What was it like growing up in the Bronx and seeing the birth of a new genre?
It was a one-of-a-kind experience when hip-hop got started. Between the ages of eleven and fifteen, the streets of the Bronx raised me. I was running in packs and putting in work—robberies, stickups, the whole nine. That’s who I was before I got into the music. But once I met Caz, we instantly connected. And not too long after that, hip-hop started exploding all around us. Kool Herc’s name was ringing bells. Bambaataa and Flash were doing their thing on the other side of town. No one was really making noise on our side, so it was just a natural progression that we became students of the culture. We had already been dressing the aesthetic, we were both graffiti writers, and so becoming a part of the music was just the next natural step for us.
What were the biggest hardships of the ’70s?
Back then, New York was fukking bankrupt. There were no programs, no resources. After my father died, we became a family on welfare. My mother was working two jobs at that point just to support us. I went to school, but I think I got a better education in the streets. We were definitely aware of our social environment at a young age. When my brother and I started going to Catholic school, we were less than a handful of the Latinos there. Even before my mother went on welfare, they were already calling us welfare recipients. It was a tough time for a lot of folks. Gangs were running rampant in the Bronx, and I soon became a part of that. We were all in the same boat—broken homes and a lack of anything else to be a part of.
What kind of impact did the music have on you?
Once I got involved in hip-hop, I spent less time in the street, and I started to gravitate away from those friends. But my mind-set was still pretty much the same. I still had a really quick temper. I wasn’t that overly talkative dude you’d want to kick it with, but the music taught me a lot about being a pioneer.
I was the first Latino DJ, the first Hispanic dude behind the turntables, so there were a lot of biases about that from the Latino community. Hip-hop was perceived as a Black movement when it first got started, so I was perceived as a Spanish guy trying to be Black, trying to be non-Spanish.
Disco Wiz with the Coldcrush Brothers, 1982. Photo courtesy of Disco Wiz and powerHouse Books.
What were most Latinos listening to then?
They were listening to disco, salsa, and Top 40. Whatever was available on WABC, the one station we had in New York. But we weren’t accepted at fukking disco joints. It’s not like I could have rolled up to Studio 54. So it was tough at first. But once hip-hop became more popular, and my crew started to do community events, hip-hop became distinctively ours. From there, we just gravitated to it even more and began to create our own mark, our own niche. I was still a very aggressive dude, so I started to channel that aggression out through the music. Caz used to get mad at me, ’cause I would break the knobs on the mixer. Sometimes, I’d even slam shyt and break a needle. I was known for that. I got behind the turntables like I wanted to beat a motherfukker up. That’s why I got heavy into breakbeats.
