Interview with Fab 5 Freddy

Luxury. Today we've got part one of a very special two-part episode where we talk to a champion of the melting pot of New York art and culture, the very first host of UMTB Raps. That's right Tialla, in this first part we'll be talking about the downtown New York scene and the origins of hip-hop, disco and new wave. And in part two we will break down Blondie's Rapture, a song our guest was immortalized in. And sort of encapsulates that. So welcome to part one of our very special conversation with the one and only, Fat Five Freddy. Kitty! A great story, like Monsters Inc, stays with you forever. And Disney Plus is where you'll find your next great story. From the return of the award-winning hit series, Rivals. Welcome to the naughtiest show on television. To the unmissable crime drama, High Potential. Gotta dead body, gotta go. A lifetime of great stories awaits. This spring on Disney Plus, 18 Plus, subscription required. T's and C's apply. Up next it's Bread Flare and his new band. Oh my god I'm back again. On that vacation oh everybody spin. Gonna bring new games, gonna show you now. New game party, find new... Dropping hits every week, find the new slots. I'm back, back in the casino tonight. 18 Plus, be gamblerware at all. That's right. I'm actor, writer, director and sometimes DJ, D'Ala Riddle. I'm producer DJ, songwriter and musicologist Luxury, aka the guy who whispers interpolations. And this is One Song. A show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before and you can watch One Song on YouTube and Spotify while you're there please like and subscribe. If you're looking for even more music facts, more conversations and more us, these two guys we've got a Patreon now. Go to patreon.com slash D'Ala Luxury that's patreon.com D-I-L-L-O-L-U-X-X-U-R-Y. In other words, our names. Do all that spelling. As we mentioned, we have a very special guest with us here today, a pioneer in graffiti who brought that art form and many others to the mainstream, the co-producer and soundtrack co-creator and star of seminal hip hop film, Wild Style, the first host of Yo MTV Raps and now author with his memoir, Everybody's Fly. It's out now. You have to buy, you have to read it. Oh my gosh. Welcome Fab Five, Freddie in the building. Hey, hey, hey, hey, thank you for having me. That's it. Woo. Honored to be here. Big fan. We are so happy to have you here. Your book, by the way, which we've been reading, it does such an amazing job of giving everyone who wasn't in New York in the late 70s, early 80s. Just it paints such a vivid picture. You talk about the confluence of hip hop, disco, punk, graffiti, art books. I grew up, my father was a painter. I grew up with all the art books in my house. You bring it up some of them. I haven't thought about that name in so long. And importantly, because we're both DJs, you talk a lot about the DJs in New York at this time. All starts with the DJs. Oh, it all starts. Yes. Give us a tour of the downtown scene in 1980. Well I guess even a little before the downtown scene, I'll just give you a taste as a younger kid coming up before I hit the scene, what really was the most exciting thing were the mobile disco DJs. And these were guys, some of the names I talk about that were wildly popular was the original Grandmaster, Grandmaster Flowers. It was Pete DJ Jones, Maboya, Plumber, Out in Queens. You had the disco twins. You had Infinity Machine. These guys have massive sound systems. And just the idea of keeping the music going continually as opposed to- Without the fade out. No, but as opposed to in most people's homes, you had a spindle, you'd put five or six forty fives, the arm would swing back, the record would drop down, the record would, the arm would go clear, play the record. That's how records were played. If you had a party, that was the mode. The idea of continually keeping the music going, just mixing from one record to the other was a huge innovation. And that is what the mobile disco DJs did. They weren't cutting, scratching or mixing, but they made being a DJ super cool, super sexy and these guys would pack. Now as a young kid, I didn't have any real paper to go to the clubs they spun at. They'd come out in the summer, play at block parties and park jams. And it'd be three, four, five, six hundred kids or more in these parks until two, three in the morning. This is a classic story. These were the guys that figured out how to bust open the base of the streetlight. Know which wire to connect to. Because the wrong wire you get fried to a crisp, plug into the city's power supply and rock until the early morning. I got to bring this up because your book is so good. It's called Everybody's Fly, Fat Five Freddy's Book. So many key details that I thought I knew everything about this period. I did not know everything. The idea that these guys would steal the speakers out of train, subway trains and then try and play music through that. That's what's so desperate to be DJs, man. How do I get a system together? That sound quality was absolute garbage. Horrible. Horrible. And like I said, you were saying flowers and some of the other ones had like these big speakers, right? Like they'd have big base bottoms. This is where you first saw brands like Sir Win Vega. These guys spun at would be promoted with how many watts a different DJ system had. Like 3,000 watts. That was an attraction. You know, like, oh, shit. This is hilarious. Louder than the next guy. They're like, you're not going to be listening to the one, two, three train speakers at this party. Not us. But what we had heard was because the Bronx was the poorest borough and kids everywhere wanted to do this, they were like, let's put a system together some way somehow. Most people in their homes. This is before stereo became a ubiquitous thing. People had high five systems. Oftentimes it was a TV, like an FM radio and one big speaker. Maybe a turntable on the top of it. Turntable on the top, radio on the top, big TV, big massive piece of furniture. And guys would dismantle those to try to get a speaker to cobble together some type of system. But it weren't stereo yet. Stereo became popular later. WBLS, I know in the black community, real popular radio station, the way they did their station ID, oftentimes it would go WBLS, which would move from the left speaker to the left. That was like, oh my God. I was sensed around 3D AI, super duper high tech. And that made people like, when you talk about, yo, I was in so and so. And shit went from this speaker to that speaker to the cast. Man, I got to get me a stereo. Because what your moms typically had or your parents had was a high five. Short for high fidelity. I know everything was high five in the mid to late 70s. I want to take a second to talk about flowers because in your book you say that he would open up sets. I'm always interested in what were DJs playing then? What are some of the forgotten songs? I remember you mentioned like one of the big closers, I think, was Love is the Message by M.F.S.B. Love is the message was referred to as the anthem. And then Mobile DJs, that was a huge song that was just, oh my God, that was an epic record. And it was really interesting. It was coming out of Philly. It was out of Philly. It wasn't a New York record. No, it wasn't a New York record. New York had some, yeah, Gambling Huff, that Philly soul sound. Yes, OP. It had some orchestration. It was like an orchestra. It's like real instruments. You know, the sax. They're like 20 musicians on that track. Man, listen, this record was incredible. That's an orchestra. And the actual original record was built up once again to this crescendo, a break, if you will, which was one of the most incredible breakdowns. And then that record was, once again, it was a staple across all these mobile DJs. But then on the beginning of rapping side, people wanted to go crazy on that breakdown part. So Cass wanted to hop on that mic. And that eventually, as people learn how to remix records or the idea of capturing the most exciting part of a record, then versions would come out, just an elongated break of that love is the message breakdown, which was so epic, so incredible. And Manziel Space Funk is another one with one of those epic breaks right at the beginning. Yes. You know, those are those are like, I have a question. I didn't know I was going to ask this question. Okay. I got to ask this question. Why did guys really seek out the break beats to rap over? Like, did they just not want to sing over? Do they not want to rap over music? Or was it because like the break beat was like the hypest part of the song? The most fun part of the song? If you knew the record, you're at one of these jams, you were waiting for that part. That was the climax. That was the big peak of it all. And you know, the whole story, which when we take it into the beginnings of rap that grows into hip hop, and then you have the genius grandmaster flash is like, I want to be able to continue the energy. They saw there was a decided elevation of the energy when that break beat came in, but it was always really brief and her when flash goes when we when we go up to the Bronx, which trying to what they call needle drop, pick that up with his hand and just physically drop it back in the group. You catch it. You might not catch it. Flash wanted to keep that going continuously and seamlessly, which led him on a research and development mission of every turntable available, Moran's Gemini Panasonic, whatever, until he hit that wasn't the techniques 1200. It predated that right, but it had the AK 30. What is it called? Might have been that different signature, different signature, but it was a direct drive. So when he held that record and let it go, it was up to speed instantly. And now makes a big difference because then you don't have to. I was thinking for whatever reason last night about like how I used to kind of like when you would stop a regular would be like, yeah, it took a minute, but that's not helpful in a party. Yes, it was helpful. And so flash was obsessed with and he figured out this was the turntable that allowed that to happen. So that was a major innovation towards what hip hop would bring to the table. But the mobile DJ is just basically mixed and blended all the popular songs of that day that you would hear on the on the popular Black radio station, but to be outside in a really loud system that was a rarity to hear music with that level of fidelity, especially if your system was dope, so you could feel the bass and you'd feel it. It was something that people that we all talked about and was sort of in awe of this massive systems that these mobile DJs brought out into the parks. At the same time, Richard Long is building a massive system at the Paradise Garage. Well, Richard Long definitely did the garage. He did many clubs and many systems, but he also helped a lot of these mobile DJs with their portable systems. He developed something which became known as a coffin kind of creepy, which was the all in one setup where the turntables would be in there, the mixer. And then he designed these speakers that were just massive. So a lot of the mobile DJs like I know guys in Queens like, oh, I got a Richard Long system. And it was like, whoa, name was ringing. And then Katz tried to emulate and recreate and make their own versions of it. So that was the thing that really drove the fidelity once again. So these innovations are happening on the mobile DJ level. And then they start to make the move into the clubs like Paradise Garage. Well, yeah, but before the Paradise Garage, that was the epic, the cathedral, the Vatican of discos. But there were many that led up to that to what the Paradise Garage was. And that was Richard Long's like prize. And he continually worked and tweaked. I went to the garage many times. They would add baffles in the ceiling to refract the sound. And I heard that he could control. I had the pleasure of meeting Mel Sharon from Weston Records like a million years ago. But like he told me that Larry had a dial in the booth where he could actually control the temperature. Like he had control over the heat in the garage. Yeah. So like if he was like sneaky with it, I'd always be like bringing like the tempo and the vibe of the party up. Yeah. He'd actually increase the heat so that everybody was just like losing their mind. Yeah. He'd increase the heat. He'd increase the heat. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you said that the floor was built on sand. It's just an amazing... Tend and I heard on springs. And he would... In between, periodically, the garage would close for updating and maintenance. And a lot of it would be things that Richard would be adding to the system to make the sound better. So there was a progression to get to that. The club that was the big inspiration, I didn't get to go to this one, the big inspiration to what the Paradise Garage became was David Mancuso's loft, which I think he might have actually lived in. I think it was off of Broadway, maybe in Houston, you'd go upstairs and it was like house party in a way people describe diva... Great documentary called Maestro that a young Latin kid made early 2000s. He wasn't even at the garage, but it's the best kind of film about that era, about many of the people, they had incredible footage that shows the garage. Unfortunately, that was the final weekend, which was too... It was like... I was like, I had many friends that were going. I think they partied nonstop from Friday into maybe like Monday morning. Never stop. These are the legendary clubs that we've both grown up reading about and wishing we had been there for. And the thing that I want you to talk a little bit more about, because I don't think a lot of people know this, the history of Dijing and this era and in this place, was the eclectic music that's being played. Talk a little bit about to us what you're going to be hearing at a David Mancuso party. Larry LeVan at the garage. It's not a single genre. He's mixing it up, right? That's true. They were playing a broad variety. They might sprinkle a little African, a little Fela, maybe in the mix. And there were different sounds. I can't... To be honest with you, I'm not completely up on all the records they were playing, but they were playing the hottest dance music. And then they were developing this idea of extending the mix and things that were later replicated on the extended disco mix record the whole long, as disco became the thing. But these are places where the DJs that were the true architects, like the real Michelin chefs in the kitchen, Larry was there. Oh, what's my man resting piece that blew up house music? Frankie. The knuckles was in the room. And the siano is in the mix. Yes, these cats are there. And in that maestro doc, he talks to different people and he'd get a real sense of what they were doing and the vibe and the way they played. And so Larry was there. And I guess what they say learned a lot of the techniques that he would later execute at the garage. I think Larry, you know, he was doing the continental baths. And that was like a big thing for Larry. And then he took a lot of the lessons of the... Go ahead. I was talking about Plato's retreat or Lorelia. The continental baths was the other one. Is this for swingers? Is also swingers? No, these were primarily like gay. I was a primary gay singer, yeah. What they say. And what... Hey, look, that was a scene. That was a scene. That was a big aspect of the disco scene as well. It was like the gay people could beat themselves, let it all hang out. They would really get up. They would help shift the party into overdrive with the abandon, with the wildness of that energy. It was so wild. I mean, like people don't realize, first off, the Paradise Garage, it was actually a garage. Correct. It was just a place for cars. And you would walk up this long ramp and as you got closer to the doors, you'd hear the music get louder and louder, build up this anticipation. Yes. You know, the other thing that's really interesting about this period, I think, is, you know, there are a lot of DJs in the mix. And one thing that we wanted to ask you was, were there DJs that you thought were great and they just never got the attention? Oh man. Well, a lot of those mobile DJs that I talked about, particularly the ones that I, that were playing in Brooklyn and the streets, the Pete, DJ Jones, the Maboya, the Plummer, the Grandmaster Flowers, these guys never really made records. So they played music well. They had decent sound systems. Once again, the big innovation was the seamless flow of the music. The music never stopped. The only person who did anything close to that was the radio guy who had had the ability to continue the music, which, you know, we could play that. Now, was that Frankie Crocker who talked about here? Well, Frankie became the most influential black radio jock because most radio, when he was a kid coming up, was heard on AM stations. So in New York, the main black station on AM was WWRL 1600. And most people then also the boombox hadn't come into play. You had a transistor radio. It was kind of mono, you know what I'm saying? And so you might have, you know, as we're thinking like Curtis Mayfield, like, oh, man, I can almost, I can almost hear those drums. We're so spoiled now with like, yes. But what happened was Percy Sutton, who was a major play in the New York scene, he was an attorney, he was in politics and he was in business. He headed up a group that acquired an FM station at AM and an FM station. It was WLIB AM. And then it was WLIB FM. But then they changed the call letters to WBLS, which was short for World's Best Looking Sound. Frankie Crocker had worked his way up. He was on some like white pop station WMCA in New York, if I'm not mistaken. Then he went to the main black station on AM WWRL 1600, which would have like commercials for cheap ghetto wine, like Thunderbird and like that. There will be no Thunderbird disparagement. No Thunderbird, no money down, you know, pay for the rest of your life, like ghetto furniture, maybe offering these. You did a whole show about it. I was going to say, sounds like. And so when Frankie went to BLS, he wanted to elevate. He was a part of the like George Jefferson moving on up thing. Black folks was like, wait a minute, it's time to get classy, fly, sexy at another level. So he was the program director at WBLS and the main DJ. And he came on from four to eight every day. And man, that became like a huge thing for anybody in the know. You could walk through different parts of the city and hear BLS coming from people's houses and cars. And he would close every show playing this amazing jazz record. King Pleasures. Moody's Move. My parents love that song. Money. Everybody in that era knows every lyric. There I go, there I go, there I go, there I go. And you could check your watch. It'd be right around eight o'clock. And Frankie be going on. You're like, ah, man, he's playing Moody's Move for Love. But what Frankie did to get it popping in the beginning, because there wasn't big advertisers, the promoters of these mobile disco parties, the Pete DJ Jones, the Plumber, all those cats. They would commandeer restaurants in that part of the seventies. The city was broke and people needed help with their businesses. So these promoters went to these restaurants and said, hey, listen, we'll we want to do a party here. We'll you can split. We'll split the bar or you get the bar and we'll get the door. They would take the chairs and tables out and they would promote them on BLS. You would think these were clubs. You in Brooklyn, you would know that this is really like like a restaurant. Oh, that's funny. But it'd be like because the restaurant is probably closed by that. But they would be closed by that hour anyway. Correct. Restaurant would be closed after hours. Not much popping on the weekend. So a lot of these DJs played in these places and they would advertise on Frankie Crocker's show. So Frankie, you'd hear these parties like these DJs will be playing at this place, Nell Gwynnes, Nemo's Superstar cafeteria, different spots. I was I wasn't in the mix yet, but I'm hearing all this stuff. I had an aunt. My aunt Pearl was, you know, hip and fly. So he's that cool aunt. You're on to so much. Yeah, you're me. Got a cool relative and whatever. But basically what Frankie would also do, he would be at a lot of these parties and the hot record that moved the crowd, he would program and start playing these records on BLS. So he wasn't following what the playlist said, what the top 10, top 20, whatever on the black charts was because he was a program director. He can play. Oh, somebody's playing somehow. So as Frankie now is this megaphone, if you will. And he's tapped in to the coolest thing going on. He was playing these records that these DJs found and blowing them up. So he ended up breaking a lot of what became the foundations of disco like Donna Summer. Oh, my goodness. I got to imagine. Sheik, of course. He'd be playing these records first because he saw them rock the crowd at this party or that party. And that was huge because if you were tapped in, you'd be like, oh, wow, nobody else is playing this. And then Frankie would interview these guys. So he was a huge force in making disco go from a street underground kind of gay thing into the Saturday Night Live Studio 54 level when it became like People Magazine feature stories. It was like Frankie and he doesn't get enough juice, but he set a lot of that off. Unfortunately, when hip hop eases in as a lot of older blacks from a previous era, they, you know, the aggressive on the corner street energy. It wasn't trying to mess with it. But he was a big inspiration to a lot of it. But he kind of was like, I think one thing that happens during this period that again, I didn't know until I sort of read your book was the blackouts in 1977. You know, we're talking about the equipment and how the equipment affected the DJing and how the DJing affected, you know, people's music tastes with the blackout. People stole some turntables and some speakers from the stores when I mean everybody went crazy, Luton, not that, you know, it was a horrible thing. It's horrible. It's horrible. But boy, oh boy, private property. And this is something like Grandmaster Cas and other cats from the Bronx shared this indifferent hip hop, you know, history. Like when the blackout in 1977 happened, cats hit the major shopping areas and the electronics stores that had all the stuff standing the window. I mean, man, I'd love to have that look at this. Generation of mobile DJs was born. A whole generation of mobile DJs got good equipment. Some of these guys were pulling the speakers out of the train station, you know, to shit making announcements. I've seen guys trying to Jerry Rick shit. I mean, it was so such a compelling thing to want to be in that mix. But a lot of cats got their hands on quality stuff and the Bronx kind of stepped up a few notches considerably. Cats now got because listen, the bottom line is this stuff costs money and it costs a few thousand dollars to put together a little system. It's a really good documentary that I took part in. Friends of mine made, including Ron Amin, Ron Lawrence, one of the great producers of a lot of nineties music, a brother, a good friend of mine, Hassan Poor, they did a documentary called Founding Fathers, which really is about this era of DJs that predate hip hop. And they focused on a lot of these guys out of Queens. And some of these guys were like their families were a bit more well to do, had a few dollars to give their kid two, three thousand, four thousand to build the system. That's probably in this in the 20, 30 grand in this day's money, but four or five grand was a lot. And that's what a lot of these guys that the jump start to go out and put together these substantial sound systems that sounded great. And so to have that was a desire. But what the Bronx guys would do was they would completely innovate, disrupt, shake up the whole game in a super significant way, because they couldn't compete with what these other guys were doing. But they, thanks to Cool Herk and other people, they came up with something completely different. That was game changing. All right, we're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we'll continue our conversation with Fat Five Freddie and ask him, is he the reason this music is called hip hop? We'll be right back. Make your summer with Starbucks. 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You're so deeply enmeshed in the early hip hop scene. What is it that people get wrong about it when people mythologize that era? What are people focused on? That's the wrong thing or what are the things that I think is connected connecting to what I'm explaining now is the whole. And this I think primarily because hip hop became so big, so pervasive, so massive globally that this idea that because Cool Herk was of Jamaican ancestry born in Jamaica and came up, they figured, oh, he must have brought this whole dancehall thing up. And that's what the big inspiration for hip hop was. That wasn't the case because when Cool Herk comes up, he's like 12 or so years old. He's not trying to emulate what King Tubby and the big producers in Jamaica are doing. I spent a lot of time in Jamaica. I directed most of Shaba Rancis videos and I loved the Jamaican scene and sound. I talk about it in my book when it first popped off when you Roy I Roy big you've I was into all that stuff. But basically what I feel was happening, which was even more interesting is the Jamaican dancehall DJ and the mobile disco DJ later were emulating what the record DJ, which is the actual original DJ, the disc jockey was doing. He was the guy on the black side that can talk some some slick jive pattern sounded cool, had all the hot records. He controlled music and playing music. And that's what the DJ actually wanted to do. So when you look, check the early Jamaican sound system, if you really dig in deep, you'll know that the Jamaican DJ when the weather was right, was able to pick up the black radio station coming out of New Orleans and coming out of Florida, coming out of Miami. They all the black DJs had late night shows. But when the weather was right, you can tune in and here and that inspired what the early that makes so much sense, because the early Jamaican DJs, rather emcees were called DJs. Count Machuki in the late fifties, early sixties. Right. He was a DJ. And then the DJs were called selectors because they're selecting the music. Thank you. This station for identification. I'm going to turn it over to your sound dimension, your music, producer. Everybody on the ball. So that all makes so much sense to make to connect those dots there that what they share in common was they were both separately influenced by DJs on the radio. Oh, did you rate that was the guy that was doing it? And the New York guys, it was the same thing. You now have the power to be like the radio guy, but he's bringing that to your community and he can keep the music going and never stop. That was like, oh, my God, one record to another, especially if you had a party. Come on. The main reason for these parties is guys want to get with chicks. So, boom, if the music is flowing, you can dance with a girl for three, four records if the DJ kept it moving. Right. But on the other old style with this with the four, five, forty fives on the spindle, the record was a it was a 10 or 20 second stoppage. You got three minutes. Close deal. You got three minutes and then you got a 20 second pause. And the other thing that's long gone, I don't know if you realize this is the every party back in the days, House Party, whatever you were, there was a section where the DJs would play slow jam. That still existed when I was coming up in the 90s. Like when I was in college in the 90s, I always ended the night with like one or two slow jams. See, yeah. In the night, but there were intermittent parts through the party where there'd be a slow jam section and you'd want to hopefully have a nice chick that you may be danced with on a dance record. And then if the slow joints come in, you would hope Honey would stay there with you. And then you got the whole of tight and get your rub up on. Epic. That was huge. Like the DJ can play three or four slow jams. I mean, come on, you practically making a baby. I had my first kiss to a Mary J slow jam. There you go. There's a little bit of high guys. I'm glad you bring up Cool Hurt because there's been some debate online about the specific date of birth of hip hop with other camps that have said, you know, and I think pretty much everybody embraced the 1973 thing because we just did the 50th year. Yes. A couple of years back. But there are a lot of people who will say, hey, look, 1975, way more accurate. I think even in your book, you're like, you know, the guys throwing the cardboard down and like just dancing on the spot. Like that's more like 75 than it's 73. And do we what is what is your opinion? Do we do you think we should clock it from 73, 75 or something? Oh, listen, what Kirk what Kirk did. At that party, him and his sister put together a 15, 20 Sedgwick Avenue in the Boogie Down Bronx was incredible. It was pivotal. It was a spark, if you will, that set off a series of major moves that would happen, including flash going, wow, here what he's trying to do. He's doing the because Kirk is doing the break beats, but they're a little wonky. As you said, he's needle dropping. He's needle dropping. He's playing some system. He doesn't have a system to actually keep the beat going continuously. And but what he's doing is parties is dope and he lays the foundation for the whole. He's got the two records and the two turntables. So he's got one. Once again, yes. So he has that going on. But the key thing and I and I get into this in my book. It really it wasn't hip hop technically yet. It was the beginnings of that and the beginnings of the form of manipulating the records. Flash will tell you when he was doing his thing, when he figured it out and he was bringing his set out into the parks, he said, people wasn't dancing. They would just stand there staring because they were so amazing. Remember like, how are you doing this? This is amazing. I haven't heard this anywhere. So Flash was like, you know, people just stand at me. He wanted to make people move. So Flash was like, man, I'm going to get if I can get somebody to get on the mic and keep them talking and talk to the crowd to get them off of just staring at me. And people could get a move, you know, throw your hands in the air waving like just don't care. All of that stuff, which is the basic beginnings of rapping. Yeah. That was when the first rapper stepped up and oh, my God, I'm not sure if it was Kid Creole or Keith Cowboy. But when he's got stepped up and talk about the DJ, because most of the early rappers, their job was to talk about how incredible the DJ was, because he was the one that brought everything out into the park. He was the focus of attention. Is that the same Kid Creole with the coconuts? No, that's a different Kid Creole. OK, that's what he's actually. Melly Mel's brother, OK, Creole with the furious five. It's interesting news, right? It was a kid. I always get those two. There's a couple. They say whether like multiple Dr. Dr. Drays, there's a couple of names. You can recycle a couple of times. You mentioned it a couple of times already in our conversation. It sounds like the really important thing was this continuation. The second things began to be continuous in terms of the music not stopping. That was the like hypnotic moment. That was a big innovation. Into overdrive. Music's not stopping. You're blending. It was really like blending one record into another. So the music never stopped. That was like, wow. It's almost so you could say hip hop, don't stop. That's exactly exactly right. Stop the episode right there. If you're done. Hip hop, you don't stop. But what actually happens and I really elaborate on in the book and the ideas that I had, which became hip hop's first film, Wild Style. The idea once again was to showcase myself and aspiring painter. Nobody was looking at any of these cultures with any kind of love or it was just we were discouraged, you know, graffiti was whatever. Whatever I wanted to show. Many things. Everything seems illegal. It's like, why are you talking tough over the song instead of trying to sing and make it beautiful? Why are you spray painting on walls? Like it's like, why are you creating noise in these parks after dark? Correct. It was no real love there. Yeah. But in trying to take control of the narrative and shape a context for who we were. Myself as a painter to show that a lot of it was vandalism and just crazy, wild, crazy teenage energy. There were artists and art that was emerging. If you looked at it and said, OK, it's illegal. He probably shouldn't have spray painted all over you, you know, the windows and everything on the train. But God damn, that's a pretty good Bugs Bunny, you know, the letters look wild. And he got the 3D drop shadow, right? It's like, hey, it's and so, you know, my I loved it when you said you were going to make the train look like a loaf of Wonder Bread. You're like, that's a moving statue. That was exactly what Lee and I. So the first idea was I was, you know, had gotten found out about Leakon is. Yeah, Leakon. You're a famous graffiti artist, very famous graffiti artist that I linked up with and had these ideas that we could we should be able to. I figured let's find a way to elevate out of just doing this on the subways and get this work into a space where it can be appreciated and looked at as artists as opposed to teenage delinquents. Yes. And Lee got it. And I had gotten really into the work of Andy Warhol, the other pop artist, Lichtenstein and I'm saying, wait, these guys are looking at similar stuff to what we're looking at comic books and advertising in soapbox, big, bold, bright lettering. And Warhol, of course, was just such an inspiration. And I was like, man, I think if we could paint a train covered in Campbell's soup cans as a homage to him, it would also send a message that some of us down here know something about art history. We know what's happening on the other end of this island. Exactly. And so we did that train. Lee assisted. We went and executed, did a Campbell's soup can. I did two versions of it. But what we plan to do, we were going to do a wonderbread and tasty, which were two loaves of bread, but it was going to be Wonder Fred and Tastelie. And we're going to make them look like the loaves of bread. It was going to be business. I just want to call attention to this because what's incredible and important is that your background as an artist and one who studied, as you mentioned, Warhol, you are able to recognize and identify that by framing what was going on in an artistic way with maybe the language of and maybe you knew the art world. You understood. I was learning. I was figuring it out. Figuring it out. You understood that if you could sort of package what was going on, maybe use the right terminology to the right people in the right way, correct. You could reframe the narrative and you did. I did. Exactly. That was exactly my idea. And but but where was I going to find an audience I could share these ideas with? That was the New Wave punk folks and and looking at what that was doing when it was page two hard news New York Times stories about the sex pistols scaring the hell out of the establishment. I was like, wow, this is wild. These people sound crazy, super disruptive. How could I connect with some people in that space and share these ideas? I would eventually get to do that through initially through Glenn O'Brien. Glenn O'Brien has this article has a column. He has a car interview in an interview called Glenn O'Brien's beat. Actually, once again, this grows out of me learning more about Andy Warhol. He started a magazine. He made films, all this multimedia stuff Andy was doing. And having fun in the heart of the 60s, a lot of the coolest stuff was emanating out of Andy's crew, the factory, the superstars. And it was like, man, these guys, it's not the like, stayed kind of corny academic kind of artists. These guys are partying and having a good time, you know, drugs and shit. It was like it was going down. Because we're parents, I just want to point out, you do not really partake in all the drugs. No, I did not. No, but that's why you're here talking to us today. Yeah. But I mean, in terms of what we know about in the 60s, sex, drugs and rock, this was happening. Right. A lot of the creative, the creative energy, a lot of it was coming out of Andy's team, the kind of light shows and they were duties kind of wild psychedelic. And you had the Velvet Underground was the house. Velvet Underground, he was producing and supporting the Velvet Underground and which featured Nico and Lou Reed and people you hear about is cool. Jimi Hendrix, they're all passing through this mix. This is the world I wish I lived in. I was born to. It just seemed really good. So in reading about all that stuff, it just seemed really cool. So basically, Glenn O'Brien was in that mix and was the original editor of Interview Magazine when it really focused on underground filmmakers and really extreme stuff. It shifted a bit after Andy got shot and he kind of backed off of a lot of the it was literally an open door policy at the factory. Anybody could wander in there and a woman wandered in there is like, Andy Warhol is controlling my wife and like shot him. And I think it was interestingly on the same day earlier than RFK. RFK was shot and that took the later that day that took Andy off the front pages. I'm sorry, he literally got 15 minutes. Ha ha. So basically Glenn had this column, long deep connection with Andy and that whole scene, but he was writing about music and it was it was fascinating. He'd write about dance music, chic disco, New Way, Brian Eno, the talking. And you had a public access TV show too, right? TV party. Yeah. So what happens is when I, I'm doing a college radio show, me and this kid had a show about reggae. It was called The People's Beat. I'm reading this guy's column and he talks so effectively about reggae and I'm learning and I'm going to buy some of these records and I'm like, wow, you know, Dillinger, CB200. I'm like, really? I'm like, man, let me see if I can call this cat. Maybe he come out and be a guest on my college radio show, which he did. So he comes, we, we interview him and then in walking him back to the train, him heading back to Manhattan. This is Meg Gavis College in Brooklyn, the community college. I'm pitching these ideas, these ideas graffiti as art. There's this new kind of music where people are rapping over the tracks and the Bronx and I kind of see this stuff as all linked together. And he was digging it. He says, you know, in three months, I'm going to be doing this public access show on cable cable was still new. Brooklyn wasn't wired yet. I'm like, public access, but cable TV. Yeah, I'm going to have this TV show. I'd like you to come on and talk about these things. I was like, wow, really? And basically three months later, he calls me to be a guest on the show. I also end up being a cameraman. So I'm like, become a regular participant in a public access TV show. This is where you'd pay about 30, 40 bucks. If you got a time slot, you would get a half hour or an hour to do. You could encourage you could do nudity, which was unheard of back in those days. Unheard of. That was even about cable. Robin Bird. Robin Bird. Look at you. I used to live in New York. I was okay. I should take this opportunity. My brother, Anthony Riddle, was the head of Manhattan. M&N for a long time. Oh, yes. That's my brother. You're OK. And he ran brick for a long time. And so public access TV is like something that runs deep. It's a New York right. It's so cool. Yes, but yes, exactly. This is this is these are the lawless days of Manhattan public access. Completely. And so when I show up three months later to be a part of this TV show, the cream of the downtown new wave scene, the intelligentsia are there and near the audience and the guests on the show. So this is how I connect. His co-hosts of Glen O'Brien's TV party is Chris Stein. Chris Stein. From Blondie. And so I get to meet these people. And as I become friends, I share these ideas I'm developing and they're loving it. Oh, man, I've seen the graph that that's stuff on the train. So a lot of stuff's really great. Oh, wow. And I'm like, whoa, so we're trying to figure out how to do this and do that. And and Glenn, they became like mentors, advisers and really good friends. And that really shifts these things into high gear. This idea I have to make a film and an underground independent film about all this to show all these elements that I think are really interesting. So to jump forward a little bit, if I can, as we put pieces together, we, me and Charlie Ahern is the guy I meet at a very significant art show called the Times Square Show, the most radical shows. It's on the Village Voice, the first radical art show of the eighties. It's 1980. I'm like, feels like the the Armory Show of 1913, which introduced Marcel Duchamp and the idea of really extreme modern art. That's a data and all that stuff pops off for the first time. I'm like, man, this art show in this and it was held in a former massage parlor, which essentially was a whorehouse in Times Square at the time. And I'm like, man, I want to be a part of this. And so anyway, I eventually meet this guy. I was like a new wave curators. His name is Diego Cortez. He's, you know, tapping in to what we're doing. And he's like, yo, I know the guy that's putting it together. Let's go to one of the first events at this event. I meet Charlie Ahern, who's and I pitch him this idea. Charlie's done an underground film about Kung Fu shot in Super 8. It's a real urban Kung Fu film called the deadly art of survival with a black Kung Fu teacher, you know, fighting another Kung Fu thing. I don't think I know this film and I don't know. It's ultra low budget. OK. Never really got major distribution. But anyway, I see this guy, Charlie, I've seen the poster for the deadly art in the Lower East Side. I know it's one of those underground independent films. I said, hey, man, you know, I got this idea. He goes, man, I love it. And he's heard of Lee's work because where he film, he made this film is in the housing project where Lee lives, the Smith houses at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Anyway, Charlie and I team up and we begin to start working on what becomes Wild Style. So what happens is we immerse ourselves in the scene. We go to all the hip hop clubs in the Bronx, T Connection, Ecstasy Garage, the Dixie Celebrity Club, Disco Fever. So we meet the key players and we is like, these guys are great. This group's great. The Funky Four is great because they have this female Shah-Rak, Busy B is a riot, a great star personality. So we are shaping this film. We we can't raise any money from all the independent financing sources. But we actually, Charlie connects with the people from German TV, the people from the fourth channel in England, and they believe this idea we channel for in England and they give us enough money to get the to get the thing moving. So anyway, we were making the film in production. There's no name for this whole thing. We refer to it as rap, because that's the main thing, but there's DJs and there's we don't have the expression hip hop yet. Doesn't exist. Expression exists among rappers as a way to take a breather, if you will. I'm sure there's a problem you don't stop a more proper music term. For when you just take a breath in between your rhyme, you could say this to the crowd, to the hip, the hop, the hip, the hop, the hop. It's kind of placeholder, like kind of a placeholder. The name of the genre could be, yes, y'all, if somebody else had made the decision. You know, well, we were thinking, we're thinking, I'm like, what are we going to call this shit? And then I go, I said, Charlie, you know, I said, every other rapper says this as like a refrain, if you will, which might be the term for this moment. When you're literally thinking about what your next rhyme is. So after you spit a nice rhyme, 12, 8, 16 bars or whatever, you back to the hip, the hop, the hop, you know, throw your hands in the air as a bunch of little things in between your raps. So Charlie, I think we should just call it hip hop. Because in looking at the new wave in the punk scene, which I had been looking at closely as a movement, we knew what that was called and what it was. And the differentiation between punk rock and new wave and then no wave and post-punk and all that stuff, you kind of knew what those genres. So once again, you had the insight that somebody named something. You couldn't frame it. So you have to because I'm reading the article. I didn't mean it yet. And then me, I'm reading all the sounds in the journalism. Usually coming off of a journalist deciding to call it something and then other people pick up on it. That's right. Typically it is. And typically it's not. And that's the thing that also inspired my thinking is Max Roach was my godfather, the great bebop jazz drummer. Never liked the term jazz is bio that he never got to release, although he worked on it with Emiri Baraka, the former Lira Jones. He would always tell me, I'm going to call my, my memoir. Jazz is a four letter word. The origins of the term jazz apparently comes from New Orleans and it was a slang expression for sex in the whorehouses. I think jazz me was, I think in some jazz book I read that evolved relationship to another word too. Okay. And that is related. Yeah. So that's totally true. I've heard that. Well, where did he prefer? I don't know what he preferred as an alternative, but being like an intelligent black man and not being able to have the control of the genre in the ways that they wanted to was frustrating. And I picked up on that. And, but I always in, in saying, look, these guys are already saying hip hop. It felt more encompassing and we could fit every, all these other components of the culture up under that umbrella. I did run it by Bambada. He totally said yes, without question. And then in reference to what you were texting me about, which I think the other brother that wrote that book mentioned in terms of this is these years, 7375. The first time hip hop is used in print. I reached out to Michael Holman, who I turned on to the game in the culture. And Michael got locked in. He was managing the New York City breakers. Michael, the East Village Eye does a whole issue with several different articles. The idea was the promotion of Wild Style. We were gearing up for our release. And this is a key downtown paper. So I shared with Michael Holman, we're going to be calling it hip hop. And when Michael did his piece, I think an interview with Bambada, he referred to it as such, it ends up being the first time it's referenced. And then as we imprint and as we continue on to promote the film, this is how we reference what all of this is. And so essentially that sticks. And I feel like I like to look at it as a fact like, no, I didn't name it, but it was a word that was there that I just pushed into help. But to be clear, you kind of named hip hop is kind of what we're hearing. Yeah, let's be clear. Once again, I didn't I didn't want to. I don't. You didn't say that I did. Yeah. But essentially it was there and I just helped nudge it into place. It needed to be called something. And we we had a film coming out. What are we going to call all of it? Wrapping. It's wrapping along with this dance and this art is like, huh? So it felt a lot better. It came, I feel, from the community who had popularized use of that term. It was there being you. So it was an effortless move and none of the hip, the many hip hop flies, which are numerous collections, nothing references it as hip hop until after that period of time. But I was going to ask are the are what we now refer to as the pillars of hip hop? Was that a thing at the time that people were starting to like articulate? Well, there's great dancing. Once again, this is this is what we frame up in Wild Side. These were the elements that I felt. This is what I wanted to showcase in the movie to show that we were not the delinquents. What annoyed the hell out of me as in this process was whenever you saw a young black or brown kid with swagger hat to the side or whatever, it was always connected to something negative. Right. And I was like, crime. And I'm like, that damn, this is wild. Like we all are not that just because you put on, you know, the, you know, the right track suit, you got the right fit, cool sneakers, Puma's on or whatever. And I didn't like that. And I just did another motivation for me was to frame this up and to show us as creatives, which we were. And then the other concept of Wild Style was to use the actual players in the various forms to play themselves. I'm one of the few people actually acting. A lot of people still think I'm from the Bronx, but I play this character. We actually wanted phase two, who literally was a legendary New York graffiti writer who then progressed to designing flyers, some of the early hip hop flyers for Ecstasy Garage and different gigs. We couldn't get him to play the role. He just wanted to keep it on the ground. So Charlie Ehren talks me into looking at me weird when I'm like, Charlie, why are you looking at me like that? Fred, you could be this character. I'm like, I heard that Lee Keone has made them get the like the scar across the nose because he was like, yeah, I don't want the police to recognize me. And then I think it was Charlie was like, dude, your face is going to be 40 feet tall. They're going to recognize you. Lee was so reluctant. It was a religious experience. The idea of painting for him, even though he's we get him to play the movie. We get him to play the role. We auditioned different people like Giancarlo Esposito. We saw in an off-roadway Negro ensemble play and we were like, this guy's great. But he was sad and the film wasn't. We were super dumb or ultra low budget. Like, how are we going to figure that went out? But what Charlie cleverly came up with Charlie Ehren was he told Lee, well, listen, we cast Lady Pink and they were an actual item at the time. So, well, yeah, Lee, you know, we're going to definitely have an actor play this role. And of course, you know, there will be a make out scene. And it was jealousy. And me was like, whoa, OK, I'm going to play that part. But Lee was like, would not allow us to film him painting a train. So we got Dondie to double for Lee. So when you actually see somebody walk up to do the painting from the back, it's Dondie rest in peace, who was a master of it all. So we went through all these kind of wild hoops we had to jump through and climb under and to get the film made. And it's remarkable that we did. And first movie, first hip hop film. We love that we've talked about it at least for maybe five episodes now. This year. Yeah. Oh, I heard it coming up. My favorite movies. I remember when they finally got his proper DVD release. It was one of the first things that I purchased. There's a story I think about the stick up kids. Those are actual stick up kids, right? Well, I'm not sure if they were stick up kids, but when we were shooting at the Dixie Club, all the interior performances, these guys were just neighborhood guys that were hanging out. They would be watching us make this film. So Charlie had this rinky dink. It looked like the kind of six shooter kids would play with. You put caps in it. Yeah. Fakus. It looked very fake. And so it's like cable TV. You can curse here. Fakus. Fakus fuck. Basically. So these dudes, so we're actually doing a run through with a scene, which I mean, I came out and kind of saved it. We wanted to have a moment that let people know this should is just not some howdy duty. Yeah. This should still edgy up and we in a spooky down bronze and it's edgy as fuck. So these dudes watched us do a run through with the gun. They said, yo, man, what's that? Yo, that's some bullshit. Let me show you something. The dude goes to his car and goes up under the thing and takes out this this sword off, which was a thing back today is illegal then. Yes, the sword off shot. And he says, yo, I was like, yo, that's crazy. Yes. And so these are armor on set came over and inspected it and made sure it never been. We had none of that. I used to look at films. I used to I remember when preparing for Wild Style, I looked at books about independent filmmaking, underground filmmaking at that time. And one of the books said because we have no permits and nothing is like if you guys wear NYU sweatshirts or whatever, you could say you're like students. So I was like, Charlie, we got to get sweatshirts to the team in the front. Yo, they were dry buys. They didn't even look twice. We were shooting, you know, a little crazy crew. They never paid any attention to us. But basically those dudes, Pookie and another guy was his name, played the stick up kids and improvised their own stick up lines, which is iconic. A to the K, A to the K, A to the M and motherfucking Z. Which makes almost no sense. It makes almost no sense. Just kids that have emerged. I've seen in little chats and shit that say, oh, here's what that really meant. Blah, blah, blah. But like, no, I'm like, I don't know. But the thing what was dope about those kids, they was believe it. The way they rolled up, what's up? You know, because stick up kids were a thing. That was a major thing. A big hustle in the hood. Guys would rob you for your clothes, your jewellery, your little money, your sneakers. Take them up, run it. Like I directed a video, you know, I grew up close to a lot of that stuff. I directed a gang star video called Just to Get a Rap. Claiming respect, Just to Get a Rap. Just to Get a Rap, a classic. You say, oh, just this old gang star song, Just to Get a Rap. But it was about that whole stick up kid thing and just doing it to Get a Rap. And I was like, oh man, I know this so well. And there's a mad low budget video. But I said, yo, I got this guru and guru and primo and put that together. But anyway, those guys pulled that off and it was an amazing moment in the film. Yes, A to the K. They couldn't even get together on A to the what. One says A to the K, and they say A to the motherfucking Z. And he pulls the shotgun out and then I walk out. Hey, those people are cool, man. A lot of people, baby, ease up. Oh man, I had no idea. They were your friends. Wala, he improvised the whole shit. He just let him go. So that was wild style. And the soundtrack to this is insane. I mean, like, obviously we did an episode about Nas's Illmatic. And the intro to that album, which incorporated so much of it. Yeah. What can you tell us about those break beats? I mean, like, was it? Well, here's what it was. So once again, super low budget film. Sampling hasn't even begun. But in terms of the foundations of hip hop, it's these DJs with these really rare, initially hard to find breakbeat records. This is a foundation of the genre as it develops that Herc helps set off records like Apache, Mardi Gras, Bob James Mardi Gras, Impicc the President. I mean, there's a list of these break beat records that are the foundation of the hip hop scene. And I'm like, Charlie, come on, this shit is nobody going to know. Like rappers barely emerge. Maybe rappers delight and a few singles are out. I'm like, let's just use what they use in uptown, baby. Charlie was adamant that we should. It's going to be a problem. And years later, it clearly would have been. So he goes, no, Fred. And I go to outside to outgoing the studio and make these beats and make the music. So I get this cat who's a drummer, white cat, real cool, resting piece Lenny Ferraro, but we called him Lenny Ferrari. Funny guy, great drummer. He worked on some Atlantic sessions with a rethan shit like that. It was he was together. I said, Lenny, man, I need to create these. OK, so I took Lenny into the studio, played him the Supreme Team radio show on W HBI would have a section called the Supreme Team Breaks. They would play a section of break beats and they show. And I recorded that. That's how you got it. Yeah, you had your tapes. Yeah, we're talking about you're ready to record, you know. And so I played Lenny some some some actual break beats from different varieties. So we went in the studio and laid down a bunch of breaks. Then I knew this cat out of Philly, David Harper, that played with a bunch of Philly groups on the road, first choice, this, that and the other. I said, man, he did the bass. And then I realized then I learned in the studio, well, you should have the bass and drums recording together. I'm like, shit, we had to fix that and get that. So then we get to found that. And then Chris Stein comes in with all different kind of pedals and guitar stuff. Add different sounds to make these little short one minute tracks. I came up with about 12 of them. And that's how we create the foundation of the music that then I pressed up about 100 pieces of vinyl of those songs and distributed them to the different DJs, Grand Wizard Theodore, Charlie Chase and Tony Tone, Flash, they all get so that they can pick the different songs they want to cut and mix for when the DJs perform. Most of them here, the other ones using down by law. That's what we want to use to. That's why a lot of the performances they have down by law, but we do use some of the other break beats. And then we record that the first whole time we filmed it all, we screwed up, had to reshoot all the club scenes, the big amphitheater thing again, because we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We had a stereo Nagua that was the tape that you'd use at the time. Didn't have it hooked up right. Sound was over modulated butchered. I love it though. We were talking about that as you were walking into the building today. We were playing it through this speaker in here, which looks like it belongs on a subway screen. We were playing it and we were actually literally talking. We love the fact that you have so much like Mike bleed and like the mic is clipping, like there's something sort of raw about the whole experience that makes it ironically, like you were such a fan of punk and like that sort of like raw sound like it just sounds raw when you listen to like the fantastic freaks at the amphitheater. You know what I mean? Like I think that's what makes it endearing. That does. And that's so nice of you to say. So because we had a super low budget, people have asked me, Kenny dope put out answers to work and dance music. Yeah, but he put out a special 45 set of those break beats that I did because it became as we went into the nineties and DJs began digging and also looking for everything ever, ever sampled and more things to sample. People were like, what did they use in? Wildstyle? They assumed I'd sample some 60 soul, whatever, whatever. And nobody knew it was this big thing. And I'd meet guys that were major Ds. But man, what did you use? And I was like, oh, shit, I made all these records and boom, boom. So they never came out as just the instrumental records. And Kenny dope did a whole thing and did a really exhaustive research on the line of notes in the packaging. He had photos of the one inch box with all the writing and all that stuff to give you that sense. Like, and so those came out at that point and that was really cool. But we put all that together and it was just pretty, pretty, pretty cool. Well, that's amazing. So that that was basically the foundational period where you start working with Chris. Yeah. And Chris Stein comes in and adds all this incredible sound. They were such, it was really a big inspiration through it all. And then released the soundtrack on Animal Records, which was his own label under Chris List at the time. They were the initial people that released. Chris really believed and I mean, the Blondie was one of the biggest pop bands in the world. So we were able to use their name a lot. And you know, Chris, you know, Blondie's helping us. You know, we got Chris and Debbie from Blondie. Oh, really? To help get over hurdles we had and it was super helpful and supportive of all of that. All right. That's the end of part one. Stay tuned for part two, which will be posted here next week, where we and Fat Five Freddie will break down Blondie's Rapture, a song that forever immortalized his name. And trust me, even if you've heard this song a million times, you've never heard it broken down like this. Thanks for listening. As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-L-O and on TikTok at Diallo Riddle. You can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at LuxuryXX. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at One Song podcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. Just search for One Song podcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in these episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, you're officially a part of the One Song nation. Show us some love, give us five stars, leave a review and send this episode to a fellow music fan. It really helps keep the show thriving. And by the way, if you're looking for even more music facts, more conversations between Diallo and Luxury and basically more of us, we've got a Patreon now. You can find us at patreon.com slash Diallo Luxury. That's right, Diallo Luxury. Luxury helped me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist and every Friday night from 10 till midnight, KCRW DJ, Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And this is One Song. We'll see you next time. This episode was produced by Casey Simonson, mixing and engineering by Eric Hicks.