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!"