. That's not calming the savage beast down, that's enraging the beast. That's why I see a whole lot of kids getting killed right now or going to jail. They don't learn the real culture of gangs. The real culture of gangs wasn't what it is right now. Our job as gangs was to protect our neighbourhoods because they was trying to run us out. A lot of white dudes didn't want us in the neighbourhood when we first moved into the housing projects. So they used to hit us with sticks and this and that. So we had to form gangs to protect ourselves from them and from the cops. Now we form gangs just to fight each other and to do stupid things. That's why Hiphop is important 'cause Hiphop to me stood for Highly Intelligent Professionals Helping Our People. But now it's not helping our people, it's hurting our people. The four elements of Hiphop are Breakdancing, Graffiti (Writing), MCing and DJing but the fifth element was always knowledge. Melle Mel was spreading that knowledge in the early eighties already. People need that knowledge about the culture. But yeah, Soul music... that is bringing out your soul! It makes you feel good!! Soul is the emotional part of man. Soul music has you laughing and dancing like the B-Boys back then in the park." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Thank you for the interview!"

SHELT LA ROCK:"Thank you, Norin! I appreciate what you're doing!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Shout outs to my Intruders Crew, my man Sureshot La Rock (thanks for the flyers, my mellow), Andre Wilson (thank you for the flyers and pictures), Troy L. Smith, Pluto Seven and Pete Nice."