Does the large Caribbean presence in NYC's Hip Hop scene explain the disconnect with other regions?

[truth2you]

the gay underground got more attention than the straight overground which is why alot of the stuff the black and straight overground was pioneering went unnoticed

I'm serious when I say you have made me think so different about hip hop, and black american culture!

You really need to find a way to get your knowledge into the mainstream. There are too many fake historians who are speaking that have no idea what they are talking about, they are repeating folklore with very little research to see what is true & what isn't. Since "Complex" is the place that young hip hop heads are watching, somehow you need to get your knowledge to them, the people in their offices don't really know hip hop history.

If it wasn't for you, most of the people on here would be reciting nonsense from people like 'retiredskj" who used to make it seem like the aspects of hip hop came from the islands, but the more I read his posts, I realized he doesn't really know what he's talking about, that nikka said "NYC had no car culture"

I remember everyone had something done to their cars from the interior being redone, to the designs on the car, the sound systems, the rims, and even regular people had the silver designs that showed names or something on the car doors. You know what i'm talking about, but I can't remember the name right now, but the point is we did have car culture, people used to go uptown just to flex their cars, I was there, and seen it myself.

Anyway, I appreciate your hard work, my brother

 

[MrPentatonic]

Ok

Let's hear about the Jamaican influence. We're all ears

I'm not really saying what influenced what tbf, i'm just saying the discussion in this thread sees influence as something very linear when in reality its nothing like that

 

[CASHAPP]

Let me ask you, why do so many west indians on here keep ignoring truths when it is presented to them. This guy "king of nyc" can't even answer a simple question, and just gives the run around when asked to show & prove his point!

I grew up with west indians, and never went through any of this shyt, as far as proving a point and getting the run around, but obviously they still believed what they want because they are telling their kids this shyt, the lies are still being repeated, but even worse! I've seen this shyt constantly on here, this shyt is ridiculous with these people just ignoring facts. The only people I've seen do this are racists who just won't admit certain parts of history. I never thought I would see this with black people in the era of google!

Is the need to be recognized that important to them that they will just shyt on others history? Why is the self esteem so low?

By doing that, you just change so much facts that are important not only to black people, but to NYC, NYC changed the WORLD during that time. By saying it came from the Caribbean, you ignore the racism that created hip hop, you ignore the ingenuity it took to create hip hop, you ignore the skills it took that created hip hop, you ignore the way the people thought that gave rise to hip hop, you ignore the unification of different ethnicities that came with hip hop.

To me that is a big fukk YOU to all those people, which is why I can't just say "yeah, it came from the caribbean" just to appease people. I would not take anything away from Caribbeans, and they shouldn't take anything away from us. Plus, you can't rewrite history, the truth will eventually be told, like we are doing NOW!

You know why. Its because they are mainly known for just dancehall, and reggae(Jamaica) and wanna get off and convince them of the fact that they are responsible for all forms of music. The reggae snobs are worse with it too. Talking about reggae being the purest form of music but pretending AA jazz didn't come before.

It will take a reputable documentary, maybe from someone like a Spike Lee that gets alot of attention, like on a Black Panther level for them to stop it. Even then they will do the whole "We didn't wanna claim rap anyway cause its trash now".

 

[kingofnyc]

Grandmaster Flash carefully studied the styles and techniques of earlier DJs, particularly Pete Jones, Kool Herc, and Grandmaster Flowers.

@Blessup stop cherrypicking. Refer to @IllmaticDelta previous post about Grandmaster(s) Flowers and Pete Jones.

This is getting annoying!

My Man, why is it so hard to watch the videos, and learn from your elders? That youtube page has people who could tell you so much knowledge that most don't know, including YOU, but you would rather spend that time arguing with me!

I don't understand why people don't want to learn anything.

baam and flash are 2nd generation hiphop

the earliest mobile jocks are all all older than herc/bam/flash and were city wide/famous all over





@1:17

This video right here, is why YOU are the MAN!

He said Flowers was mixing in 1964!

I thought it was gay dj's who was doing it first in the early 70's, going by what dj Pummer said, but that could be because he was young in the game, so that was his experience.

These brothers were doing their thing even in the early 60's!

NYC should be ashamed of itself for not telling these stories, these guys changed the world!

@kingofnyc , If you are truly a New Yorker, and lover of black music, you need to watch the videos "illmaticdelta" links. Humble yourself, and admit you may not know as much as you thought you did. We are blessed to have him in our presence because he does most of the work for us. When you go out in the world, you can shut all the bullshyt down with facts, because you are telling info from the people who were there, and actual created all of this, we don't have to have folklore anymore or hope some magazine or tv show interview these people.

THE INTERNET HAS REALLY CHANGED THE GAME!

listen.... i dont mean any disrespect.... i really don't

BUT, this is some SAD shyt

yall using DJ’s that played Disco fukking music as founding fathers of hip hop
.... is straight up disgusting

the original B-Boy, Cholly Rock explains dem nikkaz y’all champion - DJ Pete Jones & Flowers hated hip hop & didn’t want that type of crowd at their events

and lastly I also find it extremely interesting, that the abundance of videos y’all posted YET this particular one was never brought up

 

[Indiglow Meta (R$G)]

listen.... i dont mean any disrespect.... i really don't

BUT, this is some SAD shyt

yall using DJ’s that played Disco fukking music as founding fathers of hip hop
.... is straight up disgusting

the original B-Boy, Cholly Rock explains dem nikkaz y’all champion - DJ Pete Jones & Flowers hated hip hop & didn’t want that type of crowd at their events

and lastly I also find it extremely interesting, that the abundance of videos y’all posted YET this particular one was never brought up

HERC HIMSELF said he was doing what other people were doing, his OWN VERY WORDS were POSTED IN HERE.
The whole video is about GANG ROCKERS...ROCKERS ARE LETTERS ON THE BACK OF A JACKET IN BIKER STYLE, YOU GOOFY
"COLORS" = VESTS.
ON THE SAME CHANNEL
1.No jamaican music
2.I was doing what other people were doing

Pick island cherries all you want...We'll gladly bring it RIGHT ON BACK to a young man named MACHUKI who was imitating american jive talking and djing along with coxsone SWAGGER JACKER dodd:
M: No. To be honest, what gave me that idea, I was walking late one night about a quarter to three somewhere in Denham
Town. And I hear this guy on the radio, some American guy advertising Royal Crown hairdressing. (affecting an American accent) “You see, you’re drying up with this one Johnny , try Royal Crown. When you’re downtown you’re the smartest guy in town when you use Royal Crown and Royal Crown makes you the smartest guy in town.” That deliverance! This guy sound like a machine! A tongue twister! I heard that in 1949 on one of them States stations that was really strong. I hear this guy sing out pon the radio and I just like the sound and I say to myself I think I can do better. I would like to play some recordings and just jive talk like this guy
Clive Chin, writes Lesser, remembers toaster Count Matchuki carrying around a book. “There was one he said he bought out of Beverly’s [record shop] back in the ‘60s. The book was called Jives and it had sort of slangs, slurs in it and he was reading it, looking it over, and he found that it would be something that he could explore and study, so he took that book and it helped him.” Lesser writes that this book of jive may have been a boo, written in 1953, The Jives of Dr. Hepcat, which was published by Albert Lavada Durst, a DJ on KVET-AM in Austin, Texas


Reading up on HOW TO BE A nikka like a wigger cac would.

 

[truth2you]

listen.... i dont mean any disrespect.... i really don't

BUT, this is some SAD shyt

yall using DJ’s that played Disco fukking music as founding fathers of hip hop
.... is straight up disgusting

the original B-Boy, Cholly Rock explains dem nikkaz y’all champion - DJ Pete Jones & Flowers hated hip hop & didn’t want that type of crowd at their events

and lastly I also find it extremely interesting, that the abundance of videos y’all posted YET this particular one was never brought up

Why is it disgusting when everything that herc was doing was disco! Same with Flash, Same with Bam

Most of the records were what some call disco, but it wasn't that commercial sound, plus he added more obscure to his playlist. His sound system, the idea of using two turntables, playing breaks, and even doing jams in the park, all came from dj's who some want to call disco to make it seem like they were the studio 54 version, but when you hear what they played, they weren't like that. You can go listen to old recordings on youtube. That's why I wrote "the internet changed the game", you can prove what you claim just a couple seconds. I think hip hop pioneers just want the fame, and not telling the whole story, but we can see what it is just by putting everything together.

Hip hop CULTURE is what's the difference, because its a hardcore culture, the music had to be hard with the drums. This is what separated hip hop & "Disco", along with the attitude. Both are connected, just different from small things. Not learning both sides, you won't know the whole story, which to me is big. All the DJ techniques, the style of dressing, the language being used, all changed year after year, and then it spread out to the whole world. One turned into Hip hop culture/rap music, the other House/EDM. Both made tons of money, but started from the NYC streets because of guys who played music, but unique techniques for the time. That story is some wild shyt when you really think about it, and it was mostly black people who did this, under bullshyt they had to live daily, from their own country! The story of black music is so wild!

That's why I say listen to other people besides the people who claim they did what. If you really did it, others can vouch for you, and because we have way more knowledge then back in the day, the lie can't keep going on to big themselves up. You just don't want to hear a different version of the story, you're picking sides, so no point in going on,



Peace.

 

[kingofnyc]

HERC HIMSELF said he was doing what other people were doing, his OWN VERY WORDS were POSTED IN HERE.
The whole video is about GANG ROCKERS...ROCKERS ARE LETTERS ON THE BACK OF A JACKET IN BIKER STYLE, YOU GOOFY
"COLORS" = VESTS.
ON THE SAME CHANNEL
1.No jamaican music
2.I was doing what other people were doing

Pick island cherries all you want...We'll gladly bring it RIGHT ON BACK to a young man named MACHUKI who was imitating american jive talking and djing along with coxsone SWAGGER JACKER dodd:
M: No. To be honest, what gave me that idea, I was walking late one night about a quarter to three somewhere in Denham
Town. And I hear this guy on the radio, some American guy advertising Royal Crown hairdressing. (affecting an American accent) “You see, you’re drying up with this one Johnny , try Royal Crown. When you’re downtown you’re the smartest guy in town when you use Royal Crown and Royal Crown makes you the smartest guy in town.” That deliverance! This guy sound like a machine! A tongue twister! I heard that in 1949 on one of them States stations that was really strong. I hear this guy sing out pon the radio and I just like the sound and I say to myself I think I can do better. I would like to play some recordings and just jive talk like this guy
Clive Chin, writes Lesser, remembers toaster Count Matchuki carrying around a book. “There was one he said he bought out of Beverly’s [record shop] back in the ‘60s. The book was called Jives and it had sort of slangs, slurs in it and he was reading it, looking it over, and he found that it would be something that he could explore and study, so he took that book and it helped him.” Lesser writes that this book of jive may have been a boo, written in 1953, The Jives of Dr. Hepcat, which was published by Albert Lavada Durst, a DJ on KVET-AM in Austin, Texas


Reading up on HOW TO BE A nikka like a wigger cac would.

i don’t even understand, what’s all this shyt supposed to be about ?

 

[kingofnyc]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

finally, notice how your man @IllmaticDelta whom you overwhelmingly praised for bringing up all of these videos, links etc. yet he has chosen to ignore my previous post which debunked damn near everything he’s posted

dude, you haven't debunked anything that I posted.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

some more shyt that shows just how the typical hiphop history being passe down since the 80s is

early hiphop dance/bboys crews predate herc by his own admission! They just weren't called bboys

Herc:

When did you start to get involved in it?

I started to get involved in it right after my house got burned down. I was going to parties back then, see. A place called the Tunnel and a place called the Puzzle, right on 161st Street – that was the first disco I used to party at. Me, guys like Phase 2, Stay High, Sweet Duke, Lionel 163 – all the early graffiti writers – used to come through there. It’s where we used to meet up and party at.

Then, years later, [there was this club] called Disco Fever. Disco Fever used to be right here on 167th. But before Disco Fever there was the Puzzle. That was the first Bronx disco.


So back then you still weren’t playing?

I was dancing, I was partying. Right around 1970, I’m in high school.

That was when b-boying was starting?


Yeah, people were dancing, but they weren’t calling it b-boying. That was just the break, and people would go off. My terms came in after I started to play – I called them b-boys. Guys just used to breakdance… Right then, slang was in, and we shortened words down. Instead of disrespect, you know, you dissed me. That’s where that came from.

Red Bull Music Academy Daily

to add to that, kurtis blow says he bboying and hiphop was around in 71 before herc's parties in 73

What do you consider the anniversary of Hip-Hop?

Kurtis Blow: Hip-Hop, to me, started around 1971, 1972. When I was thirteen years old, I gave my first party as a DJ at my good friend - Tony Rome's - 13th birthday party. I put two component sets together (back in the day, a component set was a TV, a radio, an 8 track player and a record player). So I took my mom’s component set and I took it to his house where his mom had a component set. We put both of them together and we had continuous music... and it was awesome. Awesome party. That was way before I knew that there were 2 turntables, and mixing, and continuous music that way. But in '72 I had this idea - We’re going to do this thing nonstop where we wouldn’t have to talk in-between the records and we could just make it happen. And so that was that was the first time I actually DJ'd. I was also was a B-Boy in 1972. But no disrespect to Kool Herc. If we want to claim that the start of Hip-Hop is 1973, I’ll go with it. And big ups to Kool Herc and that very first party, that back to school jam he gave with his sister Cindy back in 1973.

Kurtis Blow | Q&A | Celebrating 40 Years of Hip-Hop | PBS

now an OG bboy that grew up with herc as teens, his thoughts on bboying

Trixie:

NORIN RAD: "So you were there at his first parties in that recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue?"

TRIXIE:"Yes, we were the ones that started Kool Herc!"

NORIN RAD:"So I guess you also knew Herc's CINDY?"

TRIXIE:"I know Cindy, I know his mother, his father, I know his fam! But I was there on the Westside of the Bronx before all of them. We all grew up together.. me and Herc met when we were teenagers and most of us were graduating going to high school. We played basketball together all the time, we did a lot of things together. We went to the same schools! We went from house party to houseparty....stuff like that! One day Herc invited us to his parties and we was all thinking about it..either we wasn't gonna go or we was gonna go because it is cold down the valley. The valley was Sedgewick Ave..Sedgewick is coooooold at the winter time and you gotta go down these stairs and all this junk. Man!!! But.... winter started and we'd go to his party and it was 50 cent...yeah, it was 50 cent."


NORIN RAD: "When did you start breaking and who inspired you to start breaking?"

TRIXIE: "I'm gonna say it like this....Did nobody inspire me to start breaking 'cause I already knew how to dance. I started breakdancing in 1971, then 72,73...yeah, and I stopped dancing in 1974/75. When we did go to Herc's parties that's when I took it to another level. All my friends could tell you I already knew how to dance so it wasn't like I didn't know how to dance. Nobody did..I put it to you like this. My Mother was a dancer so I gotta say my mother kind of inspired me to dance."

NORIN RAD: "Is it true that breaking at that time was done mainly on top?"

TRIXIE:"Yeah,you would get into the move of it, you know?! Then once you see an opening then you come down to the ground and do your rolls, your spins, all of that....but you see there is a timing for that. A lot of people the way they are breaking right now all they do is the floormoves, they are not actually dancing. No! We didn't do it like that.You danced first then you break ..."Oh Boy, you now break Boy!" Then you come back up and you dance again.It was a dance. That's what it was. It was dance breaking."

Norin Rad:"And back then B-Boys used to dance to the whole song, right? Not just the break part?"

TRIXIE: "Yeah, yeah, yeah!!! From beginning to end! Whoever gets tired or whatever (against you)...you're the winner. Back in my time I could dance a whole album. A whole album by myself!"

NORIN RAD:"Over here many B-Boys have this misconception that back then it was all about breakbeats all night BUT Kool Herc did not only play beats for the B-Boys to get down to but also Hustle joints and slow joints, right?"

TRIXIE:" Yeah we used to do slow dancing.Listen, Breakdancing started a lot of stuff. The Hustle is a Latin dance but we turned it into a Soul Dance. To mingle with the other half, the girls, we had to dance slow. But if you were breakdancing she was not gonna dance with you. Most girls couldn't breakdance. So you had to mix it all up! For me as a dancer I had to do all of those. Not just breakdancing I had to dance to every type of song..so I could get a date. You had to know how to mingle, how to talk to a girl, how to do the hustle.... or you could dance regular 'cause we used to do dance regular, too. So if you danced regular you could make her smile and move her body. All that plays into breakdancing."

NORIN RAD: "Which songs would you get you down to when you were at Kool Herc's parties?"

TRIXIE: "James Brown! The Ohio Players, Earth, Wind & Fire..oh man, I could dance to all of the songs he played but really James Brown! If you danced against me and it was a contest....'cause I used to do contests, too. That's how you make a few dollars, or win a prize or get a trophy or whatever. James Brown!!!! Sheesh...It was on!!! Put James Brown on and I could dance to a whole album. Sex Machine, Give It Up or Turn It Lose..I could dance to all of his songs, all of his fast songs. But I gotta say in my mind I was not a B-Boy at that time! I WAS NOT a B-Boy when I was breakdancing. Kool Herc did come up with that after I had stopped dancing.So I wasn't no B-Boy I was just Trixie. All the other guys he made them, you know, B-Boys and Herculoids. I wasn't around when he did that though. Nah, I wasn't with that. We gonna straighten that out right now! But now B-Boy that's what it is."

NORIN RAD: "Ok just so that I understand you properly...the term of a B-Boy was something that Kool Herc came up with but you were alreay breaking before that and did not consider yourself to be a B-Boy?"

TRIXIE:"Right! No, I was just Trixie. They didn't call me Trixie the B-Boy. It was Trixie, Trixie, Trixie!! That's what I want everybody to understand."

Castles In The Sky: INTERVIEW WITH THE ORIGINAL B-BOY TRIXIE

 

[IllmaticDelta]

@truth2you @Indiglow Meta (R$G) @Poitier

dj smoke had bboys and he was around the same time as herc (actually before...many of the bboys we associte with herc were with smokey first))

“Herc had the recognition, he was the big name in the Bronx back then”, explains AJ. “Back then the guys with the big names were: Kool D, Disco King Mario, Smokey and the Smoke-a-trons, Pete DJ Jones, Grandmaster Flowers and Kool Herc. Not even Bambaataa had a big name at that time, you know what I’m sayin?”

Ill-literature with Skillz to Blaze: One Night At the Executive Playhouse

^^the ones I bolded in blue are all before herc. Dj Smoke is from the same time and area as herc. More on him and his dance crew

.
.
he appears to be before herc and people from the herc scene rocked says he was doing hiphop before they heard of herc!

melle mel mentions him as the first person he saw doing hiphop in the west bronx




now, here goes an OG bboy who was part of herc's team who said he was bboying way before he heard of herc and was down with dj dmoke first!

Clark Kent:

NORIN RAD:"What was your relationship with the legendary (N***er) Twins?"

CLARK KENT:"Well, we met when we were 8 years old and we did everything together in the beginning of hiphop. If you saw me, you saw the Twins...if you saw the Twins, you saw me..our names were cemented together, okay?! There's nothing that they were involved in that I wasn't there for and there is nothing that I was involved in that they wasn't there for. We were like triplets. Wherever you seen one you seen all three of us when it came to movin' around in Hiphop. We used to travel down to Chuck Center which is one of the places we really honed our skills at before finding out about Kool Herc and going to Kool Herc's parties. We would go to Chuck Center like every other week 'cause they had a dance contest and we used to love winning that dance contest."

NORIN RAD:"That's some precious knowledge!!! Chuck Center was located in East Harlem, right?"

CLARK KENT: "Yes on 115th Street & 2nd Avenue."

NORIN RAD: "So you were basically breaking at Chuck Center BEFORE you met Kool Herc?"

CLARK KENT:"Before I even met Kool Herc! That's where The (N***er) Twins and I honed our skills and we would go down there with cats like Wallace Dee and Chip. These are guys from the era of like Trixie and them. We ran with a whole host of cats down there before we found out what Herc was doing what he was doing on the Westside (of the Bronx).One of the names I wanna mention though is Dancing Doug!!!Back then Chuck Center was one of the places where we encountered Dancing Doug! The premier place to do breaking became Kool Herc's parties but prior to Kool Herc's we used to go to (DJ) Smokey's parties, you know, the Twins and I. From Smokey's we caught on to Chuck Center and then from Chuck Center we caught on to what Herc was doing. And out of all the places we went, you know, we honed our skills! A lot of people have this misconception that we got our skills at Kool Herc's...by the time the Twins and I arrived at Kool Herc's we was already elite!!!! And that's why we quickly ran through whoever thought they was somebody at Kool Herc's at that time. It was only a matter of time before you got on our nerves and you kept running your mouth.. and we waited untiltil you were dancing in your little circle and I would jumped into your circle and make short work of you. That's how we got down at Kool Herc's parties. Like a lot of our stuff was never premeditated. I have heard when you interviewed other people and they said,"Well, guys come in and say I wanna battle you!"That wasn't my and the Twins experience! We took on people without them knowing we was coming. By the time we jumped your circle if you thought you was somebody it's too late to run.... You're trapped now!"

NORIN RAD: "Damn! I have to gather myself!!! That's some heavy knowledge!! So there were Harlem B-Boys trying to bring it to you in 1973 at Chuck Center?"

CLARK KENT:"And we would eat'em like lunch."

Castles In The Sky

.
.
now the man himself, Dj Smokey

NORIN RAD:"What made you pick up that name Smokey?"

DJ SMOKEY:"I was running track in Taft High School and I could run really fast. When I ran the dust would be kicking up from my sneakers. They would say, "What do we got here? You're smoking!" "Hey, Smokey!" See! So the name kept sticking. I kept the nickname when I was DJing..it said DJ Smokey! That's how the name came about..DJ Smokey! As time went on I dropped the Y and it was DJ Smoke. People just kept calling me DJ Smokey. Flash and them would call me DJ Smokey. Kool Herc called me DJ Smokey."


NORIN RAD: "When did you form your dance crew? The Smoke-A-Trons? Was that around 1974/75?"

DJ SMOKEY: "No. That was around 1972."

NORIN RAD: "From your recollection how did Breaking as a dance come about? What are its roots?"

DJ SMOKEY: " Okay, in 1969 the dance at these 25 Cent parties in the basements and in the clubs started to change, it was more of a expression vibe. Like this song that came out in 1970 "Express Yourself!" You see it was more of a rush dance, a anger dance. "Say It Loud I'm Black And I'm Proud" ..they were like "Ahhhh, I'm angry!" A anger dance!! Like "I'm tired of all this shyt....who you're calling ******?" and it was also like "I'm from this block you're from that block!" You know what I'm saying? Two guys would go at each other....


NORIN RAD: "Now as for that name Smoke-A-Trons how did that come about?

DJ SMOKEY: "The Smoke-A-Trons were my dancers, the ones that I picked.Sister Boo, Johnny Kool, James Bond, Crazy Eddie, the Yellow Banana....all my dancers...when people would come to our block and think that they could dance my dancers would smoke the hell out of them. That's why I called them The Smoke-A-Trons."

NORIN RAD:"Where was Sister Boo from? The 9?"

DJ SMOKEY: " No, she wasn't from the 9. I think she was from Jerome Avenue. She was real good and beautiful. I'll send you some pictures of her. She is dead now, she died from AIDS. The Yellow Banana is still around. Her real name is Vivien. She used to go to Kool Hercs parties, too."

NORIN RAD: "So the Smoke-A-Tron B-Boys and B-Girls were Sista Boo, Johnny Kool, James Bond, Crazy Eddie.."

DJ SMOKEY:"Yes, but I had more. there were bout 20 of them."

NORIN RAD: "Could you name them please?"

DJ SMOKEY: "El Dorado Mike."

NORIN RAD: "El Dorado Mike was down with you, too? I have heard a lot about him...."

DJ SMOKEY: "Yeah, he was one my B-Boys. The ****** Twins would come to my parties, too. You can ask them about me, you can ask them about DJ Smokey...Then I had Bo Bo, he was from the 9. Here's another one: The Calgonite Kid. He was so dirty that they called him the Calgonite Kid. Then there was Barbara, Beavey, Born, Knowledge...They are in heaven now."

NORIN RAD: "What about Ron, Sleepy and Kaseem? I heard Pow Wow from the Zulu Kings mention them as great B-Boys."'

DJ SMOKEY: "Yes, yes they were all Smoke-A-Trons. Sleepy was very good."

NORIN RAD:"What were your stomping grounds in terms of indoor as well as outdoor party spots around the early to mid 1970 when The Smoke-A-Trons were with you?"

DJ SMOKEY:"The Cave! '74! It was on Webster Avenue....in the Webster Avenue Projects. It was on Webster Avenue & 167th street. We called it The Cave."

NORIN RAD:"Damn! Melle Mel mentioned that the first B-Boy party he ever witnessed took place at The Cave with you playing the music....Was that a club?"

DJ SMOKEY:"It was a community center. One of the buildings had a big community center and it was in that center!"

NORIN RAD:"I heard that you were also giving parties at a spot called Over The Dover (I read that in an interview with Pow Wow from the Zulu Kings / Soul Sonic Force)....What kind of spot was that?"

DJ SMOKEY: "Okay, The Dover was a movie theatre that was closed. On the top of The Dover was a club that Lucky got for us. We called it Over The Dover.....it was kinda raggedy so we started working on it.....we had to build it up and clean it. The more we built it up the more people came and before we got the amps stolen from us we had it packed on the regular. At first it was 100 people, then it was 200 people.....then 1000.....we started to make so much money out of it. The Smoke-A-Trons and Luke- A-Trons were there....but then unfortunately we got robbed....."

NORIN RAD:" From what I've heard you also used to do parties at your apartment on Grant Avenue where B-Boys got down at heavily..."

DJ SMOKEY:" Yes!! All day long!!! All day long!!! My apartment was on 169th street & Grant Avenue...5D!!! On the fifth floor....We played music 24/7 !! That's where my Smoke-A-Trons..they would come in there daily, hang out and dance. We would also do block parties on Grant Avenue in the summer time."

DJ SMOKEY: "Yeah..when other people came from different neighbourhoods they had to come through them....dancing. They (the other B-Boys & B-Girls) would lose a lot of times! Sometimes they would win...but most of the times they lost. 155th Street Crew...they lost. The Polo Grounds Crew lost....University Avenue Crew they lost. They would get their ass handed to them because the Smoke-A-Trons was bad!! James Bond, Bobo and them was bad. They knew their style! Eldorado Mike? Come on...But there were a lot of good dancers back then... Ni**er Twins! They were bad! Kool Herc's team was bad, too! Clark Kent!!! They were good, I'm not lying. Flash's dance team was bad..Melle Mel and them could dance....they would all dance before they got into their shyt (starting with MCing)."




NORIN RAD:"How deep was your breakbeat arsenal at your peak in '76 and '77? Were you known for having rare beats?"

DJ SMOKEY:"Yes, I had some very rare beats. I had four crates..beats, just beats in it....two crates with other music. So I had like six crates...."

NORIN RAD:"Nowadays the younger DJs are not really familiar with what it took back then to become a DJ....Like building up a Soundsystem, buying two copies of the same record to extend the break..."

DJ SMOKEY:"I had six copies! Sometimes when we played outside...the records...the sun would warp them or they would get scratched up by the way that we was playing them and I used to have pennies and dimes on my needles and so sometimes the needle would break......we would cut the records so much that the grooves would get messed up....sometimes even the headphones would get messed up...So I had multiple copies of each record. "

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

DJ SMOKEY:"There was a spot called Downstairs Music, Crazy Eddie....I would go as far as Brooklyn to get the records I needed....."

NORIN RAD:"What were your five favourite breakbeats?"

DJ SMOKEY:""It's Just Begun", "Apache", "Bongo Rock", "Open Sesame" by Kool & The Gang...there was version that had a nice beat on it.....sings, "Groove With The Jeannie"

NORIN RAD:"Who were your DJ partners back then? That ran with your crew?"

DJ SMOKEY:"Jerry D! Rob The Gold! There were also a lot of other DJs that played with me like Flash, Lovebug Starski and Mean Gene (from the legendary L-Brothers)."


DJ Rob The Gold (The Master Plan Bunch)

DJ Jerry Dee (The Master Plan Bunch)





NORIN RAD: "I don't mean to upset you but what was your relationship with Kool DJ Herc back then in the early to mid 1970ies?"

DJ SMOKEY: "I was his nemesis!"

NORIN RAD: "Ok, so you were rivals! Did you ever go against each other in a battle with your soundsystems?"

DJ SMOKEY: "Yes, we did . He definetely had the equipment but skillwise I was much better than him and I'm still better today. He did something very slick to me at the PAL back then. He had invited me there to do a battle of the DJs and he had all his equipment there, massive equipment, you know what I'm saying? Half an hour before the PAL closed I finally got on using some of my equipment but I only had two speakers with me, two Peavey columns. So I tried to tear his ass up with what I had. I was waiting for Grandmaster Flash to bring the rest of my equipment but by the time he got there the PAL already closed. So Herc basically drowned me out because he had all his speakers there. Everybody said he won, he did not win..."

Castles In The Sky

and this from jdl or melle mel on smokey (don't have the book)

 

[frush11]

the gay underground got more attention than the straight overground which is why alot of the stuff the black and straight overground was pioneering went unnoticed

The thing a lot of folks don't understand bout DIsco/Dance, was the Gay scene was literally just following the footsteps of the Black party scene back then.

Studio 54, the loft, and all them famed Disco had nothing but Black djs(Flowers, Pete Jones etc). All the shiit they was playing, them tunes were already months or years old in the Black club world.

It irks me a bit when folks try to give so much credit to Gays for Disco and later House, when the foundations were in the Parks, random clubs, community centers. Where it was just Black Djs spinning to a regular Black crowd

Like this for example

Listen to NU SOUNDS LIVE AT ST GABRIELS 6/11/77 by hass718 #np on #SoundCloud

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The thing a lot of folks don't understand bout DIsco/Dance, was the Gay scene was literally just following the footsteps of the Black party scene back then.

Studio 54, the loft, and all them famed Disco had nothing but Black djs(Flowers, Pete Jones etc). All the shiit they was playing, them tunes were already months or years old in the Black club world.

It irks me a bit when folks try to give so much credit to Gays for Disco and later House, when the foundations were in the Parks, random clubs, community centers. Where it was just Black Djs spinning to a regular Black crowd

Like this for example

Listen to NU SOUNDS LIVE AT ST GABRIELS 6/11/77 by hass718 #np on #SoundCloud

exactly.....the white discos were an attempt to hijack/mainstream what mainly straight black dj's were already doing. There were gay black dj's who were the main ones at those white disco's levan, knuckles, tee scott

Tee Scott




but the djs/crews like the nu sounds stuff you posted above were more numerous and actually traveled around the boroughs and were actual foundation

 

[frush11]

@truth2you @Indiglow Meta (R$G) @Poitier

dj smoke had bboys and he was around the same time as herc (actually before...many of the bboys we associte with herc were with smokey first))




Ill-literature with Skillz to Blaze: One Night At the Executive Playhouse

^^the ones I bolded in blue are all before herc. Dj Smoke is from the same time and area as herc. More on him and his dance crew

.
.
he appears to be before herc and people from the herc scene rocked says he was doing hiphop before they heard of herc!

melle mel mentions him as the first person he saw doing hiphop in the west bronx




now, here goes an OG bboy who was part of herc's team who said he was bboying way before he heard of herc and was down with dj dmoke first!

Clark Kent:



Castles In The Sky

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now the man himself, Dj Smokey



Castles In The Sky

and this from jdl or melle mel on smokey (don't have the book)

I forgot whom on Michael Wayne, but someone else besides Mean Gene also noted that there were other crews in the West Bronx besides Herc.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

I forgot whom on Michael Wayne, but someone else besides Mean Gene also noted that there were other crews in the West Bronx besides Herc.

yeah, other hiphip pioneers seem to get mentioned every now and then, here and there but it's almost like people (herc, bam, flash) have purposely tried not mention them so they can continue the narrative that's been as the official history since the 1980's. For example, this interview with Tony Tone of Cold Crush was asked about Smokey and he tried to act like smoke was a nobody

Smokey.



Who?



Smokey!




Yo I am going to tell you the truth, I ain’t never seen d.j. Smokey.



Well J.D.L. gives him a lot of props.




But I told J.D.L. about that. I told J.D.L. stop giving n------ props just because you knew them. I never seen Smokey. I asked Herc about him. Herc said who the f--- is Smokey? (Troy is laughing) Who the f--- is Smokey, Smokey ain’t nobody.



I even heard Dota Rock speak about him. He came out of those projects by 169th st.



Off Webster ave.



Yeah off Webster.



Yeah off Webster ave. because I was up in those projects. That’s where the first record shop was, right around there.



The first record shop?



The first record shop I worked for. Claremont and 3rd. ave.



O.k. I understand.




That n----- name ain’t on no flyers. At least Able and Bear name was on a flyer. You don’t see no Smokey or Smoke A Trons on no flyer. Im telling them why y’all giving ni****s like that any type of light when the names ain’t on no flyer. You can’t research nothing on them. So how much could they had been doing. See this is were n------ get it f--- up. Its one thing to do block parties. But if you that good you going to go inside in the winter time to make some money. So you got to put some flyers out.



This is definitely a turn of events on this guy Smokey.



Let me ask you this. Who ever is giving him props J.D.L., or Dot, or any one, if he so nice why he only playing Webster houses?

Toney Tone is the founder of the Cold Crush Brothers
.
.

in this interview, herc mentions him but basically gives him the

When did people start calling it breakbeats?

They started to do that in the ’80s.

Was anybody else doing anything similar?

No. There were guys trying to battle me, but I wasn’t fukking with them. There was a guy called Smoky. He was coming up, he was on Webster Avenue, had a group called the Masterplan Bunch. Flash was in the cuts. He was making noise and shyt. I had no competition.

Red Bull Music Academy Daily

.
.
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but people were there, say otherwise

pow wow from soul sonic force/zulu nation on smoke:

Well, when did you guys decide that, from the Zulu Kings and all, that you three and Bambaataa were going to be The Soulsonic Force, more as a music group?

Oh well, there was a whole bunch of us. I think there was about eight of us at one time. But cats didn't want to come to practice, and only comin' to parties when they wanna come and stuff like that. Like originally Mr. Biggs was an MC, but he wasn't really into it like me and G.L.O.B.E. And my first partner, Love Kid Hutch, used to be down us. He used to be down with Busy Bee Starski. Used to be Starski and Hutch, but they broke up. But Hutch wound up going with Disco King Mario, bless his soul, and The Chuck City Crew; and after that, we came our way. The rest is history. And he left and went the way he wanted to go, instead of coming to practice like I said, like me, Biggs and G.L.O.B.E. was doing.

They cut they own selves off. I'm a team player, that's how I get down. If the team wins, then I'm gonna win. But if I think I can leave and then come back three or four days later and the format's done changed up on your ass, and you're wondering wow, what happened? Why nobody told me? Because you were not there. You gotta go to work every day, and that was our work. Me and G.L.O.B.E. sat down and ate it, breathed it, and got to the point where we ran out of fukking words to rhyme, man!

So it wound up just being us three that stuck it out. 'Cause me and G.L.O.B.E. were more in the hip-hop area than the Bronx River was. See, where we came from, we were hip-hop, with The L Brothers, DJ Smokey and the Smokeatron, he was from Grand Avenue. And a lot of guys, they don't talk about him. I'll get back to what we were saying, but DJ Smokey, and his brother Roscoe and the Smokeatron, they were the baddest motherfukkers out at the time, man. I mean, Flash couldn't touch them, Kool Herc couldn't touch them. Nobody was touchin' Smokey. And a lot of cats will not speak on him, which they should, because he is also a pioneer of hip-hop music.

And what happened to him?

I heard he moved out of state. I heard he moved before hip-hop music turned big. I guess he cut it loose and went about his life, but DJ Smokey and his brother Roscoe, let me tell you, they threw the baddest parties. You wanted to see some guys that could dance? Man, it was a show! There's a movie theatre we had over on 174th St in the Bronx River called The Dover movie theatre that had a place you could give parties - it's a church now - but he made that spot very popular. He used to throw block parties mostly on Grand Avenue. And this guy here, I wanna let the world know about him; he definitely deserves his props, man, because he was there in the beginning. And a lot of guys don't that brother his recognition, which is sad; and I'ma give it to him every time all the time

Werner von Wallenrod's Humble, Little Hip-Hop Blog: Be What You Be - Pow Wow Interview (Soulsonic part 1)

and

Troy L. Was there any difference between the hip-hop in Bronx River and the hip-hop in T- connection?



Pow Wow Yes it was rawer in Bx.River, then in T- Connection cause at the River, is the essence of hip-hop. They were playing stuff like “Square Biz” that was not played in The River. Once the real hip-hop evolved that is when T- Connection came into play. Like Garrison’s basement, which was Flash’s spot on Garrison ave, 1111 fox street. D.J. Smokey’s spot which was called “Over the Dover” on 174th st and Boston Rd. and that was a movie theater T- Connection was not on the map yet. Matter fact Smokey who had D.J. Roscoe running with him was pulling the crowd from Herc and Flash. The B-boys use to come to Flash and Herc’s parties, but then they started checking Smokey. Even the ****** twins who was bad and real good at what they do but mostly drove around with Herc and rock at his parties came around and one day to the “Third avenue Ballroom” where the L-Brothers were rockin, man “Burnt face Melvin and Black Amy tore there --- up”. Those were the first days, then came T- Connection.[/qupte]

Bronx River Center and other Clubs with Pow                   Wow and Troy L