Milk D Interview Part 1

We don’t have to spell out our love for the career of Milk D. Audio Two never put a foot wrong (well, apart from splitting up and not releasing their third album, the fabled ‘First Dead Indian’) and Milk’s brief solo career on American Recordings was all gravy to our ears too. We hooked up with the dopest dairy-named MC ever on behalf of a certain magazine a few months ago, but as not everyone reads printed matter these days, we thought we’d convert it into binary code for that ass too. And just in case you’ve done already read it, we’ve thrown a few rare audio butters in the mix for you too…

Do you recall your first ever recording session?
I do. It was in 1983. There was a group called Kleer back in the days who made a song called ‘Intimate Connection’. A friend of mine was working with them, and he knew I was a rapper so he hooked me up with them.

And what kind of lyrics were you kicking back then?
[laughs] The Same! I was just talking about money and stuff like that.

What was it like being in the studio as a young teenager?
For me it was a dream come true ’cause I was DJ’ing. I had equipment, but no recording equipment, just turntables, and I always wanted to put it down. Before Richard Lee from Kleer let me in the studio I would just play the records and record straight to tape. I would rhyme and there wouldn’t be any takes. It was just one take.

Audio Two – Get Your Mother Off The Crack Vocal Remix (promo only)

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How did you get the name Milk D?
I was about 9 and I was in the car with my uncle and aunt. My uncle jumped out of the car to go into the store. He took the keys with him and my aunt is trying to roll down the window to shout after him. She couldn’t, so she just started screaming and banging on the window, ‘Milk, Milk, Milk’. I was in the back seat laughing because she was bugging out. So every time I saw them they’d be shouting ‘Milk’ and I’d start laughing. So when I was looking for a name I was looking for something unique, that nobody else had, and that wasn’t like anything else, so I chose that. At that time, everybody had something at the end of their name, a ‘D’ or whatever. And on milk containers it says ‘Milk with Vitamin D’, so that’s where it came from.

So, you were already rapping, but were you thinking about making records?
Well, my first passion was acting. I used to do a lot of plays in school, a lot of off-Broadway stuff. This was when I was real young, 8 or 9. So I always liked performing and being on stage. The thing at Richard Lee’s studio was for a contest, like a ‘clean up New York’ contest. That was the first recording. But after that my father, who is an entrepreneur, saw that I was really serious about it. I was sending out cassettes. There was a radio station in Brooklyn that had a show that was basically like ‘American Idol’. They would put everybody’s music up and people would call and vote on it. So I sent in the clean up New York thing and they started playing it and it went to number one on this small college radio station at Medgar Evers college. So my father saw I was serious and he had a friend who had a small independent label. So he introduced me to his friend and we put out the first record which was called ‘A Christmas Rhyme’ and that was in 1984. The guy we were working with was called Elmo the Magic Christian and he used to be a big club promoter back in the 70′s with my father. Because the label was small and independent, we were doing a lot of the leg work ourselves and my father was financing part of it. So, we were like, ‘we might as well start our own label’ and that’s when we started First Priority.

Audio Two – Chillin’ (from the Flip-Flop Mini Album)

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The producers of your early material were King of Chill and Daddy-O. What was it like working with them?
Daddy-O was my mentor. It was amazing to meet someone who had records out and was doing it, not to mention I appreciated the fact that Stetsasonic were doing something different – they were the hip-hop band and they used to wear the white. So he was a mentor to me and totally inspirational as well as a really cool guy. He helped a lot, and during ‘Top Billin’ would be the best example. ‘Top Billin’ was a song that I did in the basement and nobody was there, it was just me. I did it, so of course I thought it was hot, because as an MC you think everything you do is hot. But I didn’t really understand until I let Daddy-O hear it. He went crazy. He was like, ‘that’s it right there. That’s it, leave it just like that.’ That’s the kind of person he is, with the positive energy and inspiration. He understood where I was coming from because I was trying to do something new, always. That helped a lot because you need that confidence, especially in the beginning and especially when you’re doing stuff that doesn’t sound like anything else.

With that in mind – the novelty of what you were doing, the comedy, your voice – what kind of reactions were you getting?
Well, it’s really funny because, initially, we got a lot of resistance. And not just resistance to me, but resistance to Lyte. They said I sounded like a girl and she sounded like a boy, and you shouldn’t curse on records. Lyte was the first female MC who cursed like that on records. So when we first serviced ‘Top Billin’ to DJ’s, they were like, ‘what is this?’ Back then, a lot of rap songs had full instrumentation and baselines, other than ‘Sucker MC’s', and we were the first thing that sounded like this, so we got a lot of resistance. It wasn’t played. We kept pushing and pushing, six months went by, they still wouldn’t play it. After about eight months, we got some of the college radio stations to play it and got a little buzz. We serviced Red Alert with ‘Top Billin’ probably fifty times. When he’d see us coming he’d start running. And one day, Marley Marl just started playing it, and when he started playing it, it took off.

How did it feel to hear yourself on the radio?
It was dream come true, because I always knew that it was going to work, that we were going to be successful . And once they started playing it, there was going to be no stopping us. The first time I realised I was a ‘star’, we had some shows booked, and there was guy who was with us called Big V, and we went to do a show in a middle school in Manhattan . We pulled up, and there was just the four of us in a car, and when we got there it was crazy. Kids were standing outside, they were going insane. My father looked at me and said, ‘I think we need to get some security. I was like, ‘wow, it’s going down’. We had another show later that night and the girls pulled me off the stage, and after that we knew it was on.

King of Chill was definitely ahead of his time.
To me, King of Chill is one of the most talented hip-hop producers, and he was definitely ahead of his time. It was great working with him. Actually, he was the one who took me to Richard Lee’s house. We all went to school together, me, Giz and King of Chill, we all went to Brooklyn Tech. He was in a rival group and we all used to get together and battle. Of course, we had the lunchroom table battles and then we’d go to his crib and his DJ used to throw on beats, so that’s how we met. And once we started the label, especially since it was obvious that he was an extreme talent, we started working together. But he is ahead of his time.

What memories do you have of recording the ‘What More Can I Say?’ album?
One of my fond memories of recording that is the board we were using at the studio. Most of the album was recording at my house on the four track, but we used to go to this downtown studio called INS. They had an MCI board, the 636, and I remember that every time I brought something to the studio and put it through the board, I’d be like, ‘Yo, I really like the way that sounds.’ To this day I really love the way that board sounds.

How were you coming up with crazy concepts with ‘I Like Cherries’?
I used to sit around, as I still do, and just try and think of the craziest thing that I could. What could I do that would be ill? And whatever came to mind I’d put it down. That’s where it came from – I was really trying hard to do something different. When you do that, either they love it or they hate it and after a while I started to hate ‘I Like Cherries’. This is too silly, why did I do that? Which is funny, because a lot of people ask me about that song now.

Milk D – Get Off My Log (Jazzyfatwoody remix)

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Hip-Hop was polarised into crews on different labels in the late 80′s, but First Priority always seemed like more of a family.
That’s exactly what it was and what the atmosphere was. Me, Giz and Lyte are siblings, my father owned the label and we had cousins working there and my stepmother. We all bonded with the artists. All of the artists were like cousins.

Were there any collaborations between the artists that never got released?
Yes. You know Lyte and Positive K had a song called ‘I’m not havin’ it’? Then Pos had the song ‘I got a man’. Well, that was originally recorded with Pos and Lyte. That’s the main one that comes to mind but it was never released.

Does you dad still have the masters for that? You should put it out.
I have them! And we’re gonna be doing stuff like that. We’re gonna make everything available on the website, we’re going to have stuff from the vaults, unreleased albums. I have two albums for Lyte that were never released – the last one was probably in ’99, the other one was mid-nineties. Two Audio Two albums including ‘First Dead Indian’…

Stay tuned for part two, where Milk reveals the producers behind the never-released ‘First Dead Indian’, and his future plans…

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