Eric B – The Unkut Interview [Extended Edition]

This interview was originally conducted ten years ago, while Mr. Barrier was promoting a new rapper he was working with who none of us can remember. Since I was compiling some material for a Queens book idea that never panned out, I held back the best parts – namely, the stuff about the park jams in Queens and clowning Kool Herc’s sound system.

Robbie: Who were some of the guys from the early days of Queens hip-hop that don’t get the credit they deserve?

Eric B: There’s a lotta guys. There’s a group called King Charles, Dance Master, Infinity Machine. A guy DJ Vernon, The Disco Twin. These guys had sound systems that are bigger than the sound systems that we have in the clubs now – and they were mobile DJ’s. Names like Dance Master, King Charles, New Sounds, Infinity Machine – all of these guys had big, huge sound systems. DJ Vernon – Vernon Fertado – he’s the guy that I followed.

Do you mean worked with him or you went to his parties?

No, no, no. Actually, when I started out in the park I was down in the park carrying equipment for them, and learning the business and learning how to be a DJ. I got it from DJ Vernon, who played for a group called King Charles. King Charles was an old Jamaican guy with a big, huge sound system. It’s pretty funny, I laugh when they say, ‘Kool Herc was the Godfather of rap’ and all this stuff. I don’t see that in no kinda way.

Because these guys were doing it at the same time?

Yeah, but they were doing it on a bigger level. These guys had forty, fifty speakers. Herc didn’t have no system like that. Herc had two little guitar speakers. These guys had big, huge sound systems, and these guys never got the credit that they deserve. When they say, ‘Hip-hop started in the Bronx’ – that’s the biggest lie ever told! Because these guys in Queens had these big, huge, massive sound systems. You know, you got fifty, sixty speakers. The Disco Twin – you remember when you used to go to the theater, they had these speakers called Altec Lansing ‘Voices of the Theaters’ they were called. The speakers were seven feet high. The Twins had two of them! Those are the speakers you see in the movie theaters. Herc never had a system like that.

Were they playing breaks back then?

They were playing disco music and break beats in parks and schools and stuff like that. These guys never got the respect that they deserve, these guys had real sound systems. They had a speaker that they had put together – it was called ‘The Bertha’. The speaker was just the deepest bass you ever heard. It would rock your house. Herc sits there screaming he started this and started that, but these guys in Queens had professional sound systems, and he didn’t have a professional sound system. We used to laugh when we went up there and seen the systems that Herc and these guys in the Bronx had. It was pretty funny, actually.

Were there MC’s out in Queens at this stage?

They had different MC’s that rhymed all night long. It’s just pretty funny how people in The Bronx scream, ‘Hip-hop started in The Bronx!’ Hip-hop started in The Bronx because you never left The Bronx and knew nothing else but The Bronx! It’s funny, I remember there was a difference between going to a Bronx party and going to a party in Queens or Brooklyn. Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan – these guys had real sound systems! In The Bronx they had these little guitar speakers! They go to these block parties and have a bunch of these guitar speakers set-up and guitar amps, and they’d be screamin’ and screachin’. These [non-Bronx] guys had professional sound systems that you could hear from miles and miles away. The bass was so deep you couldn’t stand in front of these speakers! It would rattle the whole park.

So why does every book or movie credit the Bronx as the place where it started?

They only talk to Bronx people and Bronx people come up with the same thing – ‘Hip-hop started in the Bronx’. Yeah, OK.

What were some of the names of the MC’s from these early parties?

MC Tee…there was a whole bunch of them, I’m sorry I can’t remember their names. These was a bunch of guys used to grab the mic and they would rhyme all night long from the top of their head.

MC Tee of ‘Gangster Boogie’ fame?

No, no, no. This is way before that. This guy is from East Elmhurst, Queens. He used to get on, grab the mic and just rhyme all night.

When did you graduate from carrying equipment to throwing your own jams?

I started working for WBLS, for the radio station. I got my first street team and the first mobile DJ to go out and play at different events for the radio station. That’s how I really got started, professionally. I used to do the same thing and be around the way in the parks and they’d let me play music, but when I really took the show on the road was when I worked for the radio station and started playing playing in different cities and different neighborhoods. That’s how I met Rakim – playing in Long Island.

How long did you guys record together before you approached the record labels?

As soon as we finished the record, the next week went out to the labels and made a deal with an independent label named Zakia. It was in Harlem, a guy owned it – his name’s Robert Hill – went and made the deal and put the single out, and the record just caught on. It just started getting’ bigger and bigger.

Did you approach Island/Polydor or did they seek you out?

No, I went there. I was reading labels. There was a guy named Cutmaster D.C. that put out a record, name of the record was ‘Brooklyn’s In The House’. I read the label and I said, ‘Man, this is right down here in Harlem!’ And I went down to the label and I tell ‘em I wanna put out a record. I paid for my own record, gave it to ‘em and they pressed it and start puttin’ the records out.

So you were already pretty business-savvy at that point?

You try to be. You try to learn as you go on. Basically, I really got a lot of on-the-job training.

G Rap was from the same neighborhood, wasn’t he?

I started G Rap. I put G Rap and Polo together. Polo was my friend and G Rap was my brother’s friend and I put them together and made the group Kool G Rap & Polo.

You also got Freddie Foxxx his deal with MCA, didn’t you?

Yep. Freddie Foxxx is a very talented guy. I think one day he’s gonna be a great director. He has a great eye for direction, great lyrical content and I tell him all the time he should’ve been a movie director.

When you worked on the second G Rap album [Wanted: Dead Or Alive] there were some issues with Large Professor over production credits. What are your thoughts on that situation now?

You know what? When I was doin’ all this stuff it was pretty new – new to me, new to everybody else – and when people sit there and say, ‘Oh, you put together a legendary project’ – it really hasn’t sunk in. I think there’s much more things that I can do, and I think when you sit back, looking at your accomplishments, you get stuck. I feel there’s a lot more things I have to add to music and I can bring to the table, and I just really don’t look back at none of that stuff. I say, ‘Hey, there was some stuff that I did, it had to be done’. Actually, I say I took one for the team.

How do you mean?

I went out and did what we had to do to make things work! That’s all it was. So I don’t look at it as, ‘Oh, if it wasn’t for me this wouldn’t have happened’. I just feel it was a team effort, I was a team leader and I took one for the team and put it together.

The last thing a lot of people heard from you was your solo album. Can you fill us in about what you’ve done between then and now?

Oh man, so much stuff…movie production, Source Awards, it’s just so much stuff just to go into. Consultant for everybody.

You orchestrated The Source Awards?

Yeah, the one they did in Miami. I came in as their advisor and put that together.

Are you also involved in the restaurant business?

Yes. I got a bunch of ‘em. What I do is, actually I set ‘em up and I gave ‘em to the kids. So I give ‘em to my kids, my brother’s kids, a friend’s kids, and they actually run it. I tell a funny story – I was down in Texas one time and I came back home and I told the kids, I say, ‘I ate at this restaurant and it was really good!’ And they say, ‘Dad, we’re partners in the restaurant. You own half the restaurant!’ I was like, ‘Oh, OK’.

So this is like a chain type of thing?

Yeah. They’re like a whole bunch of Mom & Pop restaurants, and the kids come in and we put up the money and we do joint ventures with different people.

Are you still into collecting luxury cars?

I do and I don’t. It’s funny, you get to a point in your life where all that doesn’t even mean anything. Everyone likes luxury items and things, but you get to the point in your life where it’s like I’ve done it for twenty years – what else could you possibly do? I just like to get from Point A to Point B. I still got a buncha cars but it really doesn’t excite me like it used to in the 80’s. I used to be on the cutting edge of vehicles and needed to have the newest of the newest of the newest. But now it’s like I’m in a different place – I got the center where I’m helping kids and stuff like that. That means more to me than the cars and all the jewelry and all that stuff. We got a bunch of kids that’s in gangs and stuff, and having them here and off the streets – we could’ve saved somebody’s life! When people ask me, ‘What would you like to be remembered for?’ My humanitarian efforts and helping people. My music was fine and fantastic, but just to be able to say, ‘You know what? At the eleventh hour we could always count on him to help us for our charity or help us to take the kids out of a slump and takin’ them into somewhere positive in their life’.

What makes Queens stand-out from the rest of the pack?

I think outta Queens people really polished up what they did. A lotta people did things off the cuff, but I think Queens people really polished-up their acts, and like I said earlier came with the big systems, and made great representations of themselves. Kid ‘N Play and all of these guys started out in Queens with us…Salt ‘N Pepa, Hurby and all of ‘em, and it turned into showmanship.

What are three records that best represent Queens?

We never really represented Queens, ‘cos we were out of Queens but we stayed in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The records that really represented Queens were Run-DMC – ‘Peter Piper’, ‘My Adidias’ and ‘Run’s House’. I had a Cherokee Jeep that had four 18″ woofers in it and tweeters like I’m in a club. It had no back – it was all speakers – and I used to play ‘Run’s House’ and it used to shake people’s houses when I went by with my truck. My neighbor, his mother is still mad at me. She said that I’m responsible for cracking the china in her cabinet. She’s still hot about that.

Where did you guys used to hang out back then?

The only place we went to really was the Latin Quarter, 48th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.

Who’d you used to roll with?

The original 50 Cent, Supreme Magnetic from Fort Green, Brooklyn, his brother Rap…

Was 50 already notorious at that stage?

He wasn’t notorious to us. I never looked at it like…I laugh at all the stuff we see now.

Did you do many big stadium tours?

We played everything from Wembley to everything else. All the big European shows…we did Top of the Pops and everything. It was pretty funny, we took the concord over, played Top of the Pops and come back out the airport and all these older people – they’re sixty, seventy years old [puts on old lady voice] ‘Hey! I seen you on Top of The Pops last night!’ We’re lookin’ at them like, ‘What? ‘Top of the..?’ We’re from the United States, we’re stupid, we don’t know nothing about Top of the Pops. We figure it’s a regular video show that they put rappers on from all over. We didn’t know it was a real television show that people watch and everybody performs on! It never dawned on us Top of the Pops was a big show.

What song did you perform?

‘Paid In Full’. If you look at the ‘Paid In Full (Coldcut Remix)’ video, they took that from our performance on Top of the Pops.

I read somewhere that you went to White House to meet George W. Bush?

I’ve been there [The White House] for both the Bush’s – for the father and for him [George W.]. I’ve been there twice.

What was that experience like?

Hey, it was what it was. He’s Commander-In-Chief, you’ve gotta show him respect. ‘Hey, how ya feelin’? How you doin’? Keepin’ it movin?’ Take the pictures – that was it. I think the person that I met that we sat there and talked and really had a conversation was Nelson Mandela. We had a dinner – there was probably about twenty of us – myself, Robert DeNiro, the accountant Bert Padell, my father, Russell Simmons…no more than thirty people there. You sit there and talk to Nelson Mandela about boxing…he’s telling me his Joe Louis stories and how much he loves Joe Louis. [deadpans] Pretty interesting.