Aaron Fuchs [Tuff City] – The Unkut Interview, Part Two

Concluding my discussion with Tuff City Records founder Aaron Fuchs, he talks about working with The 45 King, Lakim Shabazz and the Flavor Unit, the ‘Crack It Up’ single, the Ultramagnetic compilations and the highlights of his discography.

Robbie: The 45 King had a big impact on the Tuff City discography. How did that relationship begin?

Aaron Fuchs: He was R&B driven, which I loved. Red Alert was a DJ of rare honesty, he played a record if he liked it. You didn’t have to pay him. He was partial to The 45 King so making records with The 45 King wasn’t rocket science. Where I made my contribution was my role in the creation of the Lakim Shabazz persona. Listening to hip-hop shows, so many dedications came from prison – people with Islamic names – so it was like, ‘Let’s get a rapper like this.’ So MC La Kim became Lakim Shabazz, with all due respect to his legitimate involvement with his Islamic faith. But we played it up.

How successful was Lakim Shabazz’s Pure Righteousness album?

I think that that was the first hip-hop album that ever came out without a hit single. At that time, the wall of a record store called Music Factory in Times Square was an international communications medium. I had first seen that wall’s responsibility for the transition of west coast hip-hop, from being years behind the east coast, to catching up. In ’84 they came to the New Music Seminar and they were just ripping records off that wall, and it caught them up with the east stylistically. I knew that was happening and that European tourists shopped there too, so I made the Lakim Shabazz album just so I could put him in a picture with a kufi and a dashiki. It broke the album internationally.

How did those early 45 King compilation albums together?

I’m a bottom feeder, I just love the idea of making DJ records. When I say ‘bottom feeder,’ I mean nobody was making DJ records with the intention of only having modest success. Having been marginalised by that time, with a number of major-driven hip-hop labels dominating the play, some of the hip-hop labels themselves had become very huge, I was just making DJ records out of humility. When I made ‘One For The Treble’ by Davy DMX that record was meant to celebrate the ‘DJ record’. The concept of scratch deejaying was new and exciting, that record is an exciting, dark terrain of music. When I made the 45 King records it was with the intention of staking out – like in baseball, everyone around you is hitting home runs and you believe that you can endure as a professional by hitting singles – that’s what I was doing.

Was ‘The 900 Number’ your home run?

It’s had a long, successful life. Even though I gave Mark the sample for it, I didn’t see truly it coming. It started out as something called ‘Beat Suite,’ the fourth movement of a four beat concerto, and slowly but surely a couple of versions later it became ‘The 900 Number.’ Less became more. It was used for the Ed Lover Dance on Yo! MTV Raps, it became part of DJ Kool‘s ‘Let Me Clear My Throat.’ I went to New Orleans in 1988 to get away from it all and I heard a brass band playing it. I said, ‘Has this thing risen to the level of “When The Saints Go Marching In”?’ There’s sports expression called ‘instant offence,’ or in clubs when you’ll use a popper to get the crowd high. That’s what this was, something that really grooves a crowd, gets them excited.

The whole Flavor Unit thing was something that grew hugely because of the politics of radio in New York City. Mr. Magic was a silent partner in Cold Chillin’, he had a share of the records that he played, Marley was his DJ. They were able to make the record that they had a share in and promote it on the airwaves that they had a share of. So they were killing! Combine that with Marley’s excellence – you could see this evolution from MC Shan to Rakim, coming around him from whatever greater swath of territory. Red Alert had to fight back! So Red Alert developed his ‘golden children’ that he could get exclusives with. The 45 King was one such artist, Boogie Down Productions was another, The Violators were another. If you made a record with The 45 King I couldn’t be happier! The Flavor Unit was a petri dish of creativity, these guys stood on each other’s necks to make sure their rhymes were as good as could be. You knew you had a good record, you knew you had a chance of it being played, you didn’t have to pay the DJ to play it if that was distasteful to you.

Tuff City released the only Flavor Unit album of that original line-up. Was that a planned project or a collection of spare songs?

First of all, I planned the fruit salad cover because I wanted The Source magazine to call it, ‘One of the worst covers in hip-hop history.’ So that was intentional! [laughs] Nah, I had a great artist named Skipper Stockman, and this guy was giving me paintings! I couldn’t be happier. Hip-hop was artistry to me. The Joey Vega covers, the DJ records. ‘Flavor Unit Assassination Squad’ was an opportunity to make a record with Queen Latifah, who was the best selling of the artists in that posse.

Were Chill Rob G and Latee not involved because they were signed to Wild Pitch?

I don’t remember. I didn’t quite work something out with Stu [Fine] for Chill Rob G.

Why was there such a gap between the first and second Lakim Shabazz albums?

The period between the first Lakim album and the second Lakim album was marked by contractual dispute. If you talk to Mark you’ll see that after the success of Queen Latifah there’s a pattern of every Flavor Unit member on every label – they went on strike – it was like a work stoppage until they got better deals. That’s what was happening. We never recovered from the loss of momentum.

What happened with Lord Ali Ba-Ski? Was he meant to do an album with you?

He was pretty good but he didn’t want to give up his day job! When you’re running an indy label and you’re in New York – you always heard expressions related to New York, ‘the rat race,’ ‘what makes Sammy run’ – the notion of this pace. In hip-hop, when you ran any indy label, all it was about was getting the next record out. You had to have a product flow.

‘Whoever’s ready? Let’s go!’

Nature abhors a vacuum – and so did distributors. There’s this classic notion with distributors that you don’t get paid on your first record until you make your third, so you were always in this condition of mildly indentured servitude. You had to keep making records if you wanted to pay your old bills.

How did Ron Delite and Louie vega fit into everything, since they weren’t actually part of the Flavor Unit?

He called himself alternatively Louie Vega, Louie ‘Bud’ Vega and Louie ‘Phat Kat’ Vega, all to distinguish himself from the popular dance music producer ‘Little’ Louie Vega. They were a few enough degrees of separation to make it all worthwhile, and there was that sound that Mark had developed that Louie had picked-up on,albeit with some Latin flavor so there was a sense of you were in the ballpark with a record like that.

Did you realise how influential The 45 King’s style was at the time, particularly his use of horns which laid the foundation for people like Pete Rock?

Even though hip-hop was the most radical departure from what preceded it – certainly in the last hundred years of American music – there was still continuity. The guys that used r&b samples on their tracks spoke my language. I could have never seen a J-Dilla coming. Or the guys doing electro tracks – at that time the Linn Drum was kinda giving me a headache. There was continuity that I was able to hear, to the point that when I was actually getting involved in some production, and I was finding my own samples and loops, I simply recorded Spoonie over the entire rhythm track to ‘Impeach The President.’ I made a track with him called, ‘You Ain’t Just A Fool (You’s An Old Fool).’ It took Red Alert three seconds to tell me, ‘Man, I can’t play that – that’s not a hip-hop record,that’s a funk record!’ But we loved making it and I love listening to it. If you look at the value of ‘Impeach’ as a breakbeat, you could almost call it the first hip-hop breakbeat. Listen to that next to ‘Funky Drummer’ by James Brown, which was the most popular drum beat prior to that, and you’ll almost hear the difference between a funk drum beat and a hip-hop drum beat.

Why do you think that the original Flavor Unit fell apart?

As Luther Vandross would say, [sings] ‘Everything must change…’ The LA ‘gangsta’ thing was happening, the Hammer dance thing was happening, and the momentum we built up with the first Lakim album? We lost it in the time that it took to work things out with him for the next album. People’s memory are short. Mark told me every artist in the Flavor Unit contributed to this collective work stoppage when Latifah became successful and wanted their contracts renegotiated.

Apparently the whole crew was involved in making that first Latifah album work as well as it did.

The seeds of Latifah’s success was her ability to negotiate both a woman’s world and a man’s world. The Flavor Unit members applied rigorous standards that they relaxed for her because she was kinda the queen bee. Everybody had to work on their rhymes as if they were homework and come prepared, and she came with the sketchiest of ideas and Apache and the rest snapped to attention and wrote her rhymes for her, or certainly helped. She was less self-contained than the rest of them.

How was your time working with CBS?

I had to start everything from scratch, I had a bad experience with a major [label]. I had the misfortune of being with Epic at the time they had the Michael Jackson Thriller album. There were substantial periods of time – that overlapped with when I was there – that they worked on no artist but Michael Jackson, so I got out of there. I didn’t want to gamble that maybe they’d fund me. What the world must know is that Tuff City was with the Epic Records half of CBS and Def Jam was with the Columbia Records half, and Def Jam had a $750,000 budget for that first year and I had a $20,000 budget for that first year. When you’re growing up and you’re a sports fan, before there was a salary cap,you don’t realise why the teams in the major markets are doing so much better than the teams in the minor markets. You had no idea that your team was doing better because your team was better funded and had better players and stuff.

When you’re running a record company – you’re from New York and being ethnic – it’s easy to fit you into a negative stereotype, you do business this way or way that way. What I am very proud to point out is that 90% of Tuff City’s records in the 80’s, the ten year period it was putting out contemporary music, were records that I generated from scratch. Nobody was bringing me finished albums. People were bringing finished albums to Def Jam because of the bigger budgets, or even after that maybe Cold Chillin’. I couldn’t compete that way. Every record that I made – with the exception of some, I picked up some masters and did a little bit of bidding here and there – but for the most part necessity breeded invention. I would love any kind of retrospective to show that I did it with A&R and not because I could buy the best talent.

Another interesting character you signed was Funkmaster Wizard Wiz. That whole ‘Crack It Up’ record was pretty crazy.

The problem is I’m not a dictator and can’t decree that all copies of the altered version be destroyed. The only chance you had of getting your record played without payola was Red Alert – that said, even then, you didn’t have a good chance! He’s playing this record, and it’s so early. I am on the street! I’m drinking side-by-side with [Mr.] Ness of the Furious Five in Disco Fever, and he’s telling me, ‘Check out this new drug called crack.’ You know how Chuck D called hip-hop ‘the black CNN’? I was the National Enquirer! I used to sit at the McDonalds at Broadway and 125th with my hood over my head and I used to just listen for phrases that I’d never heard before. That’s how you have records like ‘Get Off My Tip’ and ‘Put That Head Out.’ A record about crack? What could be the big deal? It’s just another drug.

Red Alert plays it. I’m thrilled. And I get savaged! [Kiss-FM General Manager] Barry Mayo is getting calls, ‘How could you play this? This is a scourge! How could you be glorifying this?’ That said, ‘Crack It Up’ is brilliant! If you’ve listened to it carefully, this was somebody doing the idiot’s dance in the throes of death. I’m not going to sit with Barry Mayo and say, ‘No, no, no! This is Shakespearian! This is magnificent! This is a jester doing a dance of death!’ Wasn’t gonna happen. So I took it back into the studio, we overdubbed ‘You better not crack it up’ and nobody gave a damn. I sold out for nothing. The two sides of that record – that and ‘Bellevue Patient’ – are the collaboration of two brilliant artists, Wizard Wiz and Pumpkin. Pumpkin was at his zenith, using both live music and synthesizers, and he was going, ‘OK, I hear Dexter Wansel here, I hear Isaac Hayes.’ They just put the record together like that! [clicks fingers]

What was the story with Freddy B and the Mighty Mic Masters?

Red Alert was playing them! [laughs] I bought the master. They had some success with this record ‘It’s the Hip-Hop,’ which was a production by Spyder-D, a stand up guy. We made the follow-up record ‘The Main Event’ which featured Pumpkin on killer live drums and it was even bigger. What you’re reminding me of of is how different life was – how much bigger the world was. On the strength of that record’s success, that group – which was the first ever MC posse from Brooklyn, they’re from Bed-Stuy – and they’re playing the legendary Rooftop in Harlem. These guys were like fish out of water, these guys that were all about Brooklyn to be in Harlem.

You could see they were in strange territory for them. They were a very talented crew but the modest success of that record broke them up. By that time you were already getting groups who were forming to be hip-hop groups. Like that Malcolm Gladwell theory of what happens at the beginning of something when it takes people years and years to get to the point where you hear them at, ’til much later in the evolution of things when there’s much less veteranship and experience.

Wynton Marsalis talks about ‘the dance we do,’ when referring to how black and white culture bounce off each other. Hip-hop had gone through it’s first infatuation by white culture in the ‘Roxy’ era – that whole Basquiat/Blondie thing. I caught that wave with ‘One For The Treble’ by Davy [DMX] and what have you, and like everything else, it ended. One of the closing weeks of the Roxy scene, the Cold Crush did a gig and – I’m saying this positively – nobody gave a damn. There was no pressure, and these guys gave a show like you were watching Booker T and the MG’s. I have never before or since seen a DJ and four MC’s in such perfect sync that it was like four musicians in a funk band. The coming together of the MC’s and the DJ to form a groove and a pocket, the likes of which you just don’t hear, because people aren’t even looking for that anymore. The infatuation with the live dynamics of music in an era where recordings dominate is something that puts you on the right track, cos you will get something that you wouldn’t get any other way.

What were some of the most memorable live hip-hop shows you’ve experienced?

Afrika Bambaataa at T-Connection – you were able to see how post-gang hip-hop was. The Cold Crush Brothers at Crotona Park in junior high, productions by Mike & Dave. They were self-contained entities. Debbie Dee, when Wanda Dee was the DJ. Ultramagnetic MC’s live, to see what would Kool Keith do. I’ve touted that there would be a live album, From Brooklyn To Brixton, and there’s a live performance in The Bronx – the traditional thing with rappers was, ‘Is Harlem here? Is The Bronx here?’ Ced-Gee’s doing that and Kool Keith goes, ‘Is Alpha Centauri here?’

There were a lot of rumors surrounding the Ultramagnetic albums that you released through Tuff City, from Kool Keith claiming they were bootlegs to stories that Ced-Gee sold the tapes for crack.

Isn’t that an unfair thing to say about him? [Ced-Gee] The guy’s a basketball player. He’s the most upright guy, he’s practically middle-class. When you have a big posse you don’t have to have every one in the group’s consent to use the name. I did the deal’s I could make, I was happy to do them. There’s no question that you have your ups and downs in business, you have your conflicts, but you can look at being with Spoonie Gee for thirty years. If I was a little tackier I would have a celebration for his fiftieth straight positive royalty payment. But you can’t please all the people all the time.

Will that live Ultramagnetic album ever be released?

We’ll have to see. There were a number of samples that were hard to clear, and you just put stuff out like that without consequence any more.

What are the three Tuff City releases that you’re the most proud of?

‘Fresh, Fly, Wild and Bold’ by the Cold Crush Brothers, because it captures what was so unformed and untamed about them, and there’s no other record that is put together that way. Which reminds me – finishing a record with the Cold Crush was an achievement in itself. They were really – and I say this in the best possible way – wild and undisciplined people. You look at why did Run-DMC happen? Because they were young, easy to discipline, middle class kids who could just do what they were told ‘Fresh, Fly, Wild and Bold’ captures all the wildness of what hip-hop was before it was formalised. ‘One For The Trouble’ by Davy-DMX, the Bitches Brew of scratch records.

‘Street Girl’ by Spoonie Gee – this was my noir period. It was the most crime-ridden era in New York. Everybody was paranoid, everybody was looking over their shoulder. There was this crack epidemic, there was just this vibe of fear, and that record captures that. If there was a Cahiers du Cinéma I would want to be considered the Billy Wilder of the crack era for making that record. And Wizard Wiz’s awesome ‘Crack it Up.’

The most overlooked record in my catalog is this record called ‘Joe Blow’ by Puffy Dee. She was really difficult to work with and she had a real mousy voice – but until somebody tells me that record isn’t good? I’ll think it’s brilliant. That record has great storytelling, Pumpkin on drum machine – a real beats and rhymes record.

What’s the story behind Jerk-Off Records?

When the whole scene was more underground, there was an Antexx record with a Bugs Bunny sample that I didn’t have a prayer of clearing. I went to my pressing plant and it’s like, ‘You got any jackets by accounts that don’t work with you anymore?’ ‘Yeah! We’ve got Hot Mix 5 jackets!’ So I put it out on Jerk-Off City and put it in a Hot Mix 5 jacket, and sure enough, twenty five years later somebody from England came to me asking for a Hot Mx Five license! You can run but you can’t hide!

Part One