MC Chill – The Unkut Interview, Part 2

Continuing my conversation with MC Chill, he explains how he led his Cleveland crew to have an impact on several years of the New Music Seminar MC Battle For World Supremacy, despite never winning a title, and life after rap.

Robbie: Was “Nightmare On Chill Street” your last record?

MC Chill: I was working on a new album, and that certainly wasn’t the song that I was expecting to drop as a single, it was kind of a filler, but Fever were like, “We need to drop something from you right now”. At that point, Sutra got sued for some kind of piracy and folded, and I started working on a deal with 4th & Broadway, but at that time the music was changing, and I wasn’t anybody’s gangster rapper so the deal never happened.

Cleveland made a big impact on the NMS MC battles. What can you tell me about that?

They were all outta my crew. I started a crew called The Final Conflict, and since I was the only cat in Cleveland that had been out on the air and had a deal, I started trying to help out other cats from the city. By then, we’ve got a full-fledged hip-hop scene in Cleveland, so there was a lotta different crews, but my crew was dominant. At that time I also had a radio show on WBAK called The Rappers Delight Show, kinda like Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack, but I was the host of the show. My cats were in and out of the radio station, and we did lots of local shows. The major difference between my crew and anybody else’s crew is that we were fierce freestyle rappers. At one stage we had the most dangerous freestyle rappers ever assembled in a crew. You had Bango, you had Serge and another kid, Dale. They were all in my crew! Everybody battled everybody, everyday. We even had a female in the crew – Laurie D. She ended up being MC 350 and got hooked up with Scarface in Houston. She was part of the Face Mob. Not only did we have MC’s, we had dancers. This kid Todd Sams, who we called Todd-Ski, he ended up being the choreographer for Usher, and then later Chris Brown. We were totally dominant in the area. This one kid, they called him Smooth, he was like the father of freestyle battle rapping. He taught Bango how to freestyle. I actually named Bango “The B-Boy Outlaw”.

How did you all get involved with the New Music Seminar?

I was in New York and I had to go over to Tommy Boy to do an interview with this guy Funkenklein. He was a writer, but he also worked A&R over at Tommy Boy, and I started talking about the New Music Seminar. I first went to the New Music Seminar in ’85 when I came to sign the deal with Fever. That was the time when Roxanne Shante and Busy Bee battled each other in the finals. Busy Bee won, but clearly Roxanne Shante actually won. Kurtis Blow was a judge, and I can remember him saying, “I’mma vote for Busy Bee because he’s from the old school”. We started a whole Cleveland dominance in ’85, because another beatboxer – Earl Hollerman – won. He beat Wise from Stetsasonic in the finals. That was the last year they had human beatboxing in the New Music Seminar. Since Tommy Boy basically ran the New Music Seminar, I said to Funkenklein, “How can I get some people into the World Supremacy Battle? I got this kid named Bango, The B-Boy Outlaw”. He was like, “Maybe we can make him an alternate”. They thinking they got all these New York people, they got a couple of LA people, and I’m tryng to put these people from Cleveland. They thinking we don’t stand a chance!

So I get Bango in as an alternate, and he ends up getting in. “OK, we got your boy in, Chill. He better be good!” I’m like, “Oh, he’s gonna be good!” [laughs] So Bang comes in – and he’s doing real freestyles. You got cats doing written’s and then they add something at the end – and he made it to the final four. He did such a good job that they said, “OK, next year your boy’s back in”, and I was saying, “I got this other kid named Serge”. Serge was an acronym for Serious Effects Rhymes Giving Education. Serge started coming up the ranks of the Conflict as the next hot freestyler. By then, Bang had hooked-up with Ice-T, ‘cos I had him on the big stage in New York city and he definitely added to his own image of “The B-Boy Outlaw” back in Cleveland – he was punching people, robbing people and beating people up! I had the number to the bail-bondsman to get him out of jail on speed-dial! I kept his bail-bondsman in business – we called him “Rick Get Me Out Quick”. I’d hit him up and he’d see the number and be like, “It’s Bango?” “Yeah, gotta get him out”.

Bango was the real deal, man. I was bringing him up to be what Ice Cube became – a for real rough dude who could rhyme. Ice-T from Rhyme Syndicate, they liked what they saw and gravitated towards him and started working a deal with Bang. I laughed when Bang was with Ice-T, I said, “OK, you know I just let you go with Ice-T, because technically you still under contract with me”, ‘cos I was managing Bango but I wasn’t going to stand in the way of letting him get down with Ice-T. So by the time he came back [to the NMS] next year, he was basically reppin’ Rhyme Syndicate and not the Conflict. So I’m saying, “I got another kid who may be even better than Bango – this guy Serge”, so they got Serge in as an alternate, so he was there but he didn’t get to go in that year. At that point, Bango had moved to LA, and he knew that if Bando got in the same year he was in it, it would come down to him and Serge. So Bango got to the finals with Mikey-D and lost to him. Again, I thought that Bango clearly won and a lot of people that was there thought Bango won, but if you’re from Cleveland you’re not gonna come up and win the New Music Seminar – not in New York and not in the MC battle.

That proceeded the funniest thing I had seen to that point, when Melle Mel just walked up on Mikey-D with his belt from last year – the ’86 belt – basically saying, “Hey, put your belt up against my belt!” Mike is like, “Ehh, I don’t know…” and all the people are like, “Dude, don’t do it!” One thing led to another and basically Melle Mel just took Mikey-D’s belt, literally. I don’t know if he won the contest, but he took the belt from him.

I heard it was Grandmaster Caz who actually grabbed the belt for him?

Then gave it to Mel and they both walked out through the crowd like, “Somebody take it from me!” So the next year I got Serge in, they were like, “OK Chill, you had a good pick last year, let’s see how you do this year with your person”. That year the Juice Crew had done their big thing, and Master Ace was their guy that I guess was supposed to win. Him and Serge went first, that was Serge’s first battle, was against Master Ace. So I told Serge, “We better get in first while they don’t even know who you are. Ace probably think he got a kid from Cleveland and it’s gonna be a walk through”. Little does he know, he got a battle coming! Master Ace kicked rhymes about who he was down with and he was part of the Juice Crew and this and that, and Serge came and hit him in the head with, “If Run was your father and D was your mother, if somebody was your sister and so-and-so was your brother, if you went to school and KRS taught the class, I would still say a rhyme that would wax your ass!” The crowd went nuts and Ace never recovered from that.

There was a little break before the quarter finals, and Craig G – upset that his boy got eliminated – got on the mic during halftime and started going after Serge. So one of the coolest things during Serge’s battle is that when he got back for his next battle he started rapping against the guy was rapping [against] and then he said, “OK but I gotta straighten out something first”, then he dissed Craig G with a couple of verses in response while he was in the crowd, then went back to the guy who he was actually battling and beat him! He made it to the finals against Freshco, and again I suggest that the Cleveland correspondent won that round. If you look at the tape – I hate to say that the fix was in, but in an MC battle, whoever gets to go last will probably win. MC Serch was the MC for the battle, and he did the coin flip. Serge actually won the coin toss, and then Serch said, “OK Serge, you go first!” I’m like, “What kinda shit is that!? He won the coin toss! Why did y’all make him go first?” Freshco was nice, and I’m sure that I’m biased, but most of the people there thought that Serge won.

At that point, I’d brought Bango and I’d brought Serge, so now they like, “Chill, you got the golden ticket brother! Whoever you callin’ out from now on, you got an automatic in!” So I got this kid Dale – Chilly-D – this white kid. And they’re like, “Oh damn, Chill. Now you got a white kid? I guess he can freestyle too?” Serge, in my opinion, took the competition a little too lightly that year and he got eliminated in the first round, being a little too casual. He went to the first round thinking that he had a pass to the finals, and he was a little too lackadaisical, a little too relaxed. I’m like, “Dude, you in a battle and your on stage drinking martinis like you’re in concert in Vegas! Dude, this is a frickin’ rap battle!” So he lost, fooling around, walking across the stage like he Bing Crosby or somebody. But Dale is still in, and I knew it was gonna be a trip ‘cos he was a white cat and I don’t think they was ready for that. So he took out this girl easily, and then he had to go against Treach from Naughty By Nature. The most famous line of that whole battle, which is probably the only line that anybody ever heard, because after that they just went nuts, was actually a rhyme that me and Smooth hooked-up in the back. I said, “We need to say something about his hair thing”, because he always wore the durag on his hair. The line was, “Fetch this Treach!”, then he grabbed his nuts, “’cos I don’t care who brag/I’ll snatch that shit of your head and blow my nose on your durag!” he went out and said that and the crowd went nuts. There was no recovery for Treach. I don’t know what Tommy Boy did with the recording, I’ve never heard of anybody that has a recording of that battle, and I’ve probably heard every recording from every New Music Seminar rap battle up to that point. That’s the only one that I’ve never heard a recording of.

You’re suggesting that Tommy Boy buried it?

I’m not saying that, but a recording, a tape, a video of that has never surfaced. So [Chilly-D] made it to the finals. Now whatever happened that night – because the final wasn’t until the next day – I saw it on his face the next morning, and Dale wasn’t ready. Him and Serge hung out that night, and that next morning he was not ready to battle.

He had a hang-over?

I don’t know what the hell him and Serge did, I don’t know where they went…I actually tried to tell him he needed to stay in and practice battling, but he went and hung out. Everybody was predicting that he was going to win, people were walking up to me like, “Chill, you’re about to make a million dollars! This white kid is fierce! He’s like Serge and Bango – but he’s white! This dude’s about to make some money!” And I’m looking like, “OK, he’s looking a little shaky this morning”. So he went in the final and he just flagged out. He got into an argument with people in the audience – cats from Ultramagnetic MC’s – while he’s on stage, supposed to be in a battle! So he flagged out and that was it. He was totally unprepared to battle. I still maintain Cleveland’s dominance, the Conflict’s dominance, in the Supremacy battle. I laugh, I tell everybody, “All them cats on the main stage, and we ain’t make a damn dime!” We shoulda been Puffy or somebody. I guess as a posse that wasn’t from New York, we were a little ahead of our time.

What happened with Bango? I only heard a couple of songs from him with Rhyme Syndicate.

He did the Rhyme Syndicate, but when you do something like that it’s really about the main dude, which was Ice. The rhymes I had him working on here was like NWA before they came out. He wasn’t just talking it – he lived it! Back then, Bango was a handful – he had talent, but he had that criminal mindedness. You always though he might hit you with something in the midst of the battle!

What about Serge?

After the New Music Seminar, obviously everyone’s trying to talk to him. He’s talking to Luke Skyywalker, everybody wants to sign him. We had a deal with Delicious Vinyl pending, they wanted Serge to come to LA and write Tone Loc’s album, because prior to that Young MC had written all of Tone Loc’s rhymes. They wanted him to get the Tone Loc album done and then they would work on Serge’s album. So I send Serge to Los Angeles, and about a week and a half later they call me saying Serge hasn’t written any songs. I’m like, “Serge, what the hell you doing? You shoulda wrote them songs before you even got to LA! You knew you were going to LA a month in advance, you could’ve knocked out some Tone Loc songs”. He’s in LA, hanging out with Bango and Dee Barnes, having a good-ass time but not doing what he’s supposed to do. So I take time off work and fly to LA, and when I was there he finished one song and a half, called “I Joke But I Don’t Play”, so they were through with him and sent his ass back to Cleveland.

Did Chilly D continue to make music?

After he kinda flamed-out at the finals, he came back and started a group with DJ Oaty called the Upside-Down Flip Rubble Bubble Cakes, it was a rock/hip-hop band with guitar, bass, lead – the whole nine.

What are you up to now?

I’m the managing editor of a hundred-year old newspaper here in Cleveland called the Call and Post, it’s Ohio’s oldest African-American newspaper. The guy who invented the traffic light, a black guy called Garrett Morgan, started The Cleveland Call, which ended up merging with another paper called The Post, and that became the Call and Post. I also did a song in the UK two years ago with Morgan Khan from Streetsounds called “Still Chill”. They did a crazy electro club remix of it and it made it to number one on the UK charts.

Back to Part 1.

1989 NMS MC & DJ Battle Finals: Serge vs. Freshco, Aladdin vs. Miz

MC Chill – “Nightmare On Chill Street”

MC Chill and DJ Overdose – “Still Chill”