Engineer all-star CJ Moore delves into the behind the scenes events of Kool G Rap‘s Roots of Evil and the infamous Rawkus album, heading out west, working with the Live Squad and much more in the second part of this interview trilogy.
Robbie: What happened after the Akinyele sessions finished?
CJ Moore: When money started coming into play between Dr. Butcher and myself, things started getting funny. I went out to California and I teamed-up with Ed Strickland again and we was with a guy doing a project called The Reality Check – a guy named Michael Harris – Harry O. He’s the guy who funded Death Row Records. Ice Cube, Ice-T, Dub C, all those guys were involved. I produced a couple of records with Ice-T with me and him rapping back and forth. I was doing the east coast stuff, Battlecat was doing the west coast stuff. I went to Big Daddy Kane, talked to him on the phone, I said, ‘I need you to be out in California. I’m doing this project, it’s kinda merging the east coast with the west coast. Let’s talk about what it’s gonna take to get you on the project.’ He asked me who was on the project, and I explained to him. There was guy named Black Ceasar on the project, he was from Pittsburgh, real talented guy, but Kane had a problem because his name was Black Ceasar. I said, ‘But your name is Big Daddy Kane!’ ‘Yeah, aka Black Ceasar.’ I said, ‘What kind of bullshit is that?’ He couldn’t do the project because of that. I stepped to Method Man and I was trying to get to Redman and everyone was kinda busy, so the east coast/west coast thing never did the proper merge. There was so much money on the table, more than these guys have ever made. For some reason it just backed-out. I guess the whole Harry O thing might have scared people to a degree, if you know the homework on the whole Death Row situation. But we can’t get into that.
I came back, the Akinyele project is out, we’re working on Kool G Rap. Kool G Rap went around to everybody – from the Large Professor’s, the Lord Finesse’s, Easy Mo Bee’s, Premier’s – all of the producers who were hot at the time. They wouldn’t mess with him, so he comes to Dr. Butcher and Butcher comes to me. ‘I don’t work without CJ.’ ‘I don’t work without Butcher.’ He was over in Arizona for something that happened personal in his life, and we teamed up to bring Kool G Rap out of the water. Went down to Arizona for two months off and on, we only left once. We started coming up with ideas, putting choruses together. When I say blood, sweat and tears? We bled that whole Roots of Evil album out. He was down with an independent guy who invested in the project and all the parties were happy.
They bring the project back to New York and they wound up getting to Rawkus Records. He gets this number thrown at him and he’s looking at about $2.5 million. Mind you, Dr. Butcher and myself put this project together – not G Rap. G Rap was the rapper. We connected on ideas, he had his choruses, we worked on the choruses, we altered some things. Me and him kinda fought, rapper to rapper. It was more competitive. ‘I ain’t listening to that dude! He don’t have no super hits on the charts right this minute!’ Not understanding that me coming from a rap base, I’m a more integral part of that equation than anybody can be, because I was an intricate rapper, very wordy. G Rap is an intricate raper, so as we flowed through the records and you’ve got the process punching-in and punching-out – this was two inch tape machine – so when he makes a mistake I gotta be able to chop him, in-out, in-out, and make it sound like he did it from beginning to end, flawlessly, with one take. That’s not an easy thing to do with a Big Pun and a Kool G Rap and guys like that. I pulled it off and made him sound better than he has ever sounded in his life.
He gets the deal and he sits down with Butcher and says, ‘We wanna try to put you in the Igloo Entertainment system.’ Drew backed-up, like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Who the hell is Igloo Entertainment? Something you just made-up on the go with your boys, the last two, three months? CJ’s got credits going back to 1985, gold and platinum, so what are you saying? Jump on a new bandwagon when we don’t have to?’ He basically shitted on us, in street terms. He was pissed, I was pissed. The project finally came to a head and Butcher and I are submitting tracks to him like some outsider, and he turned down every track! These were hot tracks! Some of these tracks ended up being on Akinyele’s album and different artists.
I continued to engineer, I continued to live the obligation I had to finish the album and we fought every which way. I’m the type of cat, you cannot smoke around me. You can drink, you can bang your head against the wall but do not smoke around me cos you’re disrespecting my lungs. G Rap and myself fought like cat and dog about that, because if you want me to work for you, I can’t have a headache and I can’t be bombed out. I’ve never done that in my whole career and I’m not gonna start. One day, a rapper by the name of Nature was in there and I just told G, ‘Yo G, can you put the cigarette out?’ This was his session, we were in Unique Studio, and Nature lit-up a cigarette right after I said that. I took the cigarette out of Nature’s mouth and I smashed it up and I stood in his face and egged him on. He knew better, so he stayed in his place. Then me and G Rap got into it. I took all the fader levels and I pulled them down and I said, ‘Fuck you! I’m through!’ I got in his face, he got in my face, we’re about to fight. Everybody got in between us, I walked out.
Small Change [Kool G Rap’s manager at the time] kinda mediated us, we got back in together and we started finishing out the album. Now we had a brand new rule – ‘I don’t give a fuck who your people are. They in there? We don’t work. We don’t do that hang-out shit.’ The ideology behind the industry, unfortunately, is a lot of nerdy-ish guys who may have done a lot of different things educationally. I had that, but I didn’t have musical schooling, and I was heavily from the streets. You kinda still lump a person in that category, so I was the kinda guy that always got tried, but when I backed the people down it kinda backed-off. That’s what was happening with Kool G Rap. I think that stemmed from having credits written incorrectly – either no credit, or barely Butcher got credit and then I got some credit – as opposed to us getting all the credit.
This was for the Rawkus album?
Yeah, The Giancara Story.
Did you feel like Rawkus were pushing G Rap to be more commercial?
Absolutely. Black Shawn and Mike Heron? They were groupies to me. ‘I’m working with the legendary Kool G Rap! I’m so fanciful! I’m gonna bring somebody up to meet him!’ They were trying to commercialize him, and we were 100% with him on that fight. It was like a double-edged sword, because he would come to us, ‘Buckwild just said he’d do a track! He only wants $25,000!’ I looked at this dude like he was E.T. ‘Are you serious? You’re happy paying this man 25 grand who you don’t know from a can of paint, but we blood, sweat and teared you to this million dollar contract?’ I didn’t want to shit on that guy’s money, so I said, ‘Yo, it’s cool.’ But to me the track was garbage. We do the track, and Butcher was telling him, ‘G, why are you going so hard? You’re going across the grain.’ I was telling him, ‘Just have a conversation with me, just talk to me.’ The record was called ‘The Streets.’ He went in there and he really nailed that record, it had a different aura for G Rap but it flowed. He was like, ‘Yo, I can’t front. That’s it!’ It dawned on him at that time, ‘I’ve been screwing these cats over.’ I knew it had to be beating him in the back of his mind, cos he knew what he was doing. The album came out, the credits were all wrong and I knew it was intentionally done.
When Butcher and I were getting together and doing our production and putting these things together it was just unstoppable. We did a song called ‘Thug Love Story’ for G Rap and we bust our ass on putting that together. The scenes with the helicopters and the news teams and the shoot-outs and all that stuff. All that stuff stems back, rewinding the clock. Remember a group called Live Squad? Big Stretch from Queens, who was running with Tupac. We got him a deal on Tommy Boy after I left. Ed Lover came to me, cos they had a group named No Face. I did every one of those records on that album. Ed Lover was managing Live Squad, got the the deal and they came to me with this little drug/street theory. They said, ‘We’ve gotta make this thing stick!’ So I went home and got a duffle bag and brought it back with all of the things that we needed, and we made real sound effects. We had actual shoot-outs and situations for the skits of these records. Put it together and then that turned into The Movie.
It was so crazy and bold and daring. It was that whole street mantra, where Stretch was like, ‘If we’re gonna go hard and not get no radio play, let’s really get no radio play. Let’s do it for real!’ He said, ‘What about the baby? Throw it out the window!’ He physically threw-it out the window for real! The rape scene with the girl and then her riding him and then shoot him in his head and the blood spills out of his head! That was as graphic as it gets! If you remind it back, that’s the very first of it’s kind. No other group ever did anything of that stature, ever. It set a tone off, and everybody was so hype. People like Mobb Deep used to walk in the studios with that VHS tape. ‘You’ve gotta see this shit!’ That was their bible to their street raps, because we’d painted such a vivid, raw picture of that. We had a good time doing it.
At the same time, Ice-T had ‘Cop Killa.’ Paris, his album cover was he was on the White House lawn behind a tree, with an AK-47 pointed at the White House. It was all Tommy Boy and Warner Bros. stuff, they blew the whistle. ‘All right, enough is enough! Get this Live Squad outta here, this Ice-T shit outta here, and definitely get Paris outta here!’ Everything happened within a month’s difference of each other, so everybody got banned. Ice-T went on a vigilante, and he had a lot more fortitude and a lot more intelligence to go ahead and get his career uplifted from that particular point. Paris just disappeared, and unfortunately Stretch was killed.
We were sitting on a gold mine, it was more putting the pieces together on the east coast side of hip-hop, where we had control of Large Professor, Dr. Butcher, DJ Rob Swift, Roc Raida, Lord Finesse, Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane. We’re a circle, we’re friends, we’re in and out of projects. Akinyele got on the phone one day, and I came up with an idea. I said, ‘We need to form a group, a committee – one company where we all produce and write and do records through this one company.’ I was trying to do Motown. I told them, ‘This idea is gonna bring all of us to the top, so if Large Professor does a record and Lord Finesse does five records and I do two records, then that’s eight records. So I get credit for eight records, Lord Finesse gets credit for eight records, Large Professor gets credit for eight records. The difference is, I get money for the two records, Large Professor gets money for one record and Lord Finesse gets money for the five.’ Akinyele told everybody we’re gonna get on a conference call, and he’s telling them, ‘It’s CJ’s idea.’ G Rap starts off. He says, ‘Yo, I’m with it, but we’ve gotta have some money at the table. That dude C, he’s getting engineering money, he’s getting mixing money, he’s getting rap money, he’s getting production money – he’s getting all the money!’ Lord Finesse jumped in and agreed with him. So they were all jealous. Ak said, ‘Can you engineer? Can you produce? So what the fuck are you talking about?’
Who were the other members of Black By Demand?
You’ve got Cut Professor, who is the DJ, who was also my cousin. Then we had two dancers, they had speaking parts on the records as well, which was Curt Flirt and Jeff Love. We did well over a thousand show together – the NWA tour, Salt ‘N Pepa tour, the Kool Moe Dee tour, some sport dates with MC Lyte, Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Cash Money and Marvelous, MC Breed, Fat Joe – we were all over the country and the world. Those Black By Demand records did a whole lot for us, nation-wide. We weren’t as big as the rest of the guys who had signature records, but we had the love of the DJ’s because of the sound of the records. We records were super-heavy. If you put on some of the records that I was involved in, my marquee is that I make super-heavy records, so when it’s playing in the a club, it sounds much bigger than the records that it played after, so it kind of blows those records away.
Can you tell me more about your first record from 1986?
The record called ‘We’re Gettin’ Paid’ was a guy named DJ Smalls. There’s a group mogul that kinda burst the industry in New York City. They’re called the Disco Twins. The Disco Twins had a group called the Body Rockers. The Disco Twins grew-up in my projects, they lived in the back building, I lived in the front building. They would come out and have these systems, Smalls was their rapper. Smalls was tired of them, everybody was telling him, ‘Yo, there’s this young boy who lives in 2-10. You’ve gotta get with him, he’s off the chain!’ He came and sought me out, and I’m looking at him because to me he was a legend. He was that dude in the streets. He had a partner named Kid Flash, but we called him Innovator, because Innovator would never write rhymes, he would come off the top with everything. He would pick-up objects and he’d just go. We formed a crew called The Chosen Few, and we got down with a guy named Reggie Powell. He formed a label called HBO Records. Greg Nice was the other act, and this guy named Larry Davis.
Larry Davis from the news?
The vigilante guy who was on the run from the cops! He was the beat-maker for Greg Nice, the group they had was called The Comedians. That’s when I first met Greg. Greg Nice and DJ Smalls were friends, they grew-up in the same area. When Small’s introduced me to all this stuff I was in wild city, because I’m 14, 15 years old and I’m getting ready to this. I’m in high school, I’m doing talent shows but I’m already known cos I was winning every contest at Skate USA on Roosevelt Ave in Elmhurst, Queens. We formed this crew named Chosen Few and we started coming up with routines, we went in the studio and there it happened. Smalls, because he’s so well known in the streets, there’s nobody that would not play his record – cos that’s DJ Smalls! Red Alert was on 98.7 KISS, Marley Marl was on WBLS with Mr. Magic, they were called The Rap Attack. I remember going to Marley Marl’s house, he lived not too far from where I lived. Smalls handed him the vinyl and said, ‘This is the record I need you play tonight.’ He said, ‘Let me hear it to see if it fits.’ He said, ‘Nah, it already fits.’ In other words, ‘You’re playing this record!’ Then he goes to Red Alert, we actually go the station that same night. We’re downstairs, and by the time he gets to the car the record was playing. Cats couldn’t do that back in the days. You couldn’t get next to these people, but Smalls could. So he wound-up turning the group to Small’s Chosen Few. It was kind of a slap in the face, because I wrote everything, I produced everything, I did everything. I understood the politics behind it, Profile Records wanted to sign us from Reggie Powell, a lot of record labels wanted to take us. Innovator was kinda upset, cos he wasn’t as young as I was. ‘How can you do that? CJ wrote everything!’ I didn’t care. ‘I’m on a record! I don’t give a shit about none of that. Let’s just go.’
There was an era where guys were making neighborhood records, MC Shan came out with a record that was geared around Queensbridge, specifically. KRS-One came out with the ‘South Bronx.’ Then here comes MC Poet, he does ‘Beat You Down.’ By that time I was on a new record label, called Nu Sounds Records. It was some guys outta Corona, Queens – independent again – and I put out ‘Astoria’s In The House.’ So now this is the battle of these records. Then you had [Cutmaster] DC with ‘Brooklyn’s In The House.’ That era was just so fun. I was able to go to these shows – Latin Quarters – and we would have the battle of these neighborhoods. We wouldn’t play at the same time, we would play at different times and the promoters looking at who could attract the biggest crowd. He’s having a ball, cos he’s making Latin Quarters, Union Square, The Skate Key, The Q Club and Crystals – all these different clubs that were jumping off in these different boroughs – we were able to be the king of, to a degree.
Part Three covers his time at 1212 with Paul C, Ultramagnetic and Super Lover Cee in more detail…
Great interview.Thank you for this. Looking forward to part 3
These interviews are crazy. Felt like I just watched a movie.
Great interview…learned about some records I never heard of
Great interview once again.. never knew Larry Davis was doing beats for Greg Nice, surprised me with that one.
Great read again…so there is an unreleased version of The Giancana Story?
Ness would get paid for 5 records not for 8.
peace
@OnkelMichael: There were a few versions, the bootleg Rawkus version and the retail one that KOCH put out.
Record math corrected, word to Foxy Brown’s ‘Affirmative Action’ equation.
Yeah, I know…I was thinking one version of the album done by CJ and Dr. Butcher…or at least some joints…
Always worth emphasising that Live Squads game of survival movie is beyond superb
What about that little known 10 Degrees Below “Keep On” album from 1993 – CJ Moore produced the whole thing! I remember that one was pretty dope.
In this part does he jump from talking of the Rawkus LP to the Roots of Evil LP? Thugs Love Story was on the latter, or was it meant to be on the Rawkus shelved version?
@silent: Yeah it was only on the ‘Roots of Evil’ LP.
great interview robbie, looking forward to pt 3 as well as the book whenever it drops.