Interview with DJ Baron (The Brothers Disco)

                                               Interview with DJ Baron (The Brothers Disco)

                                      

DJ Baron (The Brothers Disco)

                                            conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders Crew / Germany)

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

DJ BARON:"I was born in Harlem, New York City. Manhattan.....1958."

SIR NORIN RAD:"When did you move to the Bronx?"

DJ BARON:"I moved to the Bronx in 1972."

SIR NORIN RAD:"To which part of the Bronx did you and your family move in 1972?"

DJ BARON:"Southwest Bronx."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you be a little bit more specific?"

DJ BARON:"I lived maybe two blocks away from Kool DJ Herc."

SIR NORIN RAD:"That means you lived close to Sedgwick Avenue?"

DJ BARON:"Right. One block over. It's called Undercliff Avenue. It's the longest block in the Bronx. It goes one way about a quarter of a mile."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So when you moved to the Bronx you were already 14 years old, correct?"

DJ BARON:"Correct."

SIR NORIN RAD:"In which regard did living in Harlem differ from living in the Bronx?"

DJ BARON:"Oh, Harlem was loud and the Bronx where I lived at was very quiet. I had to get used to the quietness."

SIR NORIN RAD:"To what kind music where you exposed as a child in your house?"

DJ BARON:"Oh, all kinds of music. Jazz, calypso..everything. My father used to play the congas as his hobby. Spanish music. Everything."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which high school did you attend?"

DJ BARON:"Commerce High School. Then it turned into Brandeis High School. That's in Midtown Manhattan."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you keep going there after you had moved to the Bronx?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, yeah. I went to school in Manhattan."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did you find out about Kool DJ Herc?"

DJ BARON:"I can tell you before Herc was doing parties, you know,...I used to hang with my older brother. He was two years older than me..Dimitri. He had me hanging with him and Herc and Coke La Rock. They used to play basketball only a block away from me, you know? And then we used to go to house parties. And then you know Herc's sister decided to do a Going-back-to-school-party and Herc's father owned the equipment. He owned some column speakers. So he was in charge of the speakers before Kool DJ Herc branched out and got his own stuff."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the scenery and the atmosphere at those early house parties!"

DJ BARON:"You know, you would go to somebody's apartment and they'd do a get-together and play records and everybody would be dancing back in the days. My family used to do the same thing. Everybody would do house parties, get the black light and all that type of stuff. Play the popular records..."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What is a black light?"

DJ BARON:"Okay, what a black light is....It's like a blue light. When you turn out the lights it shines on your clothes and whatnot. It's like a cheap disco light. When you go in the club, you know,  before the club lights turn down and then they turn on the lights and they have a different color effect."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did you start attending Kool DJ Herc's legendary parties?"

DJ BARON:"Alright, like I said I knew Herc before he was doing a whole bunch of parties. To get in the parties free I helped move his equipment. You know, he needed like help. He couldn't do it all by himself. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"So that means you were present for his very early parties, right?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, I was at his first party when his sister Cindy did their first party. Believe me, it wasn't established. It was just like a community center where you rent the place out and it holds maybe 100 people at the most."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was so special about these Kool DJ Herc parties from your point of view?"

DJ BARON:"The special part was..Herc had his unique way of playing records.  When they played the records he played the break part of special records that the radio stations didn't know how to play. Like Jimmy Castor.."It's Just Begun"or "Get Ready"by Rare Earth or "Listen To Me" by Baby Huey."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So his music struck you as being special?"

DJ BARON:"Right. It was stuff you never heard on the radio."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did these parties evolve?"

DJ BARON:"Like every other time he did a party it used to get more crowded and more crowded where he had to venture out and find a club."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What are your earliest recollections of B-Boys going off at Kool DJ Herc's parties?"

DJ BARON:"They were all at Herc's parties. I didn't know nothing about B-Boys. I never B-Boyed but they were unique!!! They were part of his whole circle. Trixie, Wallace Dee, Dancin' Doug, The Ni**er Twins..all these guys! They used to battle every other neighbourhood."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did your older brother Dimitri also go to Kool DJ Herc's parties?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, that was my ticket to get into the parties. It was hanging with my older brother."

SIR NORIN RAD:"You are also related to a gentleman called Diamond D, right?"

DJ BARON:"Diamond D. That's my brother. That was Dimitri. That was his graffiti name. We were cheap taggers. We didn't do extravagant pieces. Like my graffiti name was Sunshine. I wasn't a real Writer. I just put my name up with a marker or a can of spray paint. I was what they call a toy. I didn't get to that top level. We didn't do the big stuff like Kool Herc and them did."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you follow Kool DJ Herc when he started to do his parties in clubs?"

DJ BARON:"The Twi-Lite Zone, The Hevelow...yes. I used to be a part of the crew helping move the equipment."

SIR NORIN RAD:"In which regard did being part of Kool DJ Herc's crew have an effect on your decision to become a DJ later on?"

DJ BARON:"Even though I hung with Herc...oh, Herc was tight. You know, for his rare records and breakbeats..... you had to learn how to get the same music that he got 'cause he used to spray paint all his records, covered them. So nobody could copy the music."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you're saying that even those that carried his records didn't know about the names of his beats?"

DJ BARON:"No, you'd be right next to him while he was DJing but his records were covered. It's like blacked out. And I guess how he knew all his records..they were coded. He knew exactly which records he had. There was always rival people who wanted his music."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So I guess it was an unwritten law back then that DJs were not supposed to ask other DJs for the titles of their beats?"

DJ BARON:"They wouldn't tell you!! I forgot the words he used to say but you were on your own. It even included me. I used to go to a lot of record stores and you would have to mimick the record. Many people made lots of mistakes. Say for instance "Apache"....by the Incredible Bongo Band...I used to buy a lot of records by the Incredible Bongo Band and didn't get the right record before I found "Apache.""

SIR NORIN RAD:"So DJs would hum the song to the record store guy in order to find the beat that they were looking for?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, yeah...like "Apache" (hums "Apache"). The salesman would be looking at you funny (laughs). And they probably had people before me so you know eventually they knew which records to give you. But a lot of records...oh man!!! People lost a lot of money going to the record stores, trying to mimick the sound of the records that they had heard the night before, trying to get that rare breakbeat that Herc was playing. Sometimes you lost out, sometimes you didn't but people lost a lot of money trying to get that right record that Herc had."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did you feel about Coke La Rock's style of DJing? Many people, especially out here in Germany, are not familiar with the fact that Coke DJed, too."

DJ BARON:"He DJed in a special kind of way and he was on the mic. He considers himself the first MC but he wasn't a MC like what you hear about my group the Funky Four or the Furious. He would hype up his circle, call out their names and say who's in the house. You know, they felt real good that their name was mentioned. And he had a certain kind of flow, the way he said his rhymes. He rhymed, he put words together that made sense but it wasn't like the rhymes you hear from the Funky Four or the Furious Five. It was totally different. It was like a recital. I can tell you some of the records that he used to play. He used to play records by Eddie Kendricks like "Keep On Trucking", Eddie Drennon "Do What You Gotta Do" or "Girl You Need To Change Your Mind" by Eddie Kendricks, "T Plays It Cool" by Marvin Gaye, "Body Talk" by Eddie Kendricks, "Honey Butt" by Mandrill, El Coco "Let's Get It Together", "Low Down" by Boz Scaggs, "Melting Pot" by Booker T. & The M.G.'s. Stuff like that. He used to play that slower type of music that Chip and them used to Hustle to."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall a spot called Top Of The Lane?" 

DJ BARON:"Oh, that was a hustler spot. That's where all the big time drug dealers used to go to. It was an after-hour-spot where Kool DJ Herc played. Say like if he did the Hevelow and he finished playing there and he was hired to play on Featherbed Lane. I have never been there."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So what prompted you to become a DJ?"

DJ BARON:"I always wanted to be a DJ. In fact, Kool DJ Herc had DJ Timmy Tim and DJ Clark Kent. That was Herc's backup DJs and Coke La Rock. Anyway, I used to hang at all the clubs in Midtown Manhattan like Nell Gwynn or Superstar Cafeteria. I used to go to all the clubs in Manhattan. So I was a blender. You know, you transition the record from one record to the other. And Coke La Rock was my brother's best friend. Coke had confidence in me. Coke La Rock was the one who let me play on Kool DJ Herc's sound system at the Executive Playhouse."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I see. How did you proceed from there?"

DJ BARON:"I transitioned from him. My thing was to get in the parties free. I helped him move the equipment so I had to come early. So one time I didn't come early and I had to pay. I took offence to that. Herc knew me, I'm from the neighbourhood and you wanna make me pay? I sat outside the Executive Playhouse really, really tight. And my brother Kimani he used to do Karate with DJ Breakout. See, I lived in the Southwest Bronx, DJ Breakout lived in the North Bronx, Boston Road area. So my brother introduced me to DJ Breakout. That's how I started break away from Herc and do my own thing. I used to be a messenger so I used to go all over. I used to be into sound systems. I used to go to Studio 54 and Paradise Garage. Those were the big time clubs back in the day. "

DJ Breakout (The Brothers Disco)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did your bring your own crates of records when you played on Kool DJ Herc's sound system in the Executive Playhouse?"

DJ BARON:"No, I played Herc's records. You know, by then I got used to his music. I was able to look through his stuff and play their music and I did good!! I played it differently though. See, Herc used to just throw on records like a Jamaican selecta, I blended. How I learnt how to blend? I used to watch Pete DJ Jones. He had a DJ partner named Disco Dee and I was amazed how he played records. He did already blend the records and I was amazed 'cause I couldn't see the mix. And I said,"That's what I wanna do!"So my style was different."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which records of Kool DJ Herc did you play? The Kool Out joints or the B-Boy records?"

DJ BARON:"I played everything. I played the B-Boy records and I played the Disco records. A lot of Disco records contain breakbeats. So you play the break part of the Disco record. Also Rock records, Jazz records.....they all got Breaks in them. So that's where the term breakbeats comes from. I got like maybe a couple of hundred breakbeats in a breakbeat crate of mine on my computer now. I don't have all the records no more, everything is on digital." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you also use your blending technique when you were playing breakbeats at the parties back then?"

DJ BARON:"No, there's two different ways to play. Especially when you played for the MCees you had to prolong the record so they can do their MCing. My crew..the Funky Four..they were MCees, they weren't rappers like today." 

April 6th, 1979: The Brothers Disco are rocking at the Bronx River Center along with DJ Afrika Bambaataa and Kool DJ AJ

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you were capable of doing both blending and cutting?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, just like when I cut "Apache". A lot of  people copy my "Apache" style. I always cut it in such a way that you'll the hear the music for half a second before I bring in the break again. That's a style a lot people copied."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where did you practice at? Did you have turntables at home?"

DJ BARON:"I practiced at home. My fame would come from Breakout & Baron.....before it was Breakout & Baron it was Baron & Breakout depending on who was writing flyers. My brother started writing flyers before Breakout's brother Jazzy Dee started writing flyers. It started with me first and then Breakout. Later on when his brother became manager it became Breakout & Baron. Their explanation was his name is a little longer. So it's more attractive. His name got two syllables I got one. BREAK-OUT....BA-RON. Yeah!"

April 15th, 1978: The Brothers Disco are rocking at Edenwald Center.

SIR NORIN RAD:"So what kind of equipment did you have at home?"

DJ BARON:"Oh, I had mostly custom. I started out with custom. When I started out with Breakout, Breakout had some dusty looking stuff. But I had a Jamaican guy across the street from me. So my first subs were Electro-Voice Eliminators. And then since I was a messenger I used to deliver all over the city and I happened to deliver to this magazine...it was a Disco magazine...I delivered to the editor and when I went to his studio he had sound equipment. He had some ass-kickers but the special speakers he had was some garbage can speakers and I had to get those!! And that's what made my soundsystem...the Mighty Sasquatch!!! Everybody had similar things but I had those garbage can speakers that went along with my ass-kickers. And that's why the Mighty Sasquatch became so famous 'cause nobody up to this day had these garbage can speakers.  They were 15 inch Electro Voice Eliminators with a cone in the middle of the garbage can where when they played....when the bass hit, it popped and it POPPED IN YOUR FACE!!!!! The bass in your face! Truly, the bass was in your face when you heard these speakers!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"What year was that?"

DJ BARON:" Well, I graduated from High School in 1976. We started doing our own thing right after I got out of high school...the end of 1976 into 1977."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall what caused you to come up with that special way of cutting up breakbeats that you have mentioned?"

DJ BARON:"Here is the thing: You got Grandmaster Flash. You got Grandwizard Theodore. They were scratchers and I couldn't copy their style. You know, to this day everybody do Flash and Theodore. Scratchers! It got so big you got these DMC contests. Everybody is doing these scratching effects but I couldn't do that because we all had our own unique style. I'd do a zigga zigga and then let the record go but I didn't do all that what Flash and Theodore were doing. I did a little testimonial like,"Yeah, okay! That's your thing and I do a little bit of it." But I didn't stick to it."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Let's go back for a minute to that Kool DJ Herc where they wanted you to pay at the door."

DJ BARON:"I think I was a little tipsy but I sat outside for hours. I just refused to pay. Why would they do that to me? They know me, they know me and you gonna make me pay??? Maybe I was a little beside myself but I didn't wanna pay. So I was done and it turned out good that I was done 'cause you probably never would have heard of me if I didn't go my own way."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did Coke La Rock or any other member of the Herculords come to you and try to convince you to come back?"

DJ BARON:"No! To tell you the truth they probably never knew why I just went on my own way.  I don't think I ever told Herc that story."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I was told that Breakout was a B-Boy before he started DJing with you. Is that correct?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, he was a B-Boy. He used to have on the side of his pants "BREAKOUT". He had a really nice looking design on the side of his pants and on his jacket. People never messed with our crew the Brothers Disco 'cause I was still affiliated with Herc and Breakout was a B-Boy that was affiliated with DJ Afrika Bambaataa. You know, there used to be these gangs that would disrupt your party but they never messed with the Brothers Disco because of who we knew!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please elaborate on how you met DJ Breakout and how you formed the Brothers Disco!"

DJ BARON:"Okay, like I said my brother Kimani went to do Karate class with Breakout and Breakout lived in the North Bronx. So therefore my brother used to travel up to the North Bronx. My brother said,"I know Breakout and he DJs." And then he introduced me to Breakout."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where would you meet at?"

DJ BARON:"We would meet in his house. You know, I'm the guy with the equipment. So I eventually I had to let him use my equipment. He had to travel back and forth from my my house to his house. I lived in a hilly area and it was tough to get to my house from the train station but it was even tougher to get to his house but everybody gravitated to his house. That's why his house became the meeting place."

SIR NORIN RAD:"When you met Breakout for the first time did he already possess some outstanding  DJing skills ?"

DJ BARON:"Well, I was the one who had the most tighter skills than he did and I'mma give you a story. When we formed the Funky Four everybody was auditioning and at first the MCees like Sha Rock, K.K. Rockwell and Keith Keith they used to MC for Breakout and I was mad at that. My brother knew somebody named Rahiem and he brought Rahiem to the Boston Secor. That's not so far from where Breakout lived."

SIR NORIN RAD:"That's where DJ Pete La Rock & The P.T. Disco Crew was from."

DJ BARON:"Yeah, yeah, we battled them with our sound system!!! It was embarassing 'cause they had their sound system there. We let them play first and when it was time for us to turn on...I think Breakout he played in the beginning.....when he turned on the system while they were still playing you couldn't hear them no more."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you drowned them out."

DJ BARON:"We drowned them out. Yeah. To this day I was always improving my system. If you go to my facebook page you'll see what the Mighty Sasquatch looks like today. We had three different types of Mighty Sasquatches, man! I had the customs, the club stuff and I had a five way system where you had the tweeters, the mid bass, the bass, the sub...all that."

April 22nd, 1978: The Brothers Disco battle Cosmic Sounds at the Boston Secor Community Center in the Bronx.

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you brought in Rahiem as your MC at that party in Boston Secor?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, yeah! I got tired of MCees rhyming for Breakout. So I decided I'm gonna have my personal MC and I brought in Rahiem and then everybody loved Rahiem! And that's where the final Funky Four became the Funky Four. We started off with K. K. Rockwell. It used to be THE VOICE OF K.K. He was the first MC before we finally put a group together." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What exactly do you mean by they were initially Breakout's MCees? Did they refuse to get on the mic when you were playing your music?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, I used to just play my club stuff and everything and they figured out that Breakout was playing offbeat. I'm not trying trash Breakout 'cause he's always my brother to the end but in order to rhyme to the beat.....like you snap your fingers to the beat......you have to be on time. So after we formed our group and we started practicing and everything everybody finally got on my bandwagon."

SIR NORIN RAD:"The very first battle that you ever had was against DJ Afrika Islam, correct?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah. JHS 123..I give credit to DJ Tony Tone. He introduced me to this guy named Fox. We battled Afrika Islam. Fox Production...that's before Darnell."

November 4th, 1978: DJ Baron and DJ Breakout battle DJ Afrika Islam at JHS 123

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who won that battle?"

DJ BARON:"I don't even remember who won. It was a party and we played with them several times."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please break down how the Funky Four were formed."

DJ BARON:"Like I said we started with K.K. Rockwell. He was the first and then he brought on Keith Keith and then I kinda like to say Jazzy Dee discovered Sha Rock and they were MCing for Breakout at first until they came into my camp."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Is it true that the Funky Four were the first MCees who performed standing in front of the DJ instead of standing behind him?" 

DJ BARON:"Yeah, yeah...the Funky Four did that because they were performers. They had their own mic stands."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What are your recollections regarding that legendary battle between Grandmaster Flash & The Furious and DJ Baron & The Funky Four at the Webster P.A.L.?"

DJ BARON:"Okay, that day....you know, they played on the Mighty Sasquatch soundsystem. We had the sound and that day was the day Rahiem left us. It was a strange kinda day. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Four performed first. I commend them. They rocked! But when it was time for us to go on there was no uniqueness of how they were supposed to do their back and forth. We did our thing but it wasn't good because the MCees didn't click right. So that's why everybody thinks that the Furious Four won the battle against us. You know, Grandmaster Flash & Furious Four were protected by the Casanovas. There was a fight after the battle with the Casanovas. It could have gotten tragic that day. Yup!!! Thats what I remember. It was a good party but it was tragic at the same time."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Were you DJing for the Funky Four at that particular battle?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah! I was doing what I was supposed to do for our performance. "

May 11th, 1979: The Brothers Disco battle Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Four at the Webster P.A.L. in the Bronx

SIR NORIN RAD:"So did you notice that something wasn't right with the performance of your MCees?"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, I noticed that Rahiem wasn't bringing his A game. The MC that I put on. He's an incredible MC but he didn't bring his A game. The energy......it could have been much better. " 

SIR NORIN RAD:"DJ Breakout's crib was the spot where the Funky Four would rehearse at, right?"

DJ BARON:"They been to my house but they never really practiced there on a consistent basis. Everybody was at Breakout's house."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you have something like a rehearsal schedule in effect that everybody had to follow? I'm trying to understand how your crew got to such a high level of excellence. I have interviewed numerous original DJs and MCees and most of them said that you guys were something else."

DJ BARON:"I can say it was natural. Sometimes I didn't know about the practices because they would meet at Breakout's house and sometimes they would let me know. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"I was told that you are responsible for having introduced a different kind of beats to Hiphop. Prior to you DJs would play B-Boy Breakbeats and the MCees would rock over those but you introduced slower and more mellow type of beats to the game. Please elaborate on that!"

DJ BARON:"Okay, like I said the MCees used to come up with routines and I used to play joints like "Indiscreet" by D.C. La Rue, "Dance To The Drummer's Beat" by Herman Kelly & Life or "Ain't We Funkin' Now" by The Brothers Johnson. I noticed that these beats matched the  routines of my MCees much better."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Was it hard for them to adjust to these beats in the beginning?"

DJ BARON:"Nah, they fell into place right away! They had a routine off of Gillligans Island. (starts singing): From New York to San Francisco! We are the Brothers Disco!" Some stuff like that they used to say."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I heard that DJ Disco Bee who was Grandmaster Flash's DJ partner used a similar style of beats. Would you say that he was he influenced by you?"

DJ BARON:"I don't know. I didn't really follow DJ Disco Bee that much 'cause Grandmaster Flash was my real rival. Not to diss Disco Bee but you had to battle the main source."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What kind of relationship prevailed between The Brothers Disco and Grandmaster Flash's crew? I mean, obviously there was competition between you but how did Rahiem leaving the Brothers Disco for the Furious MCees affect your perspective on Grandmaster Flash and them?"

DJ BARON:"Taking Rahiem away from us was something to better themselves and we had a event coming up a couple of days later. So I had to rush to audition some new MCees. So K.K. Rockwell brought to my house Lil Rodney Cee and Jazzy Jeff from the Magnificent Seven. Lil Rodney Cee was the epitome of Rahiem 'cause he had rhythm and he had stories. So that was our life saver. And to tell you the truth...I had several auditions..before Lil Rodney Cee and Jazzy Jeff came I auditioned Special K (who later got down with the Treacherous Three from Harlem). I didn't like the way he sounded."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did you feel about Jazzy Jeff?"

DJ BARON:"The thing was in order to keep Lil Rodney Cee I had to take Jazzy Jeff. I didn't really particularly care but I had to take him because we was on crunch time. We had to complete the Funky Four. We was getting ready to perform at a block party and I needed him. I needed the group to be together."

The Funky Four Plus One MCees including Lil Rodney Cee and Jazzy

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the role of each MC in the Funky Four!"

DJ BARON:"Rahiem was the leader. He became the leader of the group. Their routines were just all in sync. Sha Rock was the first female MC out of anybody so that's what made our group unique and that's what brought a lot of women to our parties. Sha Rock!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"You also had an affiliated group called the Sisters Disco, right?"

DJ BARON:"That was like the cheering crew! Sha Rock was part of the Sisters Disco. The Sisters Disco came before the MCees.  They had their own shirts. It was the Brothers Disco and Sisters Disco and we also had a security crew. It was a Brothers Disco organization!!!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Before Sha Rock got down with you there was another female called Mootsy that auditioned for you. Please expound on who she was!"

DJ BARON:"Yeah, that was Breakout's girlfriend. Sweet Mootsy! Even Richie T....he had the same name as the guy from the T-Connection...got on the mic. He had a child with Sha Rock."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you also use an echo chamber for you parties?"

DJ BARON:"We had several echo chambers. We had one of Herc's originals....the little black echo chamber.  Then we had Echo Tec. That was our last echo chamber. Then I had a Korg echo chamber. The person who made our echo unique was Jazzy Dee. He made the MCees voices echo the right way. That's DJ Breakout's brother. He was the one on the echo chamber."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where would you buy records at?"

DJ BARON:"Downstairs Records. El Roy used to hook me up with exclusive beats. El Roy, me and DJ Afrika Islam we used to hang out a lot. Rock & Soul. Then I used to go out there in Brooklyn. I forgot the names of the record stores in Brooklyn. Plus Crazy Eddie! I know you heard of Crazy Eddie. He had a record store and electronics. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"How would DJ battles go down in the 1970ies?"

DJ BARON:"Well, one crew would start and after they had finished the other crew would come on. We battled Grandmaster Flash a few times with their soundsystem but our sound was always superior. It always came down to the soundsystem. You're not good if your sound don't sound right. So I used to buy all the top equipment! GLI mixing boards all that...."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you're saying that it was mandatory for DJ crews back then to have a powerful soundsystem in order to survive?"

DJ BARON:"YEAH!!!! There was a famous DJ convention at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. We did a DJ battle there with DJ Casanova Fly. This is before the Cold Crush Brothers. The L-Brothers was there, too.  Anyway, we got there late and when we got in there and turned on our soundsystem it was game over!!!! IT WAS GAME OVER!!! (laughs)"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please also explain what the breakbeats mean to Hiphop?"

DJ BARON:"Oh, they are very important because they pertain to the B-Boys and MCees. They have to be funky!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"How many crates of beats did the Brothers Disco have at the height of your career?"

DJ BARON:"Oh my God!! I used to carry around like six crates of records. My brother Kimani..he was my record boy. Record boys were very very important 'cause I couldn't DJ and keep the right beat going from one record to another without a record boy!! He would go through my crates and hand me the records and he would also take the records and put them back into the crate, in the jacket. That's what made you fast. Needle dropping. I did needle dropping. It didn't take me long to find that break. I would drop that needle right on the record. You would always hear the people say,"Put the needle on the record!" That's that needle drop."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So if Kimani was your record boy where does DJ Mark The 45 King fit in? Wasn't he down you as well?"

DJ BARON:"Oh, he was down with us!!! He met up with DJ Breakout. At one time he was DJ Breakout's record boy and he had all the rare beats!!!! That's who we was getting beats from. Mark the Record Boy!!! He had tons of records!!!! You know, Breakout got beats from DJ Afrika Bambaataa and we got beats from Mark The 45 King. That's long before he became famous. He was still very young and he wasn't fat. He was skinny. He was giving us beats that probably nobody else had. He was famous for the beats and he was down with the Brothers Disco. He joined us in like 1978 or 1979. Around that time. Before Rap got on vinyl. You know, before Rap got on vimyl the DJs were in charge but when the Rap records came out all the MCees showed their ass, man. They was happy to be the boss."

DJ Mark The 45 King (DJ Breakout's record boy)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where was he from? Boston Road?"

DJ BARON:"I think so and then he moved out to New Jersey and hooked up with Queen Latifah and them."

SIR NORIN RAD:"By which name did you know him then?"

DJ BARON:"Mark The 45 King."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you were already cutting up 45s back then?"

DJ BARON:"No. I mean we would go back and forth with the 45s but our main records was the 12inch or the album. You know, 12inch came out later."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What are your top 3 breakbeats of all time?"

DJ BARON:""Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band, "Daisy Lady" by Seventh Wonder, "Dazz" by Brick, "Put Your Music Where Your Mouth Is" by the Olympic Runners,"Shack Up" by Banbarra,"Seven Minutes Of Funk" by The Whole Darn Family."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please name some of the spots where the Brothers Disco used to play at on the regular!"

DJ BARON:"Oh, we played all over! Now the famous park in my neighbourhood is Cedar Park. Herc played there, we played there. Crotona Park, a lot of schoolyards. 82 Park. We played all over the Bronx. Edenwald ...that was our home. Besides the T-Connection we played in Edenwald. Most of our security crew and Sisters Disco are from Edenwald. We battled the Kaos Crew in Edenwald and we tore them apart. We also played in the Valley. When our crowd got bigger we used to pack the Valley. You can drive in there now but back then we had to walk and we had to carry all of our equipment to get in the Valley and that wasn't pretty." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who came up with the name Mighty Sasquatch and what's the story behind that name?"

DJ BARON:"Me. I did. Sasquatch is a creature. I chose that name because of the sound of my soundsystem. It sounded like a sasquatch was coming at you. Thunder! Danger! A sasquatch is dangerous. We used to put fear in the hearts of other DJs back then!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which sounds better? Vinyl or digital?"

DJ BARON:"Vinyl!!!!Vinyl hands down!!!!! Vinly has the best sound!"

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

DJ BARON:"Yeah, I give a shoutout to all the original crews that came out back in the days. Especially shout out to Kool DJ Herc, Coke La Rock, Trixie, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Afrika Bambaataa (RIP), The L-Brothers, DJ Tony Tone and the Cold Crush Brothers."  

SIR NORIN RAD: "Thank you! Shout outs to my Intruders Crew! To DJ Scarce One the best Hiphop DJ in Germany! Shout outs to Sureshot La Rock, Kenny IB, Input MZK, Leon Skee NHS! UKUMBAMBISANA!! Shout outs to Pete Nice! Shout outs to my mentors Trixie, Dancin' Doug, Cholly Rock, Sondance, Puppetmaster, Wayne Will (RIP) and of course Mr. Wiggles!! Shout outs to Troy L. Smith! Shout outs to my brother T.T. La Rock!" 

   

      

 

 

  

 

Interview with MC Wally G (The High Quality Crew)

                                             Interview with MC Wally G (The High Quality Crew)

                                 

MC Wally G (The High Quality Crew)

                                   conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders Crew / Germany) 

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

WALLY G:"I was born in New York Hospital on 1st Avenue in New York City."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, and in which year were you born?"

WALLY G:"1961."

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

WALLY G:"Primarily Washington Avenue in an area called Claremont Village. But I didn't live in the projects, I lived in the tenement across the street. They used to play us like we was "Good Times" and they were "The Jeffersons"...if you know th difference in the text brackets. I used to have to fight to play in all them playgrounds.  That's how I got popular as a kid 'cause I won the fights."

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

WALLY G:"Well, for the most part my dad was a Jazz aficionado. So I was surrounded with Jazz all along. Oscar Brown Jr., Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, you know what I'm saying, John Coltrane and some of them used to frequent our house when I was a kid." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which role played James Brown in your musical upbringing?"

WALLY G:"James Brown was undeniable!!! You know, mommy dug Jazz, too, but mommy was hardcore R&B and James Brown was undeniable! You know, I go back to the days of "Please, Please, Please", "Cold Sweat". You know, I go back! "Give It Up Or Turn It A Loose"...that's a B-Boy national anthem right there!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"What is your earliest recollection of DJs playing Breakbeats in the park or at a block party?"

WALLY G:"I'll share with you if you don't mind how I saw the development of the DJ in the park. We used to have jams in the street and it would be live bands playing Top 40 stuff, doing whatever they wanted to do with the songs. A lot of extra drums, whatever. Repeating the chorusses over and over so the people got involved. And then that transitioned into DJs coming out with them, you understand? Like between sets the DJ would plug his stuff to the speakers and he would play his records while the band was taking a break. And we would just go around and be like,"See they're jamming over here! They're jamming over there!" And I saw the transition when the bands fell off and the DJs just was prominent.  It was outdoor jams..like every four blocks or so you would find those jams in the Bronx. But as far as those Breakbeats you speak of I heard them in a park. There was a DJ called Grandmaster Flowers who wasn't necessarily what you would call a Hiphop DJ but I remember he played "The Mexican". I was also around DJ Smokey. I was kind of little then but I went up there with Smokey and them and heard some stuff but they was kinda G'd up for me at the age of 13. Still, I hung out for a couple of times but where it really locked, where I really got my nourishment from as I call it was from Kool DJ Herc."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was it like for you to be at a Kool DJ Herc party?"

WALLY G:"My father used to run a club called The Top Of The Lane. I think  it was on 140 or 141 Featherbed Lane. It was an afterhour spot for the most part for all the big hustlers. Nicky Barnes, Frank Lucas...all of them used to be there. Even Frank Matthews. My father knew Frank Mathhews. Anyway, there was a juke box and the story goes that somebody used to rent out that juke box and it broke. Not sure how. My father wanted to throw a big party for a few of the big ballers of the day. He had a large VIP area in the basement, too. My pops called his pops or somebody and they sent Kool Herc with his system there.  That's how he first got into The Top Of The lane. I was around 13 and my job was simply to clean up the club, me and my little brother. He was like 9. Me and him would clean up the club and we would be hanging out on the weekends. In the summertime we'd be there during the week. Kool Herc would be there and I heard him play "The Mexican", "It's Just Begun","Bongo Rock". I saw Coke La Rock doing the fake echo chamber and then they really got the echo chamber. I was there when they said,"Yes, yes, y'all!!" Checking the echo chamber. I can't give you the exact year but I was like in first year of high school.  I was like in the 9th grade when all this was popping. So that would be like 1975 then."

SIR NORIN RAD:"The Top Of The Lane was located on the westside of the Bronx, right?"

WALLY G:"Yes, it was."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you also witness B-Boys going off at Kool DJ Herc's parties?"

WALLY G:"Oh, come on, man! Hell yeah! (laughs). I seen the Ni**er Twins, El Dorado Mike. El Dorado Mike wasn't a famous B-Boy but he could do that move where he dropped that leg behind his  other leg and do the spin and he was able to spin continously. One night I remember he said,"I will hit 29 spins!" and I saw him do that. I saw Sasa and James Bond. I seen a lot of them, man. I couldn't remember all their names off the top of the head but the ones that stand out for me are the Ni**er Twins, El Dorado Mike, Sasa and James Bond."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe what the Top Of The Lane looked like!"

WALLY G:"Okay. You come in the door...there's a little doorway so to speak and then the dancefloor is right there to your right. The dancefloor might have been about 150 feet...barely more and then straight in front of the door that you came in...the bar is beyond the dancefloor that way. When you come through the door to the right is where the staging area was for the DJ. You know, that's their stage there. And then right past there there's another room which my father called it the VIP section 'cause everybody ain't go back there. And there was a couple of cushioned booths around the edges of it.  And then there was a place downstairs where nobody from the party ever went to but that's where some of the bigger players would go and have what I call extracurricular activities. Like they kept somebody upstairs that would go down there to entertain them."

SIR NORIN  RAD:"Please explain how watching and hearing Coke La Rock talking on the microphone affected you!"

WALLY G:"Well, I thought Coke La Rock was as cool as they come. It wasn't a lot of stuff like Melle Mel and them did but he was just cool, man!!! And listen: Just for the record...at that time I didn't have many interactions with them. They all were like 4, 5 years older than me. I was a little dude to them so to speak, you understand? But how it impacted me... I felt like I belong...like I was a part of  something special. And how I picked up the microphone....actually, I was in a marching band called Lancers. A guy named Eric Wilson used to bring his stereo equipment to the Headquarters and play and we would have parties on the weekends. And then there was a club upstairs called the Sweet Tree and sooner or later my man DJ Formalo...our DJ... got up to play in the Sweet Tree. By that time he had got equipment and stuff and we were like his friendling MCees. We started making up rhymes and getting down with DJ Formalo. The people..when they came to our parties..we didn't have a name..they called us the HQ Crew because the place we was at was called Headquarters. A couple of years later we started thinking,"Yo, we're bigger than Headquarters!" And we came up with the name High Quality to match the acronym we already had. We would say, "High Quality is more than a name. It's a state of mind!""  

SIR NORIN RAD:"Let's talk about the Kool DJ Herc parties a little bit longer. What would you do at these parties at The Top Of The Lane?"

WALLY G:"I would alternate 'cause sometimes it would be my turn to be the bartender. At other times I would just be bouncing around and I would be right there with them. Like I'm in the circle screaming- Hollering and screaming when they would do some incredible stuff. You know, the thing that still stands out to me was El Dorado Mike doing his spins. Like doing them for a minute. I remember Crusher. He used to take his hat off called the Crusher. He used to flip his hat off and do some dances around the hat. It was great!"  

SIR NORIN RAD:"What kind of effect did the music at Kool DJ Herc's parties have on you?"

WALLY G:"It was like a swimming pool. You was immersed into the sound. It hugged you. It enveloped you, you understand? And at the same time it was soothing. It wasn't scary. It was exciting. It was no escaping. You was a part of it. Like I never was on that B-Boy level but I did my share of Breaking, too. I used to Breakdance with Flash and them before he even got a sound system." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"That means you must have been to such places as 23 Park, Mitchell Gym etc."

WALLY G:"Yeah, I have been to Mitchell Gym. I've been to 23 Park. My primary place though was 63 Park. The L-Brothers, Flash, Busy Bee and all of them used to be over there 'cause by this time I might have been 16 or 17. We already had our equipment. So the HQ Crew was in  the parks, too, simultaneously while all this other stuff was going on. I remember going to parks to see Kool Herc on the westside of the Bronx. It wasn't necessarily to see Herc. I just heard, "They're jamming up there! They got a wild crowd!" So we're going up there. By 1977/1978 we was full-fledged. Like every other weekend we'd be outside with 500 to 1000 people." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What prompted you to pick up Breaking?"

WALLY G:"It was about the girls, man! You see, the girls was sweating the dudes with the dance moves so I had to get me some moves!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"How would you describe your style of Breaking back then?"

WALLY G:"Like me personally...once the dance went to the floor and gymnastics got involved in  it I fell back 'cause my thing to this day is footwork and little poses and stuff like that."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What do you remember about DJ Smokey's parties?"

WALLY G:"I didn't have a lot of interactions with him but that's where the B-Boys would be....at Smokey's house. I think he lived on the 5th floor so you would be going up there and on your way up you would pass everybody in the hallway. They would also be hanging out in front of the building. And it was every room.. when you got in there you would see some of the most phenomenal B-Boy shit!! Like I remember being amazed like,"How did they do that?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please break down how you met the Rockmaster DJ Formalo!"

WALLY G:"Formalo was a member of the Lancers before I was. He was a drummer. So was Eric. They was the first DJs down there but then we hooked up with Formalo and before we established ourseves as an actual group which is called the HQ Crew DJ Formalo was already connected with DJ Abel on Webster Avenue. Then we made a transition around 1979. It was no more DJ Abel and them. It was Rockmaster DJ Formalo & The HQ Brothers. When we started their career was over.  None of them could compete with DJ Formalo and none of their MCees could mess with us. Our system wasn't as loud as Herc's but it was quality and it reasonated. There is a school called 132 on the corner of 168th Street & Park Avenue. It's a full playground area with basketball courts behind it which stretches out for like three quarters of a long city block. We used to fill that whole space with people! "

Rockmaster DJ Formalo (The High Quality Crew)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Are you also familiar with DJ Tibbs and DJ Charlie Rock from Tibby Tibbs Productions?"

WALLY G:"Yeah, DJ Charlie Rock is my brother-in-law. Me and his sister was  a couple. I got kids with Charlie Rock's older sister. Yeah, I remember them. They was popping, too, but I'm telling you once the HQ Crew came out Claremont Village was ours for like three or four years in a row."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Is it accurate to say that the HQ Crew came out of the Lancers?"

WALLY G:"It happened organically. Everybody who was there we considered them HQ Brothers 'cause they was all at the Headquarters and they was all in the band but the performers was just a few of us."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What caused you to start MCing?"

WALLY G:"Curiosity, see if I could do it. Plus I had been writing poetry since the 6th grade. So I gave it a shot. I made a couple of rhymes up that people seemed to like and I have been writing ever since."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which MCees were the ones that inspired you?"

WALLY G:"It was the Furious. Hands down. It was the Furious Five. It was the Furious Four first , then it turned to Furious Five. Melle Mel and Kid Creole blew my mind when I heard that, "From the World Trade to the dephts of hell !!" It was something about that. We used to buy their live tapes."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was the name of the store where you bought these live tapes from?"

WALLY G:"From a record shop called the Funk Factory. It was selling cassettes."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did you find out about these live tapes?"

WALLY G:"I went to the junior high school right down the block from where the record store was.  I went to 148."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you also go and watch the Furious MCees perform with Grandmaster Flash?"

WALLY G:"Yeah, like I said I knew Mel and his girlfriend Melanie from going to Melanie's house. Playing spades, drinking beer, smoking weed and breakdancing in the living room. And then we went to some Black Door jams by Forest Avenue. I seen them in the big park. They were very organized and professional as kids, as youngsters, you dig? And they sort of set the  framework. They were the prototype if you will. And we had MCees as well. The writing of rhymes almost became competitive. I would write something and then Charlie Rock would write something and then Skip La Rock would write something. Then we got Acie Ace Barday down with us. God bless the dead! He came from another group called Phase 2. When he got with us the chemistry was undeniable. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the role of each MC within the High Quality Four MCees!"

WALLY G:"The most animated MC and the one who interacted the most with the crowd was Acie Ace Barday. He talked to the people. I'm highly animated, too, and generally when we did our routines I would go first 'cause I always get up. I could get a hit, a base hit, you understand? And then Acie Ace Barday or Skip La Rock would get on after me to maintain the vibe that I established and then Acie Ace would turn it up. And then Charlie Rock more than likely would be last and he would bring us home. His delivery was reasonating. You know, the way he delivered. He made a statement with every sentence. So I would say Acie Ace was that guy wih the crowd interaction stuff. I was more sceurity. Yeah, I have been known to confront people at the parties for just standing around ice grillling. I was like,"We're at a party so why are you looking like you wanna fight, yo??" You know, I would step to your business. Yeah, I would go to the crowd with a long ass cord confronting the gangsters."

                                                              

MC Acie Ace Barday (The High Quality Four MCees)

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did you come up with new concepts for your live shows?"

WALLY G:"Good question! We didn't use this language but it was like a brainstorming session. Somebody heard a beat that they liked. We're the first persons that ever used Isaac Hayes' "Ike's Mood". Nobody used it. We didn't hear it nowhere. We was fishing through beats and my man DJ Formalo sped the beat up and we fell in love with it. And that routine there became our theme song. Now as far these sessions went we would tell each other ,"Yo, that's whack!" And then you'd go back and you'd write some more trying to come up with something better." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who would propose the beats for your live shows?"

WALLY G:"DJ Formalo had a great ear. He knew our voices and he knew our rhyming patterns. He would show us beats and ask us, "You wanna do something with this?" or, "What can you do with this?" And then we would give it a shot. Different people would take the lead on different routines, you know? We also had a routine called "Funky Fresh." We did that over "T Plays It Cool" by Marvin Gaye. We trusted DJ Formalo. If Formalo gave us something we knew it was gold. And for the record: the confidence you feel when you know the DJ behind you is not gonna do some random shit while you're spitting your lyrics....'cause you know DJ Formalo is a drummer! He keeps the beat and he's a true master at at.  DJ Formalo actually put Frankie Beverly back on the map. I don't care if people give it to DJ Hollywood and all that. DJ Formalo was the one who put Frankie Beverly back on the map with that "Before I Let Go" song. God bless the dead! DJ Formalo did a lot for the culture of Hiphop and really didn't get recognized on the level he warranted. And I'm gonna share that because we was doing it for the love. We were basically talents. There was no business format. There was no business protocoll. We just did it 'cause we loved it. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where did DJ Formalo live at? Did he live at 168th Street & Webster Avenue?"

WALLY G:"Yeah, right on the corner."

Rockmaster DJ Formalo (The HQ Crew) with Pow Wow (The Zulu Kings/ The Soul Sonic Force) and Lil Rodney Cee (The Magnificent Seven/ The Funky Four Plus One) 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, and where was DJ Easy Bee's apartment?"

WALLY G:"He lived on 500 East 171st Street, right off 3rd Avenue."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where did you rehearse at? At DJ Formalo's house?"

WALLY G:"No, no, we never rehearsed at Formalo's house. We was at Easy Bee's house and then we went to Skip La Rock's house which became our new headquarter."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where was that?"

WALLY G:"At this time it was on Fulton Avenue & 172nd Street across the street from Crotona Park."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please break down how you came up with new concepts for your DJ/MC shows! To me it seeems that this is truly a lost art."

WALLY G:"Okay, in the beginning stages we spent a lot of time at DJ Easy Bee's house but once we started getting established and Skip La Rock got a bigger space that's when we went to Skip La Rock's house. We would meet there every Friday, coming up with stuff and bouncing it around in the living room over each other and then we'd do it as a unit. And then more than likely we'd be jamming somewhere on Saturday and then Sunday we'd go back to Skip La Rock's house. We would talk about what we did wrong or what we could do better. We would talk about the fun we had. And that pretty much was it...Fridays to Sundays." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you actually analyzed what went wrong?"

WALLY G:"Yeah, well it was organic. Form follows function. I look back at it and see the form but when we was doing it, it was organic. We was just hanging out. We used to go hang out at Skip's house 'cause he was the only one who had his own spot. I lived with my parents, Ace lived with his parents....So the place to hang out was Skip La Rock's house and since we would all do that it was an organic thing."

                                                   

MC Skip La Rock (The High Quality Four)

SIR NORIN RAD:"What were some of the mistakes that an MC could make during a live performance?"

WALLY G:"It wasn't a lot of like major mess ups but sometimes you would miss a line and make up another line or you don't come in on time because you're so caught up in the crowd or watching one of your MC brothers and so you would actually miss your first couple of lines. What was good about that is we all knew each others verses so if it's my turn and I slip it Skip La Rock would step right up and I would go, "Oh!" and then I would catch the second line. Stuff like that. We'd laugh about it. And then another thing...and I don't wanna sound like conceited or arrogant but I'm like a Freestyle guy. Like I can rhyme right now while we're talking and I don't know why and I'm gonna demonstrate it as I speak to you, you understand!?  This is just one of the things that I happen to do. I could be on a stage and seem like I broke out of a cage and the people say,"Wow!" And they get  all enraged because of the stuff I do on stage. You see how I do that while I'm talking to you?  I do it at a party  and I say rhymes and I don't remember what I said. And they say,"Yo, Wally G! That shit you said was crazy!!! Say that shit again!" I say,"What are you talking about?" And more often than not Skip La Rock would remember it. And then we'd put that in our next routine."

MC Charlie Rock (The High Quality Four)

SIR NORIN RAD:"So going off the top was already around in the late 1970ies?"

WALLY G:"Definetely! Definetely! It's a freedom! Yo Norin, that's a freedom that you gonna feel on stage. When you're connecting with the crowd they are not necessarily looking for perfection. I just share me with the people and they feel the honesty. They are also very forgiving if you fuck up a line here and there as long as you give it your all." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please name all the outdoor locations where the High Quality used to throw parties at!"

WALLY G:"Well, like I said earlier 132 Park on 168th Street & Park Avenue. That's a school.  Another one was 110 Schoolyard. That's about a block away from that on 170th Street & Washington Avenue. We was in front of 1460 Washington Avenue. We did a couple of jams over at Crotona Park, not often though. Just a couple of times. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"What about the indoor spots?"

WALLY G:"Well, we performed at the T-Connection with the Cold Crush Brothers. People would invite us to do parties. The one place that we rocked consistently for about one year was the club 371."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Was that a Hiphop club? I heard that the 371 was DJ Hollywood's place."

WALLY G:"Yes, and I don't know what was going on with DJ Hollywood but he abandoned this spot. He was missing in action or whatever and our DJ Formalo was already playing in there and we would come through and do a set here and there. But when DJ Hollywood disappeared for one year to 18 months that was HQ Crew's house."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you ever battle against other DJ/MC crews?"

WALLY G:"Nah! People tried but....like Cold Crush packed up. Easy AD lived in 1460 Washington Avenue where we used to rock in front of and one day we heard that the Cold Crush came out and was setting their system up while we was playing. So we was ready!!! And then they just packed up and left. So no, we didn't have to battle them. I don't know what went wrong with their stuff but they didn't do it. We had another cat named Pre Sweet. What's the name of his crew?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"The TR Nation."

WALLY G:"Oh, you be knowing!!! Yo, you know your stuff! Anyway, TR Nation tried to come at us a couple of times but they packed up. We didn't go head to head like this, like on the same stage. They would be half a block away from us, setting up. Then they would be packing up 'cause all the people came to us. If you wanna call that a battle then that's how we won them. And then it got to the point that we was tempted to battle the L-Brothers 'cause 63 Park stayed crowded. But we didn't have to 'cause we kept playing Claremont Village Pool."

The TR Nation

SIR NORIN RAD:"What did it take to be a fresh MC back then?"

WALLY G:"The rhymes had to be tight.....one. Personality.....two. Crowd engagement...three.  Like, "Say Hooooo!" And then fourth you had to look good. You had to have clean sneakers on. And women needed to like you 'cause if the women like you all the dudes are coming. We had that sing-song-style and the girls loved it."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What did looking fly entail back then?"

WALLY G:"Some crispy jeans, sneakers and a knit. Like we wore jeans but Skip La Rock was more fly. He was the first one to wear all this jewelry. Back in the beginning of it they had a jeans called Lee Rider. They was really big bell bottoms. We used to fold them up and they would be so stiff from the starch in them that we would use them like a bag. We put bottles of beer in them, you know what I mean? It was crazy, man. The Kangol hats. I still wear them today. We wore stuff like what I seen you put pictures up of, Norin. Yeah, that was it, man. Pro-Keds was fading out in the late 1970ies. We wore British Walkers. Some were still wearing Playboys but not a lot."

SIR NORIN RAD:"When did the Ballys enter Hiphop fashion?"

WALLY G:"Doug E Fresh put them on the map. They wasn't big until  Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick put them out there. They came later like in 1985."

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

WALLY G:"Hold up! Is it the beats that we used to perform on or the beats we danced to?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Well, you can talk about both."

WALLY G:"The ones we performed the best on was "Ike's Mood" and "T Plays It Cool". As far as the B-Boy Breakbeats go...for me it was "It's Just Begun", "Listen To Me", "Give It Up Or Turn It A Loose" and every so often somebody would play "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & The Drells. Those are the ones that stand out the most for me."

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

WALLY G:"Yes, I wanna shout out the HQ Brothers!!! I wanna shout out Rockmaster DJ Formalo! Rest In Peace! Shoutouts to my family, my kids, my grandkids, you know what I mean?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Thank you for this interview!

Interview with T-Kid 170 (The Nasty Boys)

                                              Interview with T-Kid 170 (The Nasty Boys)

                                                            

T-Kid 170 (The Nasty Boys)

                                            conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders/Germany)

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

T-KID 170:"I was born in Newark, New Jersey. I can't tell you what year I was born. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"When did you move to the Bronx?"

T-KID 170:"Right after I was born. I was born in Newark, New Jersey. My mother was in an emergency. In other words they were on their way to the Bronx and she decided to give birth."

SIR NORIN RAD:"You grew up in the Bronx. Is that accurate to say?"

T-KID 170:"That is correct."

SIR NORIN RAD:"And you are of Peruvian and Puerto Rican descent, right?"

T-KID 170:"That is also correct. My father was from Peru and my mother was Puerto Rican."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I read that you were a member of a gang called the Bronx Enchanters when you were young. Please elaborate on that!"

T-KID 170:"Yeah, that was the neighbourhood gang when I lived in Boynton Avenue with my father."

SIR NORIN RAD:"That's the Southeast Bronx, right?"

T-KID 170:"Yes, basically that's the South Bronx. It's on the East Side but it's the Southeast Bronx. It's really the South Bronx."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What prompted you to join the Bronx Enchanters?"

T-KID 170:"So I didn't wanna join a gang. I didn't do that on purpose. You know, I used to do tricks on the swings. Like I was very acrobatic and we had swings that would swing back and forth. We used to jump over fences and flip and do all kind of crazy things. We had had a battle with this other block from Noble Park. We beat them and I was like real excited about it and when we left the park...you know, I had a little El Marko Marker and at the time my name was King 13 because I was the king of the swings..I went to make a tag on an ice box which was outside of a grocery store. And then all of a sudden these guys with cut off sleeves from that gang Bronx Enchanters came up to me and they were like,"Oh shit! Yo, you're tagging on our hood! You're not supposed to tag here!" And I never heard that word before. You know, "hood"....And I was like, "What do you mean?" They'd go,"Yeah, this is our hood, man! This our area!" And then they looked and they pointed to the light poles. Actually, it was like phone wires and stuff and it was sneakers hanging there. It was a bunch of white and red sneakers all over the place. And I never...I mean I saw the sneakers hanging but I never noticed anything about them. Those were white and red. So they said to me,"Yo, we should fuck you up!" In other words they should beat me up for doing that. They said I violated and I was just a little kid. I was like twelve years old going on thirteen years old. They grabbed me and stuff and then one of them saw me and he went,"I know you! You're from the park, man! You do those tricks on the swings! This shit is kool, man! We like what you do!" And I was like,"Yeah, okay! That's what I was doing. I just won a battle and shit and I was just writing my name and shit and I didn't know! I didn't mean to write on your hood, man." So the guy basically made me an offer I couldn't refuse. He was like, "Alright, yo! You know what? Because I like you and I like what you do, bro, you could join the gang! You're gonna join our gang and you could write your name but when you write your name you gotta put up BRONX ENCHANTERS!" And I was like,"Okay and if I don't?" He said, "Then we gonna beat you up!" So I was like, "Okay, I'll join the gang!" And the first thing they made me do was go inside that bodega...that grocery store and they said, "Aight, for your initiation you gotta go in there and you gotta go steal a bottle of beer!" In other words a Colt 45 which is a brand of beer, cheap beer. I pulled that and I came out and that's how I got into the gang."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Since you wrote King 13 you must have already been familiar with that concept of tagging up your name. So were you doing that before Writers started pulling out pieces on the trains?"

T-KID 170:"In 1973 it wasn't many masterpieces. That's when Super Kool 223 starting coming out with pieces which were just big fat tags with an outline on it. So you did what you saw. But then shortly thereafter you started seeing more and more pieces. Like Super Kool 223 he did that. You know, it was a time when they were inventing styles. Like Bubble Letters...Phase 2 was doing the Bubble Letters. Riff 170 would do more straight letters. You know, shit like that. Lee 163rd! was doing regular pieces. You also had Tracy 168. By 1974 it started getting more complicated. You would see more End-To-End Cars. More cars that were being put together using color techniques and stuff like that. But at first when I was writing King 13 the pieces I saw were mainly just tags. FDT 56, Barbara 62 and Eva 62, Charmin 65...you saw a lot of tags, man."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So seeing those tags prompted you to starting tagging yourself?"

T-KID 170:"Yeah, so I was doing my tag which was King 13. The reason I changed my name later on is because I found ot that there was a King 2. He was down with Wanted. That was really like Chi Chi 133's crew. Wild Style (Tracy 168's crew) didn't happen until 1976. The main crew back then was really The IND'S (The Independents-Phase 2's crew). That was like the crew to get in. That was like the best crew."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Later you changed your name from King 13 to Sen 102. Why did you change your name?"

T-KID 170:"Yeah, Sen 102. I wanna say that's when I left the Bronx Enchanters. To get out of the Bronx Enchanters I had to get lashes. In other words they took my shirt off and they hit me in the back with a belt to get out of that gang. And then I joined the Renegades Of Harlem. That I was writing with Danco, Green Eyed Mike, Smokey and Sly 108. And Sly 108 was in the Savage Samurais. He was a cool guy."        

SIR NORIN RAD:"What caused you to leave the Bronx Enchanters in order to join another group from another borough?"

T-KID 170:"You gotta understand, when I left the Bronx Enchanters it wasn't because I was gonna join another gang. I had no plan on joining another gang. I had to get out of the gang because I had a strict father who found out that I was sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night and he would beat me up. So I got out of the Bronx Enchanters. In 1976 I went down to Manhattan to the Puerto Rican Day Parade with my boy. So it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade and that's when I met Danco and Smokey and they were tagging up and I was like,"Okay!" So I changed my name from King 13 to Sen 102 and I started Writing with them and that's how I joined that gang but that was because of Writing. I met them at the Puerto Rican Day Parade and they were real kool. So I hung out with them and they told me what the Renegades Of Harlem were doing: renovating buildings, you know, doing community work. I was very impressed by that and that's why I joined that gang but then I ended up getting shot, getting into some gang bullshit and all that other bullshit and it was like telling me, "Yo, you gotta get away from the gangs! Get away from that shit."" 

SIR NORIN RAD:"1976/77 that was the time when The Death Squad from Harlem had already begun to pull out Burners on the regular, right?"

T-KID 170:"That is correct. I got to meet Padre who was down with The Death Squad but his crew was really TBA-The Bad Artists. He used to write Boc 1. He was from the Bronx and he was another one that influenced me. He changed his name to Padre Dos. Around 1976 he changed his name to Padre Dos. He was Writing with Noc 167, Chain 3, Part One and all those guys. He was the one who told me about The Death Squad and the nasty work that they were doing and then I came to find out that my cousin Junior was best friends with Kool 131. He lived in the same building on 137th Street. Here is the funny thing: When I was writing Sen 102 I was going to John F. Kennedy High School and so was Kool 131. And me and him would be battling on a desk! We never met each other but I would do a piece on the desk and then he would do a piece. But he was good! He was real good!" 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please elaborate on that! JFK High School that's in Marble Hill, right?"

T-KID 170:"That's in Marble Hill. Marble Hill Projects. The area there is called Marble Hill which is like the beginning of Riverdale. John F. Kennedy High School was a good school. Norin, you went to high school in NYC so you know that when you're in high school you got different classes. It was a math class. That room was a math class. Mr. Leon was the teacher. He was a real kool guy. He was a good teacher. He was interested in helping kids. I was always in trouble. I was in gangs. I was doing stupid shit. I went to a special class 'cause I was failing math. So they put me into that class. And you know when you're in class you're bored. And I remember I started doing a piece. I think it was a King 13 piece. So Mr. Leon asked me, "What are you doing?" I said, "What do you mean?" He goes,"Why are you drawing on the desk?" I said, "Because it's more interesting than the class." And he goes,"You know, instead of focussing your attention everywhere else instead of being in the moment  and being right here so you can go to the regular classes you should pay more attention."So that shit really pissed me off 'cause I was a kid and I was hard-headed. I started doing that piece and I put, "THE KING WAS HERE NOW HE'S GONE. HE LEFT HIS NAME TO CARRY ON." And then Maurice (Kool 131) came and did a fucking Maurice piece right next to that shit. And I was like,"Damn!!" So then we started battling. I tried to outdo him but he was just too good at that time. He was hard to catch. You know, I was still learning. I was hanging out with Tracy 168. I was hanging out with Padre Dos. You know, they was starting to teach me and I was starting to learn. I think that's why I became so good at that shit because I learnt from these guys."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe what kind of person Padre Dos was!"

T-KID 170:"He was that kid that got all the girls. He was that kid that you wanted to be like. He was the first one to get into DJing that I knew. This is the Disco era and he was heavy into music. Like I said he would get all the good girls from the neighbourhood. By the time I was coming into my own and I became T-Kid 170 he had already decided to stop bombing trains. I tried to get him to come with me many times and he wouldn't. He was like, "Nah, I'm done." But he sat down with me....like I lived in the building on the corner of 192nd Street. So he was from my neighbourhood. Like after I got shot and I ran away from my father and I went to live with my mother. My mother lived on the corner and he lived in the building on the other corner. But before that I knew him already 'cause you know my mother lived there and when I was living with my father....on the weekends or sometimes during the summers I would go stay with my mother and you know I would hang out and that's how I met Padre Dos, Rep 2 and Hip One who was Padre's partner. I met Bluebeard and Nic 707. They was coming into their own and I was just like really beginning.  I was like, "Wow!" Once I became T-Kid Padre Dos sat down with me after school. Me and his sister went to school together to JFK High School. We used to walk home together and we would take the bus home together. So that's how me and Padre became good friends. He was very kool. He was very reserved. He was quiet. He wasn't a troublemaker.  He was just maaad kool! But his style of Writing was unique because he learnt from Trac 168.  He also admired Lee who was doing Whole Cars. He was the one who planted the seed in me to really do pieces... not just letters but also compositions. Then Tracy 168 was the one who showed me how to compose everything but Padre Dos planted the bug.  

Padre Dos (TBA/TDS)

  

Padre Dos (TBA/TDS)

After school we would go to my kitchen and we would draw on paper bags 'cause you could take them and fold 'em and they wouldn't break. And we used to get what they call Buffalo Markers and Buffalo Markers were just different color felt markers. He just showed me how to make my letters flow.  He was like,"Yo, your letters gotta be like music, man." Like I would draw a letter. He goes, "Yeah, you see this little part here? You should make that part go skinny!" Like he literally sat there and showed me how to make a letter look better. And then when I started hanging out with Tracy 168 I already had what Padre Dos was teaching me and when I showed Tracy 168 my first piece he was like,"Yo, you're gonna be good! You're gonna be fucking dope! You got style!" And I was like, "Oh, shit!" But Tracy 168 was doing amazing shit already." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where was Tracy 168 from? Was he from the Kingsbridge section?"

T-KID 170:"Well, that's where I was at....Kingsbridge....that's 192nd Street & Aqueduct Avenue. Me, Padre Dos, Tracy 168. That's where his mother lived, too. But he was originally from 166th Street & Woodycrest Avenue. And he went to P.S. 168. That's where he got the number from.  That's where Lava and all those other guys were from. Lionel 168, Bear 167....all those guys. They were from that area which was the Highbridge Section of the Bronx. That's the West Bronx. He was from there. By the time I met him he was up in the Kingsbridge area."

  

Tracy 168 (WANTED/WS)

                                              

Tracy 168 (WANTED/WS)

                                          

Style Master Tracy 168 (WANTED/WS) 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where did you see all those painted trains? Would you go to certain subway stations in order to watch them?"

T-KID 170:"So going back to Kool 131....I told you my uncle and my aunt and my cousin they lived in the same building that Kool 131 lived. My cousin was friends with Kool 131. They were like the patriarchs of the family on my mother's side. So everytime there was a party we went there or every weekend my grandmother would go over there and we would go with her on the train. Since I was a little kid my mother would take me down there and that's how I would see the trains. We would get on the 4 line on let's say Burnside Avenue and we would take it down to 149th Street and then we would take the downtown 2 train. We would switch from the 4 to the 2 and the 2 would take us to 96th Street on the West Side and then we would take the 1 train going up. We would get off at 145th Street and then walk a little bit up to the projects where my uncle and Kool 131 lived."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you'd see all these different train pieces while you were on the train?"

T-KID 170:"Yeah."     

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, so what prompted you to start piecing?"

T-KID 170:"After I got shot, man, you know I was like, "Okay, I'm done with this gang shit." For me, I never really liked tagging because it was so many tags by that time. Like 1977...trains were bombed! There was no space! But there was plenty of space outside to make things work and I had a bigger aspiration. What I really wanted to do is do pieces. Window down End-2-End cars, man. And if you really look at my style that's what it's for. It's for window down Burners.  I have done Top-To-Bottoms, I have done Whole Cars and stuff but if you look at my style, my style is really window down Burners. They have that flow and it has a lot to do with what Padre Dos taught me, you know?"   

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where does your name T-Kid come from?"

T-KID 170:"So that's a funny story, you know,  'cause it's a combination of Big T and Kid. So when I was in the Bronx Enchanters I was tall and skinny, right? And, you know, they would call me Kid 'cause I was the youngest. I was always the youngest guy. Then in the neighbourhood 'cause I was tall and skinny they called me Big T 'cause I looked like the letter "T". So when I was in the hospital recovering my brother brought me some markers and it's funny because whenever my family would come I was handcuffed. I was arrested because of that gang bullshit. They would handcuff me when they was there but then when they would leave I would draw. My brother brought me some Buffalo Markers and a sketch pad. And I would just doodle and do Bubble Letters and stuff like that and I did a big "T" and I did a "KID" and then I did a "T-KID". And then I said,"Yo, this looks cool! T-Kid!" And that's how I came up with T-Kid. 1977. And I was like, "Yo, I'mma dedicate myself just to doing pieces, man! Fuck that!! I wanna do Burners!"

T-Kid 170 (TNB)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please break down your specific approach to composing Burners!"

T-KID 170:"I would work more on my drawing than my letters. I wasn't as good with drawing as I was with letters. Letters was just natural to me. Listen, I painted trains, stuff that rolls and I just made it off the top of my head, you know? Because it's in me. Sometimes my pieces came out real good, sometimes they came out not so good but you know what? It still is what it is. I got a certain technique and what I learnt was geometric shapes to get that mechanical straight letter shit that I was really known for. I learnt that in that math class that I took. I remember Mr. Leon was on the blackboard while I was doing a King 13 piece battling with Kool 131. And he did some shapes 'cause we was learning geometry and then I started taking those shapes and I started putting letters in them. And then  I started to figure out how to manipulate just rectangles, triangles and circles and to put them together in pieces, you know? And that's what I learnt from that class and from battling Maurice (Kool 131). Padre Dos taught me how to flow and Tracy 168 taught me how to compose a piece with characters 'cause see it was a combination of many different people showing me things. It wasn't just one guy. It wasn't just Padre Dos, it wasn't just Tracy 168. I was looking at the trains. I was looking at what Kool 131 was doing. I was looking at what Part One was doing. And then I would hang out with Tracy 168 and look at his pictures and he had all the old pictures of Cliff 159, Lionel 168 and all these crazy motherfuckers, man! King 2, Chi-Chi 133, you know? And I'm looking at all these Cars, man! Tracy 168 had all this shit from the early 1970ies to like 1975 and 1976! He had all the pictures and he kept them in cigar boxes. He had cigar boxes full of pictures, man!!"

T-Kid 170 (TNB)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe your relationship with the letters of the alphabet!"

T-KID 170:"It was always about communication. See, growing like I grew up...you gotta understand something..I grew up in a broken family. My parents divorced when I was three years old. I suffered a lot of mental and physical abuse by both of them. So I developed my own world where I would escape. There is a style of writing called script which they don't teach in school anymore and when I went to live with my father he put me in Catholic school. Holy Family. And one of the classes was on writing which was script. I remember the teacher. He was showing us how to write script and whatnot and he was like,"This is communication." And he said, "With letters you can say what you want to say." And I said,"But what if they don't let you say anything?" He says,"You still write it. They'll see it but you have to write it." I started looking at letters as a form of communication. And of course already having Style Writing in my head and experiencing everything that I experienced I started to learn how to get lost in letters and how to see letters as a form of communication. That's why when I do my pieces I'm communicating. You know, I'm telling you how I feel by the colors that I'm using, by the way the letters are. My father was very militaristic. He was very hardcore. I had to do 100 push-ups, I had to do 1000 sit-ups. I had to do pull ups. I had to do all this shit. That's the way I grew up, man. When I would get in
trouble my father would hit me. My mother on the other hand she would always say, "You're no good!" You know, verbally abusing me like that. And it was like I was in a fucked up world, man. So I escaped and I used the letters and that's why those letters became a part of who I am."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was it like to go bombing in the train yards and lay-ups back in the 1970ies and early 1980ies?"

T-KID 170:"Are you familiar with the movie "The Wizard Of Oz"?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Yes, I am."

T-KID 170:"Okay, you go from a black and white world to this fantasy world where you can be whatever you want to be. That's what it was like. Going to a lay-up, going into a yard, going into a tunnel there was always that adrenaline and excitement. You didn't know if you was gonna get arrested, if you was gonna get caught, if you was gonna hit by a train, you know? And you would smell the rocks, you know, the gravel that they used for the tracks. The electricity from the metal, you could smell all that. You could feel the trains coming, you could feel the wind. You knew....like after going so many times you started to understand the atmosphere and how it would change so quick. Like you could sense the danger. It was danger coming....you could sense it! It was like going to this world. You know, at first I was nervous, I was scared. Then it became second nature. Like, "Let's go! Let's get in there!" And it was fucking amazing!"

T-Kid 170 (TNB)

                                              

T-Kid 170 (TNB)

SIR NORIN RAD:"And what was it like to see your freshly painted piece rolling?"

T-KID 170:"It was like...to see your piece rolling, man? You know, in the beginning I didn't take pictures. I just did it to paint but then later on when you heard about Henry Chalfant I started taking pictures. But, you know, to see your piece rolling, man, was like,"I did that!!!" It's on steel, it's rolling by and people are looking at it. It was kool, man! It was soooo fucking kool!! It was like an addiction. You had to fucking go and do more!!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Your crew is TNB. What does TNB stand for?"

T-KID 170:"The Notorious Bunch. The Neck Breakers. The Nation's Best. Yeah, man! It was originally Two Nasty Boys. It was me and Pesser in 1977. You know, after I got out of the hospital I hooked up with Pesser. We were tagging at first. He had a crew called MGA- Magnificent Graffiti Artists. It was just me and him. He took me to the 1 tunnel. I started piecing with him. The first car I did was a T-KID - PESSER. I was like, "Yo, I'mma make a crew! We're nasty! We're Two Nasty Boys!" And he was like,"Yeah, yeah!!!" And that's how we came up. But then later on, you know, you start putting more people down. Now it's not just Two Nasty Boys, now it's The Nasty Boys. And "Nasty" was because we were doing something illegal. That was the reference for "Nasty". And you know, we were the boys. We were getting down. We were doing our thing, man!"  

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please name all the members of TNB! Who did actually do pieces?"

T-KID 170:"I did all the pieces for the original TNB crew. It was me, Pesser, Rase, this other guy Anthony....La Rock. He was like a bomber. Like he had the letter styles. Joker One...he had handstyles, too. So those were my handstyle guys. They were tagging the insides. Then later on we hooked up with Take One from Rock Steady Crew and Vista. They were just hardcore throw-up guys. Later on it just got bigger and better I could say. "

T-Kid 170 (TNB)

SIR NORIN RAD:"You are known for having been the king of the 1 line back then. What made you target this specific line?"

T-KID 170:"That was the line you could walk down from Kingsbridge. Marble Hill was one of the train stations. So we would come down from where I lived up by the 4 line 'cause I was closer to the 4 line. The 4 line was two blocks away. So the 1 line was there and that was THE line, man!! That was the line where The Go Club....you know Team, Piggy and all these old school motherfuckers were doing pieces and that was the line TDS was burning. So we had to go there and we had to burn. We had to represent. And also my father he had moved to Yonkers. That's    why I met Pesser. Pesser was from Yonkers. You took the bus from Yonkers to Van Cortlandt Park which was the 1 line. So that was like the most convenient line and we killed that line. Then I found the Ghost Yard and the Ghost Yard was like wheeeeeew....all the trains went there."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Was Pesser Puerto Rican, too?"

T-KID 170:"No, he was a Black brother."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you would do the outlines for him and then he would do the fill-ins or would he also do his own pieces?"

T-KID 170:"Oh no, he would tag. But I would do the outlines and he would fill in. You gotta understand, it was the orchestra and I was the maestro. You know, I would tell them what to do when it came to the pieces and the background of the pieces. I told them, "Use this color! Use that color! Do these kind of blends!" 'Cause I knew what I was doing and they were learning. Then after a while they figured it out and they would just do it automatically. They would be like, "Yo, T! What if you use this color?" And I'd be like,"Let me see. Oh, that shit looks dope!" They was like an orchestra playing a fucking song. Once again going back to what Padre Dos told me,"Your pieces gotta flow!" And how do they flow when you're working with a lot of people? You teach them. You teach them and they learn and then you guys work together and you get shit done, man. That's why we did so many cars 'cause it was a group of us doing shit. And it all started with me doing the outlines and I got better real quick. I was one of the Writers that...I mean the first T-Kid - Pesser piece was busted but yo by the fourth piece I was already a master."

T-Kid 170 (TNB)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you have a little wall in your neighbourhood on which you would  practice your pieces?"

T-KID 170:"There was a wall in the benches that we used to just paint. Like I used to do little pieces there and I used to try different letters. But yeah, it was a little spot, man....the benches. Me and my boy Mack Gerrard...not Mack from TAT...but this other kid...Mackenannny..we used to call him Mack. He was a Puerto Rican Irish guy. He was fun. He was like, "Yeah, man! Check out this piece!" 'Cause he was Padre's best best friend. It was amazing, man. Growing up and hanging out with these guys it was just like...you know, we all loved different things but we all had that one common thrill: We all loved Writing, man!!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"How long did take the TNB Crew to take over the 1 line?"

T-KID 170:"I wanna say like about six months 'cause it was a lot of trains, it was a lot of people painting. After a while you had to find space and you had to go over people and that's when the whole End-To-End, Top-To-Bottom Cars started coming in. We were like,"Yo, let's do the whole car 'cause this guy did a piece here and it's busted. We got no space. We gotta do this shit!" So we  painted the whole fucking train to make pieces disappear and that would happen on a regular basis. It took about six months betweeen me, Rase...you know, I was doing Dr. Bad pieces, too. That was my other name. You know, I was doing Dr. Bad, I was doing Kid Rock. Rase was doing Rase or Coop. I was also doing Pearl pieces 'cause Pesser was doing Pearl. So I would do Pearl pieces for Pesser. Wake 5 that was another name that I used do to for Joker One. I told him,"You need to wake up! Wake up at 5 AM! Wake 5! That's you, bro! Let's do Wake 5! Let's do a "W"! Let's see how it comes out!""

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where would you and the rest of TNB meet in order to hang out, do pieces in blackbooks and plan your bombing missions?"

T-KID 170:"So with Pesser we would get together in Yonkers. We would get together in Rase's house, in his apartment. We would get together there 'cause his parents were never around. They were always working so he was always available to take us in. So we would sit there and we would come up with the ideas. Then later on we started doing it in the Bronx in my grandmother's apartment and at the benches across the street. You know, we would sit there in the summertime 'cause they had a table to play chess. So we would sit there and we would draw and we would plan, "Yo, we gotta do this! We gotta do that!" So it was several places. Then we would meet at Van Cortlandt Park. That's where we always met. Van Cortlandt Park at the last stop of the 1 train. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the atmosphere at those TNB meetings! What would you do besides Writing? What would you drink and smoke? Were there any girls with you?"

T-KID 170:"By that time it would be 40s and it would be weed. The girls? It's not that we weren't interested in girls but there wasn't that many girls that was interested in what we were doing. We were really underground. Not a lot of people knew what we were doing, you know? But we was always joking. There was always happiness. It was always a good atmosphere. It was a very creative atmosphere. Later on Trip 7, Rac 7's brother, he became my best friend and we would go to his apartment. This guy, man, that's a whole different story. He went from riches to rags 'cause of crack. He lost everything. But he had a nice apartment. He had a great job. He had a nice apartment by St. James Park. Rac 7 was my protege. Him and Jon started the 156 Crew. Trip wasn't a Writer but he was an excellent artist. We would go to his house and we would smoke weed and he would DJ and we would beat on the wall inside of the apartment. Now I'm hanging out with Boozer from Staten Island. We was just having a good time and that became like the TNB headquarters for about two, three years. And then later on when I hooked up with my first wife..there was an abandoned building next to her and we would use it as a club house. And it's funny because I found a canvas....I didn't even know I had it...that we had painted there for the club house. By that time we were into girls and girls were hanging out with us. So that was like the Romeo's spot."     

Rac 7 (TNB / 156 Crew)

                                            

Rac 7 (TNB / 156 Crew)

SIR NORIN RAD:"When did Rac 7 become your protege?"

T-KID 170:"I wanna say he was the littlest one out of all of us so I wanna say around like 1978 he started hanging around. He used to chase me. He would follow us to the yard. That was 1978. By 1982 I hooked up with the TAT Crew if I remember correctly. It was Brim, Nicer and Bio and BG 183 came later."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"They're from Bronx River, right?"

T-KID 170:"That's correct."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Let us talk about the Ghost Yard please. Where did it get its name from? Is it true that it was built on an old graveyard?"

T-KID 170:"There's many stories. In the Bronx there are graveyards all over. That's a little....I don't know about that. But the reason it was called the Ghost Yard....and the one who told me this was Mike 171..he lived right by it. The Ghost Yard is right next to a river. In the summertime at night you get the fog coming from the river. In those times they used to use handheld torches and when the workers would walk through the yard these torches would glow like a ghost in the fog and that's why they called it the Ghost Yard."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What is your definition of a Burner piece?"

T-KID 170:"A good style of letters, good use of colors, nice composition with the background and a character."

T-Kid 170 (TNB)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who were the top three Style Writers of the 1970ies to you?"

T-KID 170:"I wanna say when it came to the style of letters Kool 131 (TDS) was one of the best. Noc 167 (OTB) I would say was next. And then third place I would have to say Chain 3 (TMT)."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did battles between Writers start back then? And who determined who won those batttles?"

T-KID 170:"The winner was always determined by other Writers. They would come to you and be like, "Yo, you fucking burnt that shit, man!" And the way battles would come about was most of the times you saw a piece from somebody and you would say, "Yeah, I wanna outdo this guy!" Whenever you painted, you painted to burn! That's how these battles came about. It was never planned. It was always impromptu. It would just happen. Nobody ever came up to me and said, "Let's battle!" It was mostly what you saw and once again let's take it to that words are communication. You would put certain shit like, "Yeah, I'm burning this shit."or, "Who's Gonna Top This?"  But that's how it worked, man." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Were you ever involved in long lasting battles? Like battles that went on for multiple rounds?" 

T-KID 170:"Well, with me that wasn't necessary 'cause the first round was enough for me to take somebody out." Chain 3 (TMT) and Case 2 (TFP) went through a couple of battles like that. And Chain 3 (TMT) and Noc 167 (OTB). But for me I didn't have that experience. The kind of cars that I was doing were just fucking amazing and they were just winning it hands down. Nobody wanted to battle me."

T-Kid 170 (TNB)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe what went on in the Writing community when giants like Chain 3 (TMT) and Case 2 (TFP) battled! Were those battles inspiring?"

T-KID 170:"Oh, absolutely, man! When you saw Writers trying to outdo each other it was always inspiring. It was like,"Yo!" You know it's funny, I know that you have spoken to a bunch of Writers but they never really mentioned Dondi. But yet many consider Dondi the King of Writing. Why do think that is?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Well, I know that Dondi was from Brooklyn. He wrote Naco before he changed his name to Dondi. I think he isn't referred to as King of Writing by many of the best Style Writers of Manhattan and the Bronx because it is obvious that his later style was largely influenced by what The Death Squad and Writers such as Noc 167 and Chain 3 had been doing long before him."    

T-KID 170:"Yeah, he developed that but the one who really mastered that was Duro. Duro was the one that was coming over to the 1 line more than Dondi. And Dondi that was his partner. Duro was Dondi's partner and he took the style actually from Duro and Duro got it from Manhattan, from the 1 line and from the Bronx guys, you know?"  

SIR NORIN RAD:"You were not only a Style Writer but also a B-Boy. Since you have mentioned that you grew up on Boynton Avenue I guess that you must be familiar with Kool DJ Dee who lived on Elder Avenue and of course with DJ Afrika Bambaataa from Bronx River."

T-KID 170:"Listen, it was Boynton Avenue and then Elder Avenue as you went down. That's where I came from. And then Kingsbridge is right next to where Kool DJ Herc lived on. So you gotta understand I grew up with this as it was developing. Like when Breaking started I was part of the first generation of breakdancers." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"I see. And what prompted you to pick up B-Boying?"

T-KID 170:"They didn't call it B-Boying. They called it Breaking. They didn't call it B-Boying. That came later on. 1981 or 1982. My friend Sach he was like into this, man. When I went down to the Puerto Rican Day Parade in 1976 and I met Danco and them I was with Sach. He got into it and I got into it."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Are you talking about the Writer Sach from TMB?"

T-KID 170:"No, not that Sach. This is another Sach. This is a Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx. from Boynton Avenue. His name was Alexander Rivera. He had already started Breaking and he was like,"Yo, check this out!" He started doing some moves and I said, "I could do that!" He had just started and he knew Cholly Rock and all these guys. You had the Zulu Kings and the Shaka Zulus. He introduced me to the Shaka Zulus and they put me down 'cause I was Breaking. I wasn't that good but they put me down and I was down with the Shaka Zulus for a moment. I never really did anything with them because I was too busy bombing the trains."

T-Kid 170 breaking with the Rock Steady Crew.

SIR NORIN RAD:"But you still felt confident enough to go off in a circle when the muisc was right I guess."

T-KID 170:"Hell yeah!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"So where did you dance at?"

T-KID 170:"Bronx River. But back then it was everywhere, man. It was in the streets! Like any park you went to where somebody would hook up two turntables to the light poles they would be partying and they would Breaking. Right there JHS 123 that was the spot! That's when I lived on Boynton. It's a couple of blocks up on Morrison Avenue. The community center in Bronx River was another spot. The music was inspiring. It would suck you in, man. It would draw you. You wanted to go over there and listen to the music."

T-Kid 170 (TNB)  & DJ Afrika Bambaataa

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you pinpoint the year when you started Breaking?"

T-KID 170:"1976. The end of 1976, the winter of 1976 if I remember correctly. By the spring of 1977 I had already developed some moves."

SIR NORIN RAD:"To what kind of music did you listen to when you were at home drawing in your blackbook?"

T-KID 170:"At that time I was listening more to the R&B stuff. You know, James Brown, the J.B.'s and those guys. and that's where all the breakbeats came from. The Blackbyrds...listening to all them motherfuckers. It was kool, man! I was drawn to that shit and I could relate to it."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please shed some light on your relationship with the Ballbusters!"

T-KID 170:"Let me educate you on the Ballbusters. They were my biggest enemies. The Writing part of them..we were rivals, we were fighting all the time and that was because of Shock 123. But you gotta understand the real Ballbusters were Dominican drug dealers from Broadway between 137th & 139th Street. Those were the real hardcore guys. Then you had the Writers.....Tack, Airborn, Baby Rock 137......the FBA Crew. We were at this train station in the Bronx....Dyckman Avenue.....the 1 train before it goes in the tunnel...you know, we're chilling, we're benching..we were watching trains go by and shit and all of a sudden this guy from the Ballbusters comes up and shakes my hand and goes, "Yo, T-Kid!! I like what you do!" I was like, "Yeah, kool!" His name was Cid 137 and all of a sudden out of nowhere fucking Shock 123 comes and punches him in the face for no reason at all. That is something that really shouldn't have happened. It was fucked up 'cause Cid 137 was a cool guy. And that's how the war started between us and the Ballbusters. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"What do those days of Writing and Breaking during the 1970ies and 1980ies mean to you?"

T-KID 170:"They made me who I am today. I'm glad for everything I experienced, man. It was amazing to see a culture develop. I never knew how impactfully it would touch the world. I'm so proud that I grew up in that culture!"

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

T-KID 170:"Listen man, shoutouts to all the real motherfuckers out there doing their thing, that are surviving day by day and that are keeping it real. God bless y'all! Be the best person you can be!"  

SIR NORIN RAD: "Thank you! Shout outs to my Intruders Crew! To DJ Scarce One the best Hiphop DJ in Germany! Shout outs to Sureshot La Rock, Kenny IB, Input MZK, Leon Skee NHS! UKUMBAMBISANA!! Shout outs to Pete Nice! Shout outs to my mentors Trixie, Dancin' Doug, Cholly Rock, Sondance, Puppetmaster, Wayne Will (RIP) and of course Mr. Wiggles!! Shout outs to Troy L. Smith! Shout outs to my brother T.T. La Rock!"