Tag: U.T.F.O.

Jrnl Entry No. 9.13.2000 “MY HIP HOP STORY” PART II

Then we started moving on to bigger and better Hip Hop concerts like at The Front Row in Cleveland, OH. They (Samuel, Clay, Shaneequa, Shaniece) had tickets already. I didn’t have my ticket and had no clue how I was gonna get one. I had planned on standing outside until they came out. It was the summer before I entered the ninth grade, and I was freshly dipped in my Korea Fila suit that no one in my town had ever seen before. I also had a satiny Adidas one. I knew nothing about ticket scalpers. So I was standing there in line, and a guy asked me if I needed a ticket, I said “yeah.” He got his boy and they sold me one for $30.

The concert was legendary. A Fresh Fest starring LL Cool J performing fresh off his platinum Bigger and Deffer album. The other groups were: Stetsasonic, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, Dougie Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew, and Whodini. The way The Front Row was designed was stadium seating and you could see from back to front. It was a circular hall with a rotating stage. I remember at the end of the concert Estacy of Whodini complimented me on my Fila suit. There was a second show so most all the rappers were hanging out by the tour buses. LL was probably on one of his sexual episodes because he was nowhere to be seen. He was the big star anyway so he couldn’t come outside. The next show we went to was also in Cleveland, a Fat Boys show, featuring U.T.F.O. U.T.F.O. rocked the house, doing dance moves and what not. This was the biggest concert hall I’d ever been in. This was like my third time seeing The Fat Boys. They were performing their “Chrushin’´album which I had bought that summer.

There was something about U.T.F.O.’s performance that struck me and made me want to become a rapper who performed out on tour. When I got back home that night, which was a Sunday, and school was the next morning, I wrote my first rap song called “Dance”. I finished it at like 1:00 AM. I wrote another song about two days later which included my cousin Donavan. It was called Doc and Don, describing how two guys treated girls; me treating a girl kind, and Donavan treating a girl cruel. We rehearsed the song, but Donavan didn’t take it serious. I eventually a month later, took his name out the song, and just made it as another personality of me.

My older cousin Mantrix had a little recording studio down in his basement. He said he’d charge me $25 to make a tape of the two songs. I had produced two little beats in my head and beat boxed them onto a tape to rehearse the songs before I went to the studio. I had one problem though, my mom said that she was not going to give me the $25 to do the tape. Well, that problem was easily overcome. I made the appointment to do the tape and I just stole the money out of my mom’s purse. She found out and asked me about it. The last whipping I had was when I was 12. She wasn’t mad or anything, she didn’t do nothing, but she still mentions it to me to this day.

So I went to my cousin’s studio. He had a Casio little drum machine that he didn’t know how to program. I called Clay and asked him how to program it because he had the same one. He explained something to me and I tried it. I had the sequence going but the beat wouldn’t come out right. I just played it manually. I played the whole drum track from pad to pad: bass, hi hat, clap, hi hat, bass, clap, open hi hat. I still know how that beat goes. I did the vocals, overdubbing the whole song, to give it a stronger voice my cousin said. The songs were pretty wack for the most part. The second song with the two personalities was the better of the two. I had my cousin play the bass guitar. It was the bass line from LL’s “I’m Bad”. I didn’t think about it at the time when making it, but that’s what it was as others pointed out to me when I let them listen to it.

When the tape was finished, I went over to Samuel’s house and got addresses off of the back of his records to record companies. I had like twenty addresses. I sent the tapes off with just one stamp on them. About two days later, they all came back “insufficient postage”. The maintenance man had them all in a bucket and gave them to me. I put like two more stamps on them and sent them off again. I probably got about two of those infamous letters in the mail like six weeks later. “Thanks for submitting your material, however, at this time we are not looking for new material.” I’d always get a letter back from Profile Records. I got one back from Virgin Records saying they didn’t accept unsolicited material. I called their office to ask what that meant. They told me it had to be submitted by a lawyer.

Later that year I got hooked up with some guy, who was a beginner DJ by the name of Nelson. We got hooked up through some guy who talked a bunch of shit like he was a manager. He even had me do this one song for Nelson’s brother like I was auditioning or something. Nelson’s brother named Remmington was just a working man with a wife and kidz. But Nelson and I hooked up and he was the DJ and I was the rapper. We later named ourselves TWC (The Warren Crew). Nelson had two turntables and a mixer with a little button on it to help with transformer scratching. He had basically taken over his cousin’s little Casio sampler. I think Prince Paul used the same sampler on the De La Three Feet High and Rising” album because I heard the lion roar on the album, the same lion roar from that little sampler.

Jrnl Entry No. 9.13.2000 “MY HIP HOP STORY” PART I

It all started as a bud when my cousin Samuel met his first cousin on his dad’s side by the name of Clay. Clay had DJ equipment and was for the most part he just messed around in his room. This was like back in 1984/1985. Clay could scratch and transformer scratch, actually the first person I ever saw do it. We’d go over Clay’s house on the weekends and hang with him and his cousin Ricky. Clay had many records and at that time, it seemed like all the records he had were on the Tommy Boy label. Def Jam had a few bullshit records like the one’s by Jazzy Jay whoever the hell he was. I remember this one particular record on Def Jam. It was either Russel Simmons or Jazzy Jay, they may have been the same person who knows. But he was just talking shit on the record over a beat.

We hung together all summer long, Clay, Ricky, Samuel and I. Our main mission was to get some pussy. Clay was a virgin, I was a virgin, and Ricky was a virgin. Samuel was about the only one who had pussy on his dick because he was the oldest. We hung out over by Delaware and Jackson Street which was where Samuel’s father lived at the time. We hung out in the Palmyra Heights, which was where Clay lived. That summer, I met Tina, Sandra, Sydonia, Lavonia, Pam, Reena, Marlette, Wendy and the three girls who had the white Honda Spree Scooters. They were like the only people in the whole entire town with Scooters period.

Occasionally, our little gang would go swimming at Packard Park. It was then that I met Carla and her sister whose name, I forget her name, and I also met Shay who I instantly feel in love with. Shay was the most beautifullest thing. She was mixed, and in 1985, you know most niggaz was brainwashed to think that the lighter the skin and the thinner the hair, the better the person. Don’t get me wrong, even though she is a lot heavier now, Shay is still beautiful. Those days at the local pool were the good old dayz. Many Black people at the pool chillin; teenagers dunkin’ each other and shit like that; feelin’ the girls up under the water.

As summer passed, we were all still virgins. Clay’s Djing interest eventually had all of us interested in Djing and learning how to scratch. Samuel’s mom had bought him two turntables, a mixer, and a microphone, and he started buying 12 inches and albums with his extra money. I dabbled a little with the scratching. I could catch the record on beat and do a little scratch routine and then let it go. I remember my first record experimenting with scratching was Sugar Hill Gang “8th Wonder”. I used to go over Samuel’s house with like really cheap 90 minute tapes, like 3 for $1.99 from Woolworth is where I used to get them. I would record albums, and most albums would fit on one side of a 90 minute tape, so I’d put two albums on one tape. Let’s see, I had albums by UTFO, Boogie Boys, Skinny Boys, Fat Boys, Dougie Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew. I remember Samuel coming over to my house bragging about how dope the first Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince album was. He was telling me about how Ready Rock C could beat box so well, etc. He was right, I taped the album and it was the bomb, especially the beat box song that started like “When we rock the house there is no doubt / that me and Ready C will turn it out.” That was the shit!

I also would record many twelve inch singles at the end of the albums when there was room left on the tape. Shit like “We’re Only Buggin”, “Listen Up”, Dana Dane’s “Nightmares” and “Delancey Street”, Sweet Tee’s many twelve inch singles she had out before she put them all on one album like four years later. This was also when I recognized the name, Produced by Herby “Luv Bug” Azor as the guy making the, always funky, beats for Salt & Pepa, Dana Dane and Sweet Tee. I still have these tapes to this day.

During the course of time, the idea had come about to throw parties in Clay’s basement. Samuel and them came up with a name for themselves and got some sweatshirts made with an airbrush design, and the parties began at $.50 a head, and $.25 for soda. At the end of each party they would count up the money and split it like five ways between Samuel, Clay and Ricky, Samuel’s sister Shaneequa and Clay’s sister Shaniece. The parties got to be well known too. Every weekend they were packed. Samuel, Clay and Ricky were the DJ’s. This was around the time when LL COOL J ‘s “Radio” single dropped, and “Rock The Bell” was the shit. Ready For The World was the group to slow dance to the song “Let Me Love You Down”. I was always like the youngest one at these parties. I remember I would always slow dance with this one girl because we were like the only two left not dancing. I liked Sandra but she was going with this older guy Tim and he always had her on the floor or grinding and kissing on her on the basement wall. The parties were going well until the Beta Boys started fucking it up and fighting. The Beta Boys, well the only one I really remember was William and his brother Lester. It was about five or six of them total. One night they tore up the wall paneling of the basement. From that weekend on, there were no more parties thrown.

We’d (Shaniece, Samuel and Shaneequa, Clay and me and Ricky and Ricky’s sister) all go to concerts together. The first concerts being the ones at The Star Palace in Youngstown, OH. We seen Salt & Pepa, Heavy D & The Boyz, The Fat Boys, and Salt & Pepa, and Heavy D &The Boyz again. I wonder if Heavy D or Salt & Pepa remember The Star Palace.