QLS Classic: Top Shelf 1988

Listen back as the masterminds behind Top Shelf 1988 join Team Supreme to discuss the most transformative year in Hip-Hop history. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key and that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger. Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust, from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers. Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering, so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  We all have routines. I'm Jabran, and with diabetes, mine was finger sticks. Sometimes, I skipped them because they hurt. The Freestyle Libre 3CGM changed that. It gives me glucose insights without finger sticks. Learn more at freestylelibre.us.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Finger sticks are required if your glucose alarms or readings do not match symptoms, or when you see check blood glucose symbol for the first 12 hours. The views expressed should not be used for medical diagnosis or treatment as a substitute for professional medical advice. Individual circumstances may vary. For prescription only. Safety info found at freestylelibre.us.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Thinking about selling your car? Get a real offer worth real money from CarMax. Then take seven days to think it over. That's it. No haggling, no hassles, no pressure. Get all the details and a real offer today at carmax.com. Want to drive? CarMax.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? This is Questlove, and you're checking out QLS Classic. So some time back, way back, I think around 2018, there was a mythical, unearthed with quotations, project called Top Shelf 1988. It featured like a lot of the all-stars of what I call the Latin Quarter era of hip-hop, the Latin Quarter era, known as the classic hip-hop era. A lot of those songs that are now staples in hip-hop, they basically got their debut when DJ Red Alert was spinning at the Latin Quarter.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Rumoraries like Chubb Rock, also Grandmaster Kaz, Melly Mel, Smooth B of Nice Smooth, Drazza Black Sheep, Master Ace, Grand Pooh by the Jungle Brothers, Dougie Fresh, Special Lead, MC Light, Craig G, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Marquis, and of course, MC Search.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  What can I say, man? This is like, one of those rare summit meetings that I've always dreamed about. Having a conversation with my, you know, my comrades, the gods that, that built hip-hop culture as I knew and love it. Ladies and gentlemen, let's go back, back in time, to a classic era in Questlove Supreme history. This is the Top Shelf 1988 episode. Let's go.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Salute that man, huh? Let's just, let's just kick it off. Ladies and gentlemen, do not attempt to adjust your, your, your, your dial. This is probably my, my, my greatest dream manifesting right now in front of, in front of my eyes. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm surrounded by all my idols, literally, in front of me. This is Questlove Supreme, only on Pandora. We have the world's greatest, right in front of me. I'm gonna introduce you, one by one. Starting up, we have Sir Kane, Big Daddy Kane. Hello, how are you doing, sir?

• 3:46Speaker 04

  Top Shelf, King Ijihadic Top Shelf.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Craig G. is in the house.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  How are you, sir?

• 3:51Speaker 00

  This is amazing. MC Light is in the house. Good evening. Hello. Special Ed is in the house. What it is like, Flatbush, Church Ave., stand up, E. Hall. MC Search is in the house.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  White people, stand up.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  We also have Benji Greenberg, from Roston Records. Yep. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. Did you bring me a Pramani Brothers sandwich? Oh, I gotta go back and get you one. Sorry about that. And brother, Ayed El Khair. I, I know I'm gonna butcher your name, bro. It's cool, it's cool. No, no. It's Ayed El Khair.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  I'm gonna say it, one more time. Ayed El Khair. Ayed El Khair.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Ayed El Khair. Get your Jew right.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  I know, I'm trying to. One more time. Ayed. Ayed. El Khair. El Khair. I did it. It means return to goodness.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  The only Muslim with a Louis Vuitton scarf. Get it right.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Sexy Muslim.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  We are here to, I guess, kick off or celebrate the Top Shelf project. I can't stress enough to our listeners how crucial the year of 1988 was for hip hop history. And, you know, to hear of this project. First of all, this came out of nowhere, at least for me. I'd never heard of this, the idea of, can you give us, who can, who can best describe to me the, the history of the Top Shelf 1988 project, the genesis of it?

• 5:23Speaker 05

  I'll take that.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:24Speaker 05

  So, I had moved to New York in 2000, was working at a record company as an assistant. And I was working on producing and writing music at nights and on the weekends. And so I started making beats and I was getting better at producing. And a mutual friend of me and Chris's introduced us and Chris was big into digging for records and, and all that. And so he came over one day and we just made a track. And it ended up being the track, what, what was the first one we made? Uh, Grand Poobah's. So anyway, we, we made, we made a track and we're like, oh, this is really dope. But it sounds like it's like 1988. This is in 2003.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:01Speaker 05

  And he kept coming over and we kept making beats. And all of a sudden we had this, this group of beats that we loved. And we didn't know what to do with them because, you know, it wasn't like 50 Cent, who was popping off in 2003, was going to get on these beats that sounded like 1988. So we came up with this idea, like, what if we got, like, our idols from 1988 to somehow get on these records? And we didn't, I didn't know anybody really. It was just like a dream. And then we came up with this whole backstory of Top Shelf Studios and all the tapes were lost in the Tompkins Square Park riots. And we just sort of, just, we were just, just dreaming in my bedroom, literally, just like coming up with this story to somehow give this project some context.

• 6:45Speaker 05

  And it wasn't even a project at the time, it was just a dream. And so, um, A friend of mine introduced me to Fab Five Freddy. And I went to it, we went to his house and we played him a bunch of beats and um. He really liked it. He loved the concept of it, which was basically, there was this, the studio from nineteen eighty-eight called Top Shelf. All the greatest artists came through there, record after shows, hanging out, whatever. And during the Tom Quinn Square Park riots, all the tapes were lost. And now.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Crazy backstory, by the way.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Thank you. And now, and now fifteen years later, in two thousand and three, we find these records, right? But now it's fifteen years after that because I didn't have, I had, I was able to, we were able to make the record, but we, like, no one was interested in putting it out. And so it wasn't until we had success with Rostrum. And were able to do it properly, that it's now properly coming out. Now thirty years after the fictional Top Shelf Studios was looted during the Tom Quinn Square Park riots.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, I think it's only apropos that. You do it on an even number, which is thirty years into it. So it seems like it's all come full circle. How did you, how did you pitch this idea? To, to each?

• 8:10Speaker 05

  To the artists?

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Yes, to each member.

• 8:14Speaker 05

  Well, I thought that by having Fab Five Freddy on my side would help.

• 8:20Speaker 05

  So, because if it's like two thousand and three and it's just like, hey, my name is Benji and I want to make this record, that's, you know. So it was a lot more effective to be like, hey, me and Fab Five Freddy, because he came on as an executive producer of it back then.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  You know, we're making this record and blah, blah, blah, and, and. People liked the beats. I think that's what it came down to, is people were feeling the energy of the project. I mean, you'd have to ask them. But to me, it was like, you know, to, to, to me, it was a celebration of the music that, that we grew up with and that we loved and what got me into music in the first place. And so. I think people felt that energy, or I hope they did, which was just like, it was a celebration and it was just like a cool concept idea and like, let's just all get together and make a record.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  So I have to ask, were the tracks initially made on an SP 1200 or?

• 9:18Speaker 05

  No.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Did we cheat a little bit?

• 9:20Speaker 05

  We cheated a little bit. We cheated a little bit. We actually made them on an MPC 2000 XL.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Okay, that's, that's close.

• 9:27Speaker 05

  And, uh, and.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  That's quasi-close.

• 9:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, um, but yeah, no, we didn't make it on SP.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Well, definitely in the spirit of 88 is in there. Like, I'd never thought I'd see the day where, you know, someone spitting over something that's 108 BPMs, which, you know, for me, like,

• 9:50Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm, I'm just a lover of, of, of fast rap. So even with Chub Rock's track, which I was like, whoa, like the second I heard it, I was like, oh, there's no way he's gonna ma- And then he started like instantly.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Went off. Yeah, absolutely.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  So I, I, I have to ask this room. Um, there's, there's one sort of common thread that's on almost every Questlove Supreme show, which,

• 10:19Speaker 00

  I feel as though the, the common denominator of all of you is of course the Latin Quarter, of which no one salivates more over Latin Quarter stories than I do. So, yeah, without my cohorts here who will make fun of me of doing this, I have to ask questions about the Latin Quarter.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  They literally, yeah, they made that jingle just for me because they know I ask too many questions of it. But for me, I mean, I'd be remiss to, to not let any stories of 1988 go by without, without any.

• 11:05Speaker 05

  Latin Quarter.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Latin Quarter tells. First of all, was, was this room at all like socially, cause this is.

• 11:13Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, man, I'm too young to know what.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think you. No, but this room for sure.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  I don't know what y'all talking about. My pops told me about that spot.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  It's really funny.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Actually, wait a minute, you two are actually Juice Crew members.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  Juice Crew All Stars.

• 11:30Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  I was gonna say.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, was Juice Crew members welcome in the Latin Quarter?

• 11:36Speaker 00

  To agree with Ed, I was really young, but I have, yeah, I mean, when, um, the symphony was out, I was fifteen.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  You had the shout join when you was fourteen and.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  I was twelve.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  You were twelve when you made the shout join?

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Yes, and but here's the thing about Latin Quarters. I met Search in front of Latin Quarters when you had the Hey Girl song. And the way I wound up in Latin Quarters was I used to, Hey Boy, my bad, yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  Hey Boy, yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  I, I, I used to answer the phones at the rap attack for Mr. Magic. And some nights, I would wind up in Latin Quarters with Mr. Magic underage, scared to death. And I remember bumping into Search in front of there. I remember seeing, um, a couple of shows there, but I didn't go often. But I would wind up there coming from the radio station. So it was kind of weird that New York didn't really care about your age then, because I had to have been at least fourteen years old.

• 12:29Speaker 05

  Well, they, they made sure that you got a wristband for alcohol. So I was at Latin Quarters at fifteen and it was okay. And I didn't even want to be near the bar, like, it was so much going on just on a music front. And seeing all the dancers and everything that liquor was the last thing on my mind.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  I agree. I mean, I, I wasn't even, I think I maybe went to the bar. I can probably count on one hand, and it was all five times. We were red alert to have poo poo juice. Because he would call us all to the bar, all the violators, and, and have poo poo juice, which was Myers Rum, pineapple. And I forgot the third thing, but, um, yeah, so that was his drink. And I've never been anywhere in, in the world where they know how to make poo poo juice except the Latin Quarter. And, and one bartender.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Rest in peace, Chris Lighty.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely. Well, first of all, Search is being modest, because Search was the king of Latin Quarters. It's like, you know, when, when you come in Latin Quarters, it's like, just, you know, it's red alert.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Paradise Gray.

• 13:33Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  MC Search.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  Really? You know, yeah, that's how, that's how it, it falls. I mean, it's like, if you come in there and you don't see Search, you, you gotta think something is wrong. For real. I mean, it was like, he was the king of Latin Quarter. That's where I met him first, like, really, like, like, the Hey Boy song. Like, I remember the night when Search walked in and Red threw it on and gave him love and Search ran on the floor and started breaking it down, dancing, and everybody, and everybody was screaming for him. I was like, okay, you see, that's what I need to be doing. You know? For real? Yeah. Wait, now, you mentioned something great. You said that when you would go with Magic, but I'm under the impression that Latin Quarter was more

• 14:18Speaker 05

  Red Alert.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Pro Red Alert. Well, now, now, the thing about it was, is we're talking before the Bridge Wars, like, ah, we're talking when I had, like, the song Transformer out. That was a couple of years before the whole conflict started. So what was the official first year of the Latin Quarter that we know? Is it eighty-six?

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Celebrity Tuesdays, eighty-five, Tuesdays in nineteen eighty-five.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  So eighty-five?

• 14:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  The Celebrity Tuesdays with, um, Paradise and La Mumble Carson.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  No, Awesome Two.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  Awesome Two, right.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  Awesome Two.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  Right, and Paradise was working the door.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, Paradise.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  But it was special, right, that's exactly right. Special K and Teddy Ted had Celebrity Tuesdays. That's exactly right, eighty-five.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  It was before, like, the whole drama started, so I would go with Magic, and the funny thing is, Magic would leave me. I'd be at Latin Quarters by myself, just like, what the hell's going on here? And I never went to the bar, cause I had my little rope chain on in the corner, and you know who I would see? I would see Hawk. And he would make me feel safe. Hawk and Dog and all that. Yeah, that was my brother, cause he would make me feel safe, and then I'd get a little confidence and hang out for a minute, but He's talking about the guy that I'm going against in the Eight and a Half Stepping video with the Braves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this the Hawk that you gave a shout-out to in Wrath of the Gang? Yeah. That Hawk? Yes, sir. Okay, Tariq, I'm about to play you out, one second. For half a second before he was a Black Thought,

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Tariq was

• 15:44Speaker 05

  Hawk.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Hawk Smooth. And his acronym was H.I.P. African warrior keep kicking it smooth. I'm sorry. listening, I'm. I'm sorry.

• 15:54Speaker 04

  African warrior keeping it smooth.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  I'm sorry.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  Good night.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  But it pre it predated the the the South Bronx Bridge beef. So you know what I mean? But that was kind of Brooklyn's out. Yo, did you take the train from Far Rockaway there?

• 16:09Speaker 04

  I did. I took the eight to Forty Second Street. I would take the eight to Forty Second.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Was Latin Quarter the the was before the Latin Quarter? Was New York just regional then? Like, was this the first Manhattan? Party in which you had to leave your borough to come to it?

• 16:27Speaker 04

  For me, like, I was.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  So for me, eighty three was Lynbrook, Hot Skates, Empire Roller Rink, United Skates of America in Queens. Like, the only place to really hear hip hop was split between hip hop and dance music in the five boroughs.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  Well, Roxy and Dancer Terry.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Roxy and Dancer Terry.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  They were like before.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  But they were real strict about young boys going in there. Like, they were real. Like, you it was it was tough to get in there when you were young.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  And the Dancer Terry? Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 05

  You were getting your hip hop from the roller rinks. You're right about that.

• 17:03Speaker 04

  Without question, without question.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  My first Empire.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  Skate key.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  My first show at USA, I got booed. What? Yeah.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  I think I got my first show at Empire Roller Rink. I got booed. Because I had a trash record called Melissa that was trash.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  But I could dance really good, so that would save me. But that record was trash because you got to remember, I went to high school with Dana Dana Slick Rick. So I thought if I came out with a British accent, I would be fly.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  And it was terrible. So I performed at Celebrity Tuesday because the awesome two were playing a record. And I went there and I got on stage. And people were looking at me like I'm an alien. So I started dancing and they were like, go white boy, go white boy. So I was like, oh, OK, like this, I'm saved. Like, I figured it out. Like, I could be whack. But I could dance. And then Vanilla Ice came and just, you know, took that whole ste. But I decided to kind of grow and have lyrics and, you know, become something better than just a dancing and MC.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  I see. Wait.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  You said you got held.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Uh, well, I'll never forget it. It was again with Mr. Magic.

• 18:21Speaker 00

  Joe Ski Love was performing and I wasn't even supposed to perform and something happened technically where Magic just threw me on the mic and no DJ knew what was going on or nothing and I had to kick a a cappella and they weren't really friendly with a cappellas back then. Cause it was dancers. So, you know, about eight bars in, I, I think I'm kicking some hard rhymes. This is again before I heard Kane and I threw like seven rhyme books away.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Yup, right.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  So, my rhyme was mad basic and like I said, I mean, I just wasn't good and I was nervous as hell. Again, I'm like fourteen years old. I don't know no better, but it didn't deter me. You know what I mean? But it was weird because when he mentioned USA, it was like one of the rea- like in Queens, everybody came through USA.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Yup.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  But growing up in Queensbridge, the Reece Center was almost like a celebrity spot. So you had mad people come through. I remember being ten, watching Grandmaster, I mean Grand Wizard Theater or a cut with handcuffs on. And I'm like ten years old, like with my sheepskin on, just amazed at it. So, I seen a lot of stuff, but my brother, my grandmother lived across the street from Harlem World and forced the projects and my brother would come home. The thing about New York back then is it wasn't as regional as you thought. There was somebody from any borough at any show. It didn't matter how far away it was. Brooklyn was always somewhere. So, I would get firsthand copies of like the Fantastic Five, Crow Crush Battle.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  So, I would say like even before Latin Quarters, like Harlem World was the spot. Like, we like, you had to be nice to perform at Harlem. I wanted to perform at Harlem World when I didn't even write rhymes. I just was rhyming off the top of the head nonstop and I was like, Harlem World's the spot until I wound up at Latin Quarters scared to death or Union Square. Cause I was always by myself. Magic would, I'd get in his car with him and then he'd break out.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Just leave. Union Square was my first spot outside of Brooklyn.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Really?

• 20:17Speaker 04

  My first hip hop spot outside of Brooklyn.

• 20:20Speaker 05

  That came towards the latter part, yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, Rakim. I used to just go to Empire. I ain't going nowhere. I was a kid. I walked to Empire and walked back home.

• 20:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we just was in the hood, local, local spots, little parties in the hood and stuff. Like that block parties, but yeah, Rakim was at Union Square. My brother won tickets on the radio. Yeah, we went, yeah, we went and you know, we, we never stopped going. We was like, oh.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  So even after Youngest in Charge came out and legal, I don't, I don't know what the last official year of Latin Quarter was, but.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  Nineteen eighty-eight.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Damn, okay, so.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was it. And it's, it's really a very sad story because it's. I don't think I've ever told this story, but. Don't, don't cry though, son. Yeah, nah, so me, Fat Raul, who was the, the original DJ. Um, we came in there on a Thursday night, just kinda was me, Chris Lighty, may rest in peace, Big Darryl, um, Red. And we just strolled up in there on a Thursday night and Fat Raul was DJing.

• 21:31Speaker 04

  And we were gonna turn it into a hip hop night. We were just like, yo, we're here, like, let Red get on the turntables.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  It wasn't a hip hop night? Or for Thursdays?

• 21:40Speaker 04

  This particular Thursday was not a hip hop night. It was a gay cabaret night. Who was you doing it?

• 21:49Speaker 00

  You just decided?

• 21:50Speaker 04

  No, no, no, you don't understand, like, we, we were just, we were just rolling around the city. It's, no, I need to verify, be like, be clear, like, verifying. I'm like, I'm like Twitter with a check mark right now, B, I need to be verified right now. You ain't, you ain't had to tell this story, man. Nah, I think it's important, like, we, we on, we on, you know, we on Questlove Supreme, we need to get Supreme. So, um, so I spazzed out, like, I was, I think, you know, I'd been smoking or whatever, and I spazzed out. And I told all the people that wasn't B-Boys to get out. And I said something real derogatory about gay people. And I was like, if you ain't a B-Boy, you need to get out.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  And Big Darryl, he just got charged and he went downstairs and there was this cock diesel dude with his man and we went up to him and this dude knocked Darryl out, laid him out flat.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  And Baby Chris grabbed me, put me in Mike Goldberg's office and he said, you stay here. And then things started flying, things started flying. I was in there for like an hour, like an hour just sitting there. I came out, place was trashed, empty. Mike Goldberg was heated. Told Red, never come back. Told us, never come back. And I come outside and Chris and Darryl and um Ali and Red are just sitting on Chris's Maxima, just sitting there. And on the corner of um forty seven to Broadway and they were like, search, go home. I was like, nah, they were like, search, go home.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  And that was it?

• 23:33Speaker 00

  That was the end of the Latin Quarter.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  It was last night.

• 23:36Speaker 05

  Wow, that's crazy to even hear because you know, we just knew that it was closed. It was like, what the hell happened? And we knew at that point, Union Square, the Sheraton Hotel. We knew that Union Square had kind of taken up, you know, a lot of the slack and it was younger and fresher and everything, but I didn't know that was the reason why.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  Mike, Mike shut it down. He shut it down.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Jeez. I just thought it was all the stuff that happened when you left that closed it down.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  No, and you know, it's funny because you talk about Hawk and Dog King, like Hawk, Dog, A-Rock, the original fifty.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  Original fifty cent, Killer Ben, Big Sha.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  All of those dudes, when I was in the Quarter and they were about to do their thing, the one thing I loved about those dudes is they would tell me, search.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what Hawk would tell me.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Like always protected me like I was a little cousin.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Like I said.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  Which leads me to this question. You knowingly.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Would, I don't mean risk your life. But hip hop was so potent back then.

• 24:45Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 24:46Speaker 04

  That even you, I mean, basically, you're playing Russian roulette. You don't know what's gonna pop off. Yeah, because what would happen, no, no, no, what would happen, and I'm sorry, pardon self. What would happen was, the quarter got so big, right? The, the, the rep got so big, that the Tunnel Kids would come from Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island. It became a feeding market. Right. For Brooklyn and for Uptown. And these girls from Hempstead would come in and they had the big air ins, and these, they were showing out. Right. And it was like, it was, it was a shopper's paradise, man, like, Hog Dog, Decepticons, like, they just, they went in.

• 25:26Speaker 04

  And they would just give you the high sign, and there were certain records when they came on, Ultra Magnetic, either Ultra Magnetic came on, or Rebel Without a Pause. Ghost Stetson. Ghost Stetson. Ghost Stetson was probably the number one chain.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  They do the dance with the kick in the circle.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  That was it.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  That was it.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  That was it.

• 25:45Speaker 05

  There was always something that was gonna happen, you just wanted to get enough dance time in before it did.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Quest. So when that drum roll comes in on Stetson. You knew, you knew it was like. Brooklyn's in the house, or Top Billin', you knew to tuck your stuff. Yeah, it wasn't even, you didn't have time to tuck it, like, IOU would be in the middle of the floor, so it'd be Fatima, and Shake, and Stretch, and all of them. Stretch was J C. Right. That's Scoob, Scoob, yeah. Scoob. Scoob, Layz, Reggie. Reggie. What's it doing, Nice and Smooth? Mike Swift, Mike Swift. Mike Swift, yeah. Yeah. And as soon as that record came on,

• 26:28Speaker 04

  IOU was Jay's gone. And what would come in the middle of that crowd, was every hoodlum that we knew, and we were already back.

• 26:39Speaker 05

  And somebody's feathers from their coat was flying all over.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Girls were, you're running out screaming, because they were bleeding from the ears, because their bamboos got yanked. I, yo, and I don't know who it was, I'm not even gonna point no fingers, because I'm not getting thrown under the bus, but somebody from Decepticons, I remember when they went after Jim Astor, Jay Goddard. That's what I was about to bring up. Yep. Yo.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Rest in peace Jam Master J.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  Yup.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Kept his.

• 27:05Speaker 04

  Kept his.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  Kept his.

• 27:06Speaker 04

  They dragged him across the floor. They, yo.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Kept his.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Yup. He, he had the chain with the Adidas thing on.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Sneaker saw another day.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  And Marv, and Marv, may he rest in peace, he was with him, Hollis Crew is with him, and whoever tested him.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  Hurricane.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  Hurricane.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  And whoever tested him, and I mean, that's one of the few times I remember bullets flying in the quarter. Like, you would hear them like going past your ear, and you saw like, and he's holding on, and Hollis Crew, and he's ho- and they're trying to pull it off of his neck, and they're dragging him across the dance floor. It's done. I mean, there's nobody there except for Hollis Crew and those dudes, and he kept his.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  You remember when Jim Brown would run for a touchdown?

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  And you see like four or five dudes on his back?

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  That's how it looked.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  Jesus Christ.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  Jay kept his though.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  And yet, every, every week, I'll be like, we going back to Latin.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  But you know, you know what's crazy though, Quest? Like, you, you, you wasn't at After Midnight in Philly? Like, you never, like, let me tell you something. I know, yeah, I, I know you.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Uh, listen. Cause when they shut down New York, that's where we went. We had to go to After Midnight.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Kane had, Kane had the anniversary show, and he had Divine Sounds on it.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  Yup.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. Right? Right? And I'd never forget this, cause I posted it the day after, cause I took a picture with them. I was having a conversation, and I heard the intro. Five plus five, and whoever was talking to me, I jetted off and ran to the stage, cause what I remember from that song was being at USA. And they, B-Fats opened for them, and they came on and did that song, and when they said, "We're Divine Sounds and we're back again," somebody started shooting. And this is, the, the crazy thing is, this is not about being gangster and none of that. I loved hip-hop so much, I wasn't mad at the gunshots. I was mad I did not get to hear the song finished being performed.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  That's exactly. Exactly right.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Or. Yeah, like, we, we, I was in a lot of dangerous places because of hip hop, you know, like, and I was totally oblivious to it because I just wanted to hear the music.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. So. Exactly. I, I remember going to Zanzibar to see you perform. It was a Juice Crew night. It was Shante. It was you. It was Master Ace. It was Zanzibar. Y'all didn't even make the stage. They played, they played Lean On Me.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  And that place got shot up before y'all even, probably even got in the limo.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  How about Sensations, though, with the little small hallway?

• 29:43Speaker 04

  That one hallway.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  That one hallway. That was the first place we performed the symphony. Yes, the first, yeah, that small hallway, man, like, a lot of stuff happened from that dressing room to the stage.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  None, yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  But I remember all those places. I want to remember how, I want to know how you remember all that stuff, man, like, I don't.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  It's, it's in your heart.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  I think when your life is on the line, you can't forget it. I remember the venues. I remember the names of the venues, but I can't. I, I actually.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  When he just said the small hallway.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, Sensations in Newark, that one little with the glass mirrors.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  I mean, I got it so vividly. I remember. I remember you performing at Hinchcliffe Coliseum in Patterson, New Jersey with KRS, Boogie Down Productions, Audio Two, you, Roxanne. I got thirty-four seconds on stage to do a portion of something. I mean, and it was, the stage was on the fifty-yard line. And the crowd was like a thousand miles away.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  It was like the Beatles at Shea Stadium.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  And there was like, there was like two thousand people in this stadium of maybe ten thousand people. And it was the greatest show. I, I, I mean, I thought hip hop had reached its pinnacle. You know what I'm saying? Because it was like eighty-seven or something. And there was actually like people in the middle of an outdoor stadium coming to a show because, you know, we were doing like, you know. But we also doing the Spectrum. We were doing Madison Square Garden.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  Philly, New York.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  Eighty-seven was really starting, you know, to pop off like that. You know, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys, they sold out the Garden, you know. Right, all of that. But to see like people in an outdoor arena, like a stadium, stadium, it was like mind blowing.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. If you're a music fan, I've got a new podcast you have to check out. It's called "Before the Moment," a new series hosted by the legendary Nile Rodgers. You know him as the producer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-founder of Chic. But in this series,

• 32:20Speaker 00

  he's hitting the road to sit down with some of today's most fascinating artists. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind their careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every artist can point to that turning point, that moment before the breakthrough, before the success, before everything changed. Through candid conversations and personal stories, you'll hear what happened before the moment that made them who they are today. Listen to "Before the Moment," a Lincoln original series, on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  For you, what were the like the most notable performances that occurred? I've heard the the Charis one versus Melly Mel thing, whatever. I've heard that story. But what were, in your mind, like, what was the consummate unbeatable performance at?

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Um, I would honestly say, to be honest with you, it would be when I first saw Public Enemy.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  Oh, my God. I was getting ready to say Public Enemy at Latin Quarters.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 04

  The first time or the rebel with the- Out of pause time, though.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Was it Rebel Without a Poison? Or was it Public Enemy?

• 33:33Speaker 05

  Number one.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 05

  It was that one. And he said, I remember he, I remember him saying, "I feel like I'm on a goddamn shelf." Cause the stage was so shallow.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:45Speaker 05

  It was very high and it wasn't that deep.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  And the bass from that beat was rattling the club. I'd never.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  But what you guys don't remember, what you guys don't know is two things. One thing was the first time they ever performed there was for their Yobum Rush the Show album.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  They got booed offstage. Like, we were throwing batteries at them. They were terrible.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  That was before.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, no, no, that was, no, no. And then literally a year later.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  That's when I was there.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  It was a rap. But I remember, like, for me, like, to me, the shows that I remember were the transformation shows. I remember the Audio Two doing "I Like Cherries." "I like cherries, cause cherries taste better." "And grapes are so..." That was their first record. Was that a hit at the Latin Quarter? No.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  No.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  Oh, I was gonna ask.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  No, it wasn't, but they did that at Latin Quarters?

• 34:34Speaker 04

  Yes, the first time Audio Two ever performed. Oh, before Top Billen? A year before.

• 34:39Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely before Top Billen.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  They came out the box with "I Like Cherries"? Yes. Oh, no. Yes.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  They dropped "I Like Cherries" before I met them.

• 34:48Speaker 04

  Okay. And I'll, and I'll accept that.

• 34:50Speaker 05

  No, I'm saying I...

• 34:50Speaker 04

  I'll, I'll accept that. You don't, you don't post sign "I Like Cherries." That's fine, and that's fine. But I, those transformations are the things that I remember the best. Because that was eighty-seven. And then they went to Top Billen and the place went bonkers.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  But you know what?

• 35:06Speaker 04

  So, out of the box, Top Billen was just an absolute hit? Top Billen was the second...

• 35:10Speaker 05

  Oh, it was a killer.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Top Billen was immediate. Immediate.

• 35:13Speaker 05

  I got my deal because of Top Billen.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  That was an immediate song. But let me correct myself, honestly. It wasn't the Public Enemy, Sean, I keep it a hundred. The goddamn Juice Crew show at the Apollo. When Biz came out the nose.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  You said it at Latin Quarters, though.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  I'm at Latin Quarter. Oh, at Latin Quarters, oh, it was Public Enemy. I thought you meant Period. Like, it might have been the Juice Crew show at the Apollo.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Biz came out of a giant nose. Kane came swinging down from a damn ivory bench. I don't know, remember when you...

• 35:43Speaker 00

  I, I, this was the first time I seen a production, like, and I'm down with these dudes and I remember them not wanting me to perform "Dropping Science."

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Biz came out of a nose?

• 35:52Speaker 00

  A giant nose.

• 35:53Speaker 04

  There was a big nose on stage. First boogers start dropping out. And Biz fell out, yeah. I'll tell you, I'll tell you another great show that I remember. It was winter, it was cold, it was cold. And this was when Emerald City and Red Parrot were doing hip hop nights. And they had a really interesting way to get to the club because the stairs came from the upstairs, right? And that was really like a Juice Crew spot, like that was Magic's home, that was like, that was a Juice Crew house. Like they were there every week. But Roxanne and Biz did their record, I'm Shante and, right? So they're at the Red Parrot and I'm looking at the watch and I'm like, I gotta get to that OQ.

• 36:36Speaker 04

  I run to that OQ, um, you know, having a good time, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then everything goes dark and we think, oh, power went out or something. And then all you hear is vick, vick, vick, and then Biz walked out. And then Shante walked out in a full-length fur. And it was a rap. It was a rap.

• 37:01Speaker 04

  It was a rap. I, there are very few shows that I remember where people went that crazy. That was a rap.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Were these shows in which people would just perform their single and that was it? Or was it a full?

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Yo, people would just show up and perform and leave. You would just come in, get busy. Two songs max. And leave.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  The B-side then the A-side.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  And you were happy. B, you were so happy, you were so happy. I mean, and I, and I hate to parlay it into this, and I'm not trying to, but like, what makes 88 the golden era is because of this. It's because like everything kind of accumulated up. You know what I'm saying? Like 85 and 86 with Rakim and Kane and the Kane and Rakim battles, you know? Not battles like beef, but battle who is the better MC? And G-Rap with I'm fly, rolling up my tinta window, raise my antenna, cuz I'm not only fly, but I'm a break bread winner. Like, oh my god, Queens represent you, you know? And it was like all of this movement, movement, movement in 88. Like, Thomas said it straight, you know what I'm saying? Ain't no half-stepping word, I'm ready.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  Like, when he said that, when Kane said that, like, it was, we were ready. Like, it wasn't just him ready, we were ready. We were ready to be greater than the sum of what we were in the streets of our boroughs.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  I think eighty-eight was like, you know, a transformation, you know, period, you know? Like, during like, the mid-eighties, what was going on was like, during the time of the show and a lot of that. It was like, really like, the hip-hop party era. Where, you know, a lot of the hip-hop dancers played a major part. And the whole crowd participation, that interaction thing, you know, it was that, that party feel. That like, cats like, um, Busy Bee, DJ Hollywood, Lovebug Starsky, were doing it at regular parties back in the days. Now, it's like, on wax, um, that way.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  But then, in comes, you know, brothers, I think Rakim was first, and KRS, and then myself. And it started turning into a lyrical thing, you know? And I think at that point, you know, a lot of people were, you know, like, really, like, stepping their game up lyrically. And MC, his presence was really, really being felt, you know? Because, I mean, if you think about it, you know, back then, any artist that came out with his DJ, the DJ name came first.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  You know, Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, Eric B and Rakim, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, you know? It was like, the artists was making their presence felt.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Okay, so, from each of you,

• 39:45Speaker 04

  what song during that period did you hear that just made you, that just transformed your whole artistic approach? Like, you hearing something, like, Jay will always, till this day, talk about

• 40:02Speaker 04

  him hearing Who Shot You for the first time in, in his car. And that totally transformed-

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Forming his life and his whole approach to how he, how he was gonna be as it, as an MC. And I mean, I've, I've heard this countless of times with different songs, but for you guys, which is the class of eighty-eight, eighty-nine. Because me as a consumer, I cannot think of another year in which week after week after week was just some life-changing shit coming out every week, literally like, I mean, at least twenty-four, twenty-five classic albums, like career-defining albums that year alone. So for you guys that are actually participating in it.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Was it, was it a thing of like, oh, I'm a fan of it? Or were you like, did you feel a certain way when you heard Lyrics of Fury? Or like, damn, like, alright, I gotta come with it and like, what, what song from a peer of yours that

• 41:06Speaker 00

  made you feel a certain way like, damn, like, I gotta come? It's this damn guy right here, man. Like, I, I, I being having access to Marley, you hear stuff early. And I think he had that little silver cougar and I get in the car and he puts this tape in and I hear set it off. And I was just like, okay, man, um, I gotta go home, just put, burn all my rhyme books. The old one-two rhyme rhyme step and it's over, it's done, it's done. And then I remember this dude, I used to go out, like I said, I used to answer the phones at BLS and I would come in early and listen to all the new records. I've never heard a Special Ed in my entire life then, and I put his album on.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  And the same way he was doing it with bars, but it was like effortless, like he was talking to you. I was like, holy shit, man. See, now that, I can't be Kane, I can't be Ed, but I could be myself because Ed is being himself. He's dropping ill bars, but it sounds like he's not breaking a sweat. Exactly, exactly. So there was a lot of moments in, in those times, not just eighty-eight, but in those few, that little corner of years, eighty-eight, eighty-nine and all. Like, MCs went from, you know, just the basic pattern of a regular bar in the cadences. Rapping three words in one sentence and it was like, okay, wait, um.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  You know, I started with shout, well, listen to everybody, my name is Craig G. I was like, okay, well, um, that style is done. I can't do that.

• 42:45Speaker 00

  When I heard Set, when I heard Set It Off.

• 42:47Speaker 04

  Oh, I know.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  I was like, okay, man. And not even, and even before Set It Off, I can't hold it back. That one, I was like, yo, these dudes is rhyming like, and the funny story, I always tell the story, you know, I was at the studio when Rakim did Eric B. As President. Shan mixed that song. And we were laughing at him. Because he was punching in each line. And I'm not saying that's anything against him as a rapper. Maybe he didn't know how to record in the studio then.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  And we were like, this is terrible. Like, I didn't, and then when I heard it, like, a week later, Marley was turning records around in, like, a week. The next week on the radio, I heard it. I was like, that is not the goddamn same song I was sitting in the studio listening to.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  And I'll tell you, that, that moment, I used to hang out with Eric a lot in the quarter, and I used to drive him out to Wine Dance. He had a, a little shorty that he had in Wine Dance, and because he thought I lived in the five towns, I lived near Wine Dance. Right. Long Island, which was like, two hours out of my way. And, but I was just, you know, I just wanted to hang out with Eric B.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  He gave me a white label of Eric B. For President on Zakiya Records. And I listened to it. And when I heard, um,

• 44:05Speaker 04

  Sitting on the couch with my feet up, you think I'm lazy, you must be crazy, you thought I was a donut, you tried to glaze me. I threw every rhyme book I had in the, in the trash. And I'll never forget, the next day, I went to see some homeboys that I'd just graduated high school with.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:21Speaker 04

  And I said to him, I said to my man, G-Man Holt, may he rest in peace. I was like, yo, you heard that Eric B. For President? And we both said, thought I was a donut, you tried to glaze me. It was the craziest shit I ever heard. And then a month, two months later, this knucklehead comes out and changes the whole game.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  I mean, Wrath of Cain was another point in my career. Where I just for a minute there, I was like, yeah, I, I can't do this. I can't, I just, I, me personally, I can't do this.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  I, I seen.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  I can't do this.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  I seen Rafficane change Tariq's life.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  One of, one of Lady B's apprentice was in high school with me. So he used to answer phones at Para 99 in Philly. So he'd often bring in like promotional 12 inches and all that stuff. So we heard like stuff ahead of time, but man, we were in fifth period. And he was at the door of school and he held up, we saw the Cold Chillingum logo. And he was like, rooftop now. Somehow we excused ourself from English class.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Went to the rooftop and he says, you gotta hear this shit. And he like, I'll never forget the collective jaw drop of 12 of us. Cutting various classes or whatever, like lunch period was different for some like 11th graders. A little blue school record playing. Yeah, we had like a little preschool, the preschool joint.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  Crosby, the Crosby turntable.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  Yes. And we were just staring at, we did not know what that shit was like. We just.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  I'll tell Light something that you don't even know. When you did, I'm not having it with Paz K, I cut off K love for like the rest of my life. Because when I.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  What?

• 46:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz when hey love, when I did hey boy with K love, like I wanted to do a record like that with her. And she was fronting, like she was like, yeah, I'm not, you know, nobody's trying to hear all that. And then y'all came out with that? And I was like, yo chica, you, I can't fuck with you. Like, I can't fuck with you. Like, see that? We could have done that. Like, we could have done that. That to me was the greatest duet, top five Dead or Alive. That duet is just still to this day incredible.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  What was the B side, the cram to understand you? What was it called again?

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Take it light?

• 46:52Speaker 00

  No, um. Had the ill bounce beat to it. I used to call awesome too and request.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  I used to call the awesome two.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  I used to call the awesome two.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  Four o'clock in the morning, they came on Tuesday.

• 47:05Speaker 05

  No, the B-side to a Krem, I understand you was Take It Light.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Was it Take It Light with the ill, yo, I used to call.

• 47:12Speaker 05

  Eddie Kendrick?

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. I used to call and request, I used to call awesome two at four thirty in the morning on a Tuesday morning. Take it light, you're right, take it light. When if your moms caught you on the phone.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  She would whoop that ass.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  I would be calling and I'd be whispering into the phone, yo, Molly Mar lives in my building.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Can I hear fresh by the fresh three MCs? Like hip hop, you know, you're drawn to it, man, like with the violence, all of that was like secondary. I just wanted to hear hip hop. I wanted to hear dudes rhyming and to make me feel like I wasn't crazy for doing it.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  Is there a record like, and I always wanted to ask you this, but is there a record that you wrote? That you even stepped back and you were like.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Gave yourself a high five?

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Yo, that you were like, man, the most high gave me this right here, because this is crazy.

• 48:02Speaker 05

  No, I think he was too in it. He probably was too in it to know, right?

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Probably Mortal Kombat on my second album. Mortal Kombat.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  Really?

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it was just that, just one line that just had me like.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, I'm in a special place right now.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, like I remember being in the zone. When I wrote Gasface, I was in the zone. When I wrote Black hat is bad luck, bad guys wear black, must have been a white guy that started all that. I literally stopped for a minute and I was like, yeah, I'm never going to write a better rhyme like the.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Mine was the um, none of in front of, because every one of my adversaries lack your little son of obituary columns of read your name.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Quest, let me ask you a question though.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  What is your favorite MC light song?

• 48:50Speaker 04

  I'm gonna tell you something.

• 48:54Speaker 05

  I can answer that.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  No, I'm.

• 48:55Speaker 05

  Do you know?

• 48:56Speaker 04

  I'm.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  Listen, I'm gonna tell you something.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  See, as a drummer, I've never heard,

• 49:06Speaker 00

  I mean, Paper Thin's the first song with the rim shot was used. Everything was snare drum, hard snare drums. And again, it was, I mean, for me to, to, to get a, what I call a war of the worlds moment, which is, Orson Welles is War of the Worlds, where people thought it was a real aliens attacking, people staring at the radio like, what the fuck's going on? When I heard that song, I was, yo, I, I, that was one of the, for me, even as a drummer, I was just like, yo, I, I didn't know you were allowed to do that. You can rhyme over.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  A rim shot.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  You don't have to play drums. You can play rim shots to this shit? And. It's crazy. Literally. The rim was hitting hard, though. I mean, yeah, them drums is. And for me, the way, the way that Tariq and I bonded, like, Tariq thought it was such a novelty for a human being to like recreate shit, so to like get girls. Tariq would be calling, like, Tariq would call my crib at like 11 o'clock, which is like way past high school hours for your parents. Like, my dad was like Joe Jackson Drill Sergeant. Nobody call this house after 9pm, like that sort of thing. Tariq would call like at 11, like, yo. Like on three way. Have a joint on the, on the other line. He'd be like, yo,

• 50:29Speaker 00

  run in the basement real quick and play, um, play Set It Off real quick. I bet you, he don't know how to play Set It Off? Yeah, he can play Set It Off. Like, yo, man, my dad like might start riffing. Just play us off, man, just go. Like, literally, that was his thing, like, I bet you can't play. And he would call and be like, yo, play, play, um, play Paper Thin real quick. Like, just call girls up, like, I'm gonna get a mirror to play a breakbeat. Even in school, where we were, he would battle MCs, uh, in the cafeteria on the sixth floor. And all the instrumental majors were in the basement. And we weren't using the elevator. And I had this little Casio SK1 thing, so

• 51:12Speaker 00

  the way that my dweeb ass was allowed to sit with the cool kids was I provided the breakbeats and not, and not the punching line. They would, they would take an order. They'd be like, alright, run downstairs and play, um, play funky drummer real quick. So I had to run. That was, I was the apprentice. Like, that's how I earned my way into, that's how Tariq and I became a group. And literally, like, you have like 1.7 seconds to get like a good four bar out of it. So, you would have to play it twice as fast. Okay, that's good. Run upstairs, and then he'd be like, "No, I'm gonna do top billing real quick." Run down, sit. That was me, every day at Performing Arts High School. Like, boys and men were in the bathroom, harmonizing. But me and Tariq were literally...

• 51:58Speaker 00

  Now, now, as an actual- I met them in college. As an actual drummer, did you have synsonic drums? Did you have those? The Mattel synsonic, yes. That's the four pad joint? Yeah. I remember them. I was doing playing a rock on that night, day and night, night and day. You know what, you know, you know my favorite song from your catalog, right?

• 52:19Speaker 05

  No.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  10% Desperado. Oh, thank you. And yo- Where is intro, though? Who, was that Matt Robinson saying, "Who's beat?" Did you steal this?

• 52:30Speaker 05

  No, that was Mr. Magic.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Really? Okay, can you explain the genesis of "The Impeach the President" and "Antoinette" and how this whole thing started? Can I answer that quickly? Duck alert, I always accuse Herb of being a beat biter, because when Kane did "Raw", I felt like Kidn' Play did "Do This My Way", and we used to talk about it on the radio. I know you did. Yeah. Really?

• 52:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was talking to him.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  In Kidn' Play Defense, though, they picked up, um, that, that record, I think, the same day I picked up the beat from "Raw". Ah, okay, yeah, see. But I, I, I, I said it in duck alert, I was like, "Herb's a beat biter." So, we always made fun of it, and maybe that's where you got Magic saying it from.

• 53:14Speaker 05

  Oh no, that's where we got it. We taped it.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  So, you guys must really be perplexed now in 2018, where it would behoove the artist to actually mirror a track that sounds similar to what came out before.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  I would welcome it now, actually, because it all sounds like one record to me.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, you know, the one thing that I love about this Top Shelf record, when I, when I heard it, when I heard Light's record on this record, "Listen Up, Everybody, I'm Light, The MC", five foot, and I'm, yo, I started crying, like, I started literally crying, because it was like, "Oh, my gosh, she took me to eighty-eight", and, like, there's very few times this year I got, like, emotional over records, and one of them was watching Nas do "Elmatic" with the Kennedy, you know, Philharmonic.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  Like, I lost my shit when I watched "Elmatic" and, and a three-hundred-piece orchestra, but that simple little record, like, her rhyming, like, she was seventeen again, on a record that just came out, like, five days ago, I was like, like, the Indian man in, in the garbage commercial, man.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  With the single tear.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  First of all, still to this day, you know, I mean, how many people can you say still sounds that hungry on the mic?

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  You know?

• 54:34Speaker 04

  But all we are, but, I mean, with all due respect, your, your record on this, yo, B, you went in, man, you went in, Kane, you went in, Ed went in, Drez went in, Doug's record's incredible, "And they were dancing and singing and moving", I mean, yo, every record sounds like this celebration of eighty-eight, and that, and it's why I went so hard, you know what I mean, like, just from a, a marketing and promotion perspective, it's like, yo, this, it just sparked something in me and, and, like, put a battery in my back that I'm like, yo, there's, there's a, there's a wealth of opportunity here for these brothers, for these icons, and these legends to get back out there.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  So, what's the plan, now that the, the album is out, what's the, the ongoing future plan for this project? Is this just?

• 55:24Speaker 04

  Well, "Good Morning America", I mean, you know, I told Light this, and I, I told, I didn't tell you this, well, I told you over the phone a little bit.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  But you'll hear now on, on the air.

• 55:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, but, no, no, no, but my concept for the performance on "Good Morning America" is a small sample of what I want the tour to be.

• 55:45Speaker 04

  Because how we listened and absorbed hip hop is way different than rock guys did. Because rock guys had radio 24 hours a day. The Beatles, you could hear the Beatles 600 times a week on 52 stations between New York and Philly. So the music was absorbed by that boomer generation in a way that was very traditional. So when they continued to kind of repitulate that music, it was, it was, it was easy. It's not easy for us. There was nothing easy about 85 to 92, 93.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  It was three hour spurts. And the only time you really heard music was how it was blended together. You'd go from Kane to Audio 2, to Rob Base and Easy Rock, to MC Light, to a promo, to da, da, da, da, da. So I feel like it's time to engage that essence. If I can't, like, and bring that out on, on the road and that's kind of the top shelf tour. And how I see it, you know, in the spring. And, and, and again, not to blow these two knuckleheads up that are right here. Blow my mind. But, but Benji, like, he's spending money like it's a Wiz Khalifa record.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  I mean, with all due respect, and I'm not trying to dig in his pockets, I'm really not, but like,

• 57:17Speaker 04

  the patience and the presence of mind to do what he's doing on the level that he's doing it. No one's done it for these icons. No one, like never, it's never happened.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  To back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps. OnDeck's loans, up to $400,000, help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  If you're a music fan, I've got a new podcast you have to check out. It's called Before the Moment, a new series hosted by the legendary Nile Rodgers. You know him as the producer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-founder of Chic. But in this series, he's hitting the road to sit down with some of today's most fascinating artists. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind their careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every artist can point to that turning point, that moment before the breakthrough, before the success, before everything changed. Through candid conversations and personal stories, you'll hear what happened before the moment that made them who they are today. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series,

• 58:50Speaker 00

  on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  I got a question for Benji and... Yes. Being from Pittsburgh, right? Mm-hmm. How did, what was y'all, y'all inspiration behind the beats? Like, did y'all get tapes from New York? Or, like, because a lot of the beats are in the pocket in that 88 sound. Like, you know what I mean? So, what was your inspiration behind the beats? Like...

• 59:19Speaker 02

  I was from New York. I was born here and I grew up in Jersey.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Okay, so you had heavy access to it, yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  I used to watch Video Music Box every day after school. So, I mean, it was part of my, my childhood, so. And, you know, for me, from, from...

• 59:34Speaker 00

  In Pittsburgh, we didn't have a video music box, but we had. Ramone's sandwiches. Sorry, I'm sorry.

• 59:41Speaker 04

  No, you had a local video show. I forgot homeboy's name, but you had a local video show. The kid that was on Buzz, BZZ had like a video show. Not Reggie Reg, um, the DJ that was on, not ZAK, that's on Cleveland. There's a dude, yeah, there's a dude in Pittsburgh. I don't know if you remember him, Kane, but he had a video show.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  This guy's a wealth of knowledge. I was just wondering.

• 1:00:06Speaker 04

  You remember all the search, you write, you write it down? No, no, no, yo, for me, like.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  You're like a scholar over here, man.

• 1:00:13Speaker 04

  I got this ghetto pass that these black men and women allowed me to make this music. Like, if I don't remember everything, it would be a disrespect to the people that allowed me to go into the quarter. That allowed me to go in the Union Square. I mean, turn it like, turn it just to 180. Like Hawk could have just snuffed me the second I walked in there. Fuck out of here, white boy. It would have been simple.

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you know what? In the beginning of hip hop, man, hip hop was for the not black or white or Puerto Rican. It was for everybody. We was all involved in it because it was music. It was a rhythm. It was something that, that brought together all the people from the hood that ain't have nowhere else to go or something to, to have in common. It was a way to communicate and a way to party together. Y'all had your different crews coming together, partying together without beef.

• 1:01:09Speaker 04

  And, and I respect that, but B, I ain't seen nan white boy in any park jam that I ever went to from 1980 to 1986, except for Vanilla B, AKA Blake Latham, AKA Lord Scotch, AKA Kiway K. Like, I saw nan white people anywhere.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Even in, you were literally the, the, the one white person at.

• 1:01:35Speaker 04

  The only white person. There was a joke, Understanding and Mathematics, who used to do the big parties in, in Prospect Park when the five percenters used to get together. You remember that? Understanding had this big book of life and he'd come on in. I, I used to sneak in Prospect Park and watch the five percenters break. Yo, he would say that search is the only white person except police at the park gym.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  I, I mean, I, yo, there were nan white people. And that's why I got so mad, like, I would, I mean, I got mad, like, eighty-six, like, a group came out on Select Records called BMOC. And it was a guy named Shecky Green and this other dude. And I'm like.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  Wait, Shecky? They were on Capitol, actually.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no, they weren't. They were on Select.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Did you tell my Prospect or Fort Green Park?

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  I'm sorry?

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Did you tell my Prospect or Fort Green Park?

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  Prospect.

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  Prospect.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think they was on Capitol.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  No, they wasn't. I used to. No, the Beastie Boys were on Capitol.

• 1:02:31Speaker 00

  Shecky's first group was. Yeah, BMOC. Bad Men on Campus.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  They were before the White Boys, he was on.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Yep, same time.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  I'm about to look it up.

• 1:02:40Speaker 04

  And then the White Boys on, and then the White Boys, and I'm like, all this corny shit, like, yo, fuck out of here. Excuse my language.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  They had the rugby shirts on.

• 1:02:47Speaker 04

  You know what I'm saying? Like, yo.

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  Does he know that I said shut the fuck up?

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  No, I know you did, but I just, you know, it's disrespectful. And my daughter Mia is here, like, I don't, you know? But it's like, you know, like, I just don't want, I was mad. Like, I was mad, like, you can't come in here, like, you don't know what I went through. Like, I was battling in Vandermeer Projects. I was van, I was pink houses. Like, I was tearing dudes down for money and, like, getting shot at, like, don't come in here with some Connecticut nonsense and call yourself BMOC. Like, I'm not seeing you.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  So, when did you, when did you guys feel that the spirit of hip-hop, at least the transformation of it, was slowly eroding? Like, what was your first uh-oh moment? And I don't mean like, oh, when this guy rose to prominence or whatever, but.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  When, when, um, when I heard uh, women referred to as bitches by NWA. I was like, something, something's about to happen. Something's different, because I had never heard Kane, KRS-One, Slick Rick, Heavy D, Fresh Prince. I'd never heard any of them to refer to a woman as a bitch.

• 1:04:03Speaker 04

  Even Go See the Doctor was, like, respectful.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  Right. The word was skeezer.

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that was really shady, like, my mom would not let me say skeezer in the house.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  You know what I'm saying, like, but, but, I will tell you, for me, I went to, I'll never forget this, I went to Roanoke, Virginia on tour with Kane. We went back to back. And the first year we went, it was Kane, Queen Latifah, Digital Underground, Third Base, Nice and Smooth. Eighty-nine Roanoke.

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  Black crowd, college crowd, felt good, you know, it felt like any other place. We went back a year later, Cara Lewis booked us a year later in Roanoke, it was all white people. All, and screaming for Kane, and screaming for Digital Underground, and screaming for all of that.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  Was that the MTV effect?

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  Totally. Totally. And for me, like, I was through when we did Pop Goes the Weasel, and we went on our tour, you know, and we took Cypress and Naughty and Tim Dog and all that. And we would get to Pop Goes the Weasel, and these drunk frat white boys would come on our stage and try to do stage diving. And our dancers were from Long Beach, we weren't having that, we would body slam these dudes like they were rushing the stage. Like, we were snuffing them, like, we didn't know what they were doing, like, I was, I was done, like, for me, I was done, like, I was like, this is just not, this is not what I expected.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  Shout out to ADA for you saying snuff.

• 1:05:35Speaker 05

  I know another moment, another moment that was different for me was, um,

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  I could've said duff too, right?

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  Seeing, uh, all of those women in the hot tub with Puffy and Biggie, I was like, wait a second, what's happening here? It was a lot. Uh, you know, as a woman, looking at these visuals, it was like, I was really confused as to where we were headed.

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  But you tried to flip it on them with Better Roll. You tried to flip it on them.

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  Flip what on them?

• 1:06:05Speaker 04

  You tried to flip the sexuality on them, you tried to take your sexuality, and you were saying what kind of guy you liked.

• 1:06:11Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, that's, that's fine, but they wasn't, I didn't, I was, wasn't in a hot tub with four or five, you know?

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

  I'm not saying that, I don't, I don't, right.

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  It rattled me.

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Maybe they needed a bath, I don't, I don't know. For for me, it wasn't the music. It was when they started first week sales.

• 1:06:29Speaker 04

  Huh.

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  All of a sudden.

• 1:06:30Speaker 04

  Post-sound skin.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  All of a sudden, they stopped developing artists. And all of a sudden, it just jumped into who could say the craziest thing and get the most like pre-social media, pre-going viral. It was what you could say on record to get the most attention. And the first week sales kinda like took away from artists being developed. Where you had to go open up for somebody. You had to follow the tour bus in the van.

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? It it turned into something else where if your album didn't pop in like three weeks, it was over.

• 1:07:03Speaker 05

  Mm.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Like, not even in hip-hop. There was other genres of music where the album had been out for a year and didn't catch on and then it caught on. So to me, the first week sales kinda ruined.

• 1:07:17Speaker 05

  The chance of of growth.

• 1:07:18Speaker 04

  I remember, I remember me and Pete and Clark Kent were doing a party at Irving Plaza when Palladium was open. And a young group got on stage in nineteen eighty-six. Nobody knew of them. A group called Robes and Eazy-Rock. They were on profile. My man Steve Plotnicki, who was head of, who, head of, um, retail, said, hey, can you get these guys a slot on your, on your, on your night? They came on, they did a song called It Takes Two. Didn't move nobody.

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  Didn't move nobody. Didn't, Clark Kent played it, Eazy-Rock got on the turntables. He was rhyming. No one could care less. A year later.

• 1:07:57Speaker 00

  Was it the sound system?

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Nope. Sound system was bumping.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  They was unfamiliar with the song.

• 1:08:02Speaker 04

  I wanna rock right now. I'm Robes and I came to get down. They're not internationally known. Nobody was trying to check for them lyrics. A year later, it was a rap.

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  Popularity, man.

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  But, no, no, but I'm talking about the timeline. You know what I mean? Like, if that record came out now and it didn't pop in eight weeks, it'd be a rap.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, see.

• 1:08:21Speaker 04

  Be a rap. This record developed over a year.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  That's a long time. You know when I noticed a difference? I noticed a difference, um, listening to radio and seeing what was, um, in heavy rotation. Because, um, like, you know, I remember, like, when we came out, NWA, Eazy-E, they was popping.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  And they were selling a lot of records.

• 1:08:48Speaker 00

  Didn't get no radio play. Luke Skywalker, same thing. Was New York, I know in Philly, we had a sort of no rap work day. Like suddenly in ninety, ninety-one, suddenly it was no rap work day. Like, they took away Lady B's street beat for like a good two years. It was like hard as hell. Then we had to depend on college radio. What I'm saying, what I'm trying to say is like, you know, even on like.

• 1:09:13Speaker 00

  But did New York never have that at all? I don't, not that I know of.

• 1:09:16Speaker 05

  I don't think so.

• 1:09:17Speaker 00

  So. But I'm saying, you didn't hear no N W on the radio. You didn't hear Luke Skywalker on the radio. You didn't hear the Ghetto Boys on the radio. We didn't hear no Too Short either. Too Short either. But they were selling a lot of records and they were popping. Millions of copies. You know what I'm saying? Hammer. But when you started hearing all the, um, the vulgar, um, lyrics and the gangster rap being the main thing. Mm-hmm. Becoming mainstream on radio, that's when I felt like, okay.

• 1:09:46Speaker 05

  Something's changed.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  Something's, something's about to happen. How, it's not ours. That's the agenda. How, uh, easy or how hard was it to

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  rock different marketplaces that weren't New York-based? So if, if Set It Off could move you in nineteen eighty-eight in New York. You had to understand your catalog. When you guys would go to Phoenix or something or like. You had to understand your catalog. You had to understand your catalog and knew what worked with certain crowds. You know, certain places I knew that, you know, I could end with raw. I could end with, um, Warm It Up.

• 1:10:23Speaker 05

  And usually the video, cause by then Yo MTV Raps was rocking all over the nation. And you knew that the song you had with your video, you could do.

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was a hard joint. I would cheat, cause I knew how to freestyle. Like, I remember doing a show in like Houston and they had no clue where I was. But I freestyled off of a Ghetto, a Ghetto Boys beat and won them over. That, that, I, that's cause my songs were really regional, so. You know what? I'm so glad you said that shit. Before anything, we were living in London at the time, so we had to go on ninth hand information. Yeah. What happened that night of the freestyle between you and Super Nat? Oh, that was just In ninety-four? That was a situation where, um, you know, I was known for freestyling, you know, on the radio and all of that. And a lot of people knew that I could freestyle and I was cool with Organized Confusion.

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  And they were working with Super Nat and he was in the studio talking about how he was the greatest freestyler. And they were like, well, yo, Craig G could probably take you. So we were supposed to battle on Bobbito. Okay. Live on the radio and I think Buck Wow and a few other people were gonna bring their drum machines and Nat didn't show up. So, um, I'm at, um, the New Music Seminar and I'm just chilling. I'm with like Diamond D and them and he was on stage and they just asked him, they were like, yo, what's up with the battle with you and Craig G? And if you ever see the video, he kinda looks out into the crowd. Yeah, they have like clips of it on video, yeah. Is it on YouTube? Yeah, it should be. Oh, God. Yeah, that's like clips of it. It's probably from the Freestyle or the Rap movie. Okay. But, um, he called me out and

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  He called you out? Yeah. Yo, Craig, where you at? What, what is that? That's a call out, right? Yes. And then imagine him saying that and you turn around and Grandmaster Kaz is standing next to you, who's like part of some of the most legendary battles. I walked on stage with a forty ounce in my hand. I wasn't prepared to battle him. But I did know, and I, I knew I was the underdog and I used it against him, basically. That's pretty much what happened. Like I baited him, I said a regular rhyme. I knew some information. Nobody told me. I researched everybody. I knew he was from Indiana. And it was perfect timing. Like I said, when you go back home to Indiana, get Mike Tyson out the slammer. And he couldn't recover, basically is what it was. I, you know, I talked to him a lot.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  Like, you know, he lives in Cali and we might work on some music at some point. We don't have the scheduling like that, but Right. You know, to me, it kinda helped me because it took me from being this old school rapper to being able to work my way into the underground and have like a slightly second career from it. Yeah, the, the ripples that that caused. Yeah. I don't know. I forget, I think Tim Westwood was talking about like. Yeah. And this was before the internet, so it was such a viral moment. Yeah. That it just became something on its own, but I never knew. Sometimes I could be an asshole and I remember at the end of the battle, I had a stack of cards from record labels and I threw them all in the trash.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  Really? Yeah, I threw them all in the trash. Cause I was like, nobody was checking for me. So if it ain't genuine, I don't, I don't wanna be the flavor of the month. Right. So, you know, I threw them all in the trash. I had Rowdy Records, I had a stack of cards from labels, I threw them all in the garbage. Kane, did you ever have any battles of note on, I mean, during that, the, the period of where you're coming up, like, did any MCs ever try to challenge you, like? I mean, that's, I started as a battle rapper, that's all I did. Really? Yeah, that's all I did, um, until, um, I met Biz and that's how, I met Biz, I met Biz battling, I asked him for a battle. You never saw him when Keith Murray was rapping for him? No.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  Cut it out, man. You don't know what are we talking about? You ever saw that, eh, Keith? Yeah, no, well Keith was fifteen, man, you know, he was fifteen, just really getting started, man. Cut it out, man. Nah, man, you did it to me, man. You say a rhyme in front of Kane, and Kane would just say a rhyme at the top of your rhyme by ninety-five decibels of a bar and you just, you're like, okay, let me just go back home and throw those other rhyme books away too. Nah, Keith was like, fuck. No, but his name wasn't even Keith Murray, his rap name was Do Damage at the time. Do Damage. What year was this? Um, I don't know, eighty-eight maybe? But you know, coming up during that time, like, if you lived in a certain neighborhood and they knew you could rhyme, you couldn't leave the house without battling with somebody. I mean, that's all I did.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  Do you remember Jazz, the whole Jazz Fresh situation? I hear of it in Philly, but I don't, what was, did you and Jazz Fresh know each other from Philly or just? No, you know, I just found out maybe like, uh, Two years ago that we had battled prior to After Midnight. Really? I didn't even know that, yeah. Okay. Um, cause I remember battling someone at the rooftop that had dissed Bismarck E. And I stepped up and battled him there. Okay. I didn't know that that was the same dude from After Midnight. Okay. I like, I remember the After Midnight thing and um, I know it was a time issue. I don't know whether I got there late or what was going, I can't really remember.

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  And then we got, we got on and um, I guess dude asked for the battle, we came up. And we went. And we, I, I don't know if we went, oh, maybe two rounds, maybe? Right. And dude didn't wanna stop. Dude didn't wanna stop. And then Lady B told him, listen, you need to stop. You, you need to stop. Cause for sure, first she said it to me, like, yo, we need to finish the show. And then, but dude didn't wanna stop. Oh, just mid show, he was like, I'll battle you. Yeah, this was during the show. Oh, God, okay. And um, then um, first Lady B told me, you know, so I was ready to go on with the show. You know, cause I, I knew that, cause I already, at, at, uh, the rooftop, I already gave it to him.

• 1:16:23Speaker 00

  And it was happening again. But dude, you know, he, this dude, you know, he didn't wanna stop. And then Lady B told him, like, you really need to stop. I'm like, I'm, like, giving that look, like, you know, I'm doing you a favor. Right. But dude, dude was relentless with it, you know? And then um, I threw um, I think a hundred dollars at him. I was like, you know, I was like, I was like, yo, here you go, man. Here goes something for your troubles, man. Something like.

• 1:16:52Speaker 00

  But yeah, I mean, I'm just finding out that um, it was the same dude, you know? I tried to um, cause me and Charlie, me and Charlie Mack was talking about him. Just performed Ultra Magnetic Friday in Philly. Yeah, the Juice joint we did though for Charlie Mack. Yeah. Cause I was telling Charlie Mack to bring him, cause he said the dude still talks about it. I was like, yo dude. I'm like, I'd love to see this guy, man. The, the legend of Kane versus Jazz Fresh is like bigger than what actually happened. I'm glad you told me what actually happened. The Lockless Monster? I, yeah, I've yet to hear. I don't know if it's on tape or video or anything. No, like Charlie Mack said that he's like still today, he'd be like. Y'all know I won, y'all know I won. Oh my god. That I can attest to.

• 1:17:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's like the garbage man that says, you know, I, you know, I ran for 150 yards in high school. Oh, poke eye. Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel like I give dude credit. He didn't back down, you know what I'm saying? And he wanted to keep it going. But what it was, it was like we was in the middle of a show. And I mean, it was like, you not winning right there. It was unprofessional, yes. You know, you know, but I mean, but it, it, you know, yeah, that's what that was. Wow, wow. Ladies and gentlemen, I, I can go on forever. It's about to be like zero o'clock in the morning.

• 1:18:08Speaker 05

  Top Shelf.

• 1:18:09Speaker 00

  Yes, I will say, yes, ladies and gentlemen, please, please support Top Shelf 1988. Um, can we expect, uh, any other offspring videos?

• 1:18:23Speaker 05

  Part two, three, four.

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely want to have some visuals in the future. We're gonna have, um, some crazy vinyl next year and. Yeah, will it be available on hard? That's, that's the most important. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Super important. Yeah, absolutely. Can I just say one thing? Yes, absolutely. So in 1988, I was 10 years old in Pittsburgh. I was a paper boy, like a real paper, like I delivered newspapers. Um, and I used that money to go to the record store to buy tapes. Um, and there were tapes of everyone that's in this room. And, um, and then I flash forward to 1990 at the Syria mosque when third base,

• 1:19:06Speaker 00

  Big Daddy Kane, Digital Underground were performing. And I was there with my brother and one of his friends. Kane, you came out in a hot tub. They pushed you out in a hot tub. That's why I'm telling you to chill.

• 1:19:22Speaker 00

  Ladies, y'all forgive me, ladies.

• 1:19:27Speaker 04

  Ladies, y'all forgive me?

• 1:19:28Speaker 00

  Y'all see the whole time when I'm telling how sorry I'm sitting here like?

• 1:19:32Speaker 05

  Speedos.

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  Speedos.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  He had the biker shorts on.

• 1:19:35Speaker 04

  Speedo biker shorts on?

• 1:19:37Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you know.

• 1:19:39Speaker 04

  Sexual chocolate, ladies and gentlemen, sexual chocolate.

• 1:19:42Speaker 00

  Nah, that shit worked back then.

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness, it worked.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  But let me tell you how much of an honor it is to just be here with you guys. It's like really sort of a surreal experience for me. So it's an honor to be here and to have worked with you in some capacity and to, you know, bring this project to light. And, you know, one of my main things with this project is not just like, yeah, go listen to Top Shelf 1988, like definitely do because it's super dope. But also listen to everything else. Listen to Long Live the Cane, listen to Light as a Rock, listen to all the different records that came out then. And it's like a celebration of that time and it's a reminder of like, yo, shit was dope, you know what I mean? And that's like what I came up listening to. Like that's like basically all I listened to. And so to me, it's important to always shine a light on it.

• 1:20:30Speaker 00

  We have to invest in our art and our artists. Yes, you're right. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much for coming to. Normally I tell my crew to give it up, but I'm the only person here.

• 1:20:40Speaker 05

  We'll give it up for each other.

• 1:20:42Speaker 00

  Give it up for each other. So on behalf of the Top Shelf 1988 crew and the QLS crew, this is Questlove. Thank you very much for joining us. This was a special edition of Questlove Supreme. I'll see you on the next program. Peace.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.

• 1:21:11Speaker 00

  For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. If you love music and great artist interviews, check out Before the Moment, hosted by Nile Rodgers. This new series follows Nile as he travels across the country, talking with some of today's most fascinating artists about the moments that shaped their lives and careers. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the point where everything changed. And this podcast tells the stories that came before. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series, on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:21:56Speaker 00

  Behind every chart-topping hit, you know by heart there's an original. Writing it someplace where nobody was listening. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first. Not knowing it would land, but doing it anyway. Originals are out there. Living stories worth telling. What's yours? Behind every original, live in Levas.

• 1:22:31Speaker 03

  Ready to feel more energized and in control of your health? If you've tried diet and exercise but still aren't seeing the results you're looking for, it may be time to explore a different approach. At orderlymeds.com, you can connect with licensed medical providers through a simple virtual process, all from the comfort of home, and find out if a GLP-1 treatment may be right for you. Learn more at orderlymeds.com. That's orderlymeds.com. Compounded medications are not FDA-approved. Eligibility determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

• 1:23:01Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.