“I got to have it, I miss Mr. Magic” #2

Here’s part 2 in our Mr. Magic appreciation month. Yep, it’s up there with Martin Luther King’s Birthday. So here’s an in depth interview we did with the man himself. It’s essential reading, especially the bit where Magic admits the illicit activities that went down on their UK leg of the Juice Crew Tour back in ’88.

Here’s an old Mr. Magic show, the soundtrack to your 9 to 5. Get busy y’all. HERE.

Fat Lace: So, Mr Magic, were you the first hip-hop radio DJ?

Mr Magic: Right, I was the first person to play hip-hop on the radio. Back then it wasn’t called hip-hop, it was basically called ‘rap music’. That was in 1979 and what I used to do was pay to have an underground station. Well, not really an underground station, more a public access station, where you bought your own airtime and sold your own commercials.

FL: It must have hard work, sourcing the records, playing ‘em and selling ads.

MM: Yeah, but I was in it for the love of rap music. Back then it was more like a culture, because it was locked in with graffiti and breakdancing. I used to hang out at the Disco Fever, so Disco Fever was one of my main sponsors. It was only $75 an hour, so I was on for two hours a week, Saturday night to Sunday morning, and the call letters of the station were WHBI, 105.9. A few other people came through there – Awesome Two, Jerry Bloodrock, See Divine the Mastermind. It was a station that really had a way where you could express yourself. Everybody came on there behind me after I got started on there. See, I used to work in an electronics store, making speakers, so I knew a lot of the DJ’s.

FL: Were you DJ’ing before rap?

MM: Yeah. I used to have a system, go to the parks. I had a mobile sound system, so I used to do parties and stuff like that. Then I started working for a guy called Winston Samuels, the Winston Collection, and he had a lot of different clubs. We’re talking like, maybe 1974. A lot of the guys used to go and plug into the lightbulbs, and that’s how the culture really started. That’s how the battling thing started, because if you had the best or the loudest soundsystem, everybody would come and party with you as opposed to the next person. Being that I used to work in an electronics score, I had the new electronic equipment, so I had a nice loud system and I used to play at a roller skating rink called Clips on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. This is just some of the stuff that led up to the whole culture of hip-hop.

FL: What was the show called on WHBI?

MM: Mr Magic’s Disco Showcase. Disco really came at the beginning of hip-hop because it was disco beats with somebody rapping on it. I would take one of the DJ’s from The Fever, Junebug or Grandmaster Flash. See, the original Juice Crew was all of the guys from The Fever. You’ve got Lovebug Starski, Junebug, Sweet G, Sylvia Robinson, Funky Four Plus One More, Treacherous Three. Now, after working at WHBI for a while, Frankie Crocker called me and I went to WBLS. Being that I was down with the Juice Crew, they made WBLS, ‘the station with the juice’. So that’s how I got the AKA Sir Juice because I brought the juice to WBLS. Then we had the vans. We were the first station to have the vans going round in the community, that we called the Juicemobiles. I did that with Dr. Bob Lee, who is still at WBLS right now. As a matter of fact, Dr. Bob Lee introduced me to Marley Marl as they were both from Queensbridge projects.

So, we were at WBLS for a while, then a gentleman came and told me they wanted me to stop playing hip-hop, because if I stopped playing it, it would phase out. They offered me the chance to be a regular air personality and do the Quiet Storm. But I said the best person to do the Quiet Storm would be Vaughn Harper, because he was one of the people I really looked up to, and he had that nice bedroom voice. So we left WBLS and went back to WHBI. Right around Christmas time, Roxanne Shante came out with her record, and we were going to Philly because I had got a radio job there on WDAS. Right before that, Steve Salem had the group UTFO. And before that, UTFO got down because when I was at WBLS, we had a big affair down at Radio City Music Hall and UTFO won the dance competition. Now, going back to WHBI days, the guy who used to answer the phone for me was Jalil from Whodini [NB. Jalil is the older brother of Doctor Ice from UTFO. Ice and Kangol Kid from UTFO were originally dancers for Whodini. Jermaine Dupri danced for them when he was a child]. They wanted me to make a record, and Jalil had wrote the record, but with me being on the radio it was a conflict of interest. Jive records was one of my sponsors, and by that time we’d moved away from rap and it was becoming hip-hop. So, with me not being in a position to do the record, he hooked up with Jive Records and did it, and they didn’t have a name for the song, and it became ‘Magic’s Wand’. Grandmaster Dee was what we used to call a super-listener, he was always checking in on the vibe line, which was our request line. So him and Jalil hooked up and became Whodini. After we went back to WHBI, WBLS called me back again, then I went on to do Hot 97, the classic showcase with Mr Cee, and I did that from 1992 to 2002.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

FL: Back in the 80′s, you must have broken a lot of groups on your shows.

MM: A lot of groups. You look at Force MD’s, I found them singing on the Staten Island ferry. They used to be Doctor Rock and the Force MC’s. UTFO had brought me a record and it was the flipside of ‘Roxanne, Roxanne’, it was called ‘Hangin’ Out’ but I wasn’t really feeling it. I flipped it over, heard the ‘Roxanne, Roxanne’ and thought it was a good record. I played that and that was another record that I broke. Also, going back to that contest I mentioned at Radio City, the winner of that was the Fat Boys. That’s another group I put on. After playing the UTFO song, they were supposed to do a show for us, and they didn’t do it. Being that it was Xmas and we were relying on them, me, Fly Ty and Marley got upset. Marley had the little studio in his house and one of the girls who used to be around wanted to rap – Shante. She said, ‘I can make a record about them guys that’s dissing Roxanne’. So she went and made the record in Marley’s studio and we played it on WHBI. Then we took the tape and played it on WDAS in Philadelphia and that’s where Pop Art Records – Lawrence and Dana Goodman – heard it. If Ty was here he could explain it better – I know I’m jumping around a little bit! After that they went and pressed the record off the tape that we had on the radio and that started the whole Roxanne craze. So we went on tour and Roxanne eventually brought MC Shan in, he was the next member.

FL: Is the story true that MC Shan got in when he was caught breaking into Fly Ty’s car?

MM: Well, it was a combination of things. All of the Queensbridge guys knew each other, and they all used to record at Marley’s house. So, yeah, he was trying to get into Ty’s car, then Ty heard his rapping skills and put him on like that. But he did know Marley. After Shan came Biz. After Biz came Kane. After Kane came G. Rap.

FL: There were some people on the edge too, like Glamorous?

MM: Well, Glamorous was with the US Girls and we saw her at a party we did at Andrew Jackson. We liked her rapping skills, so I brought her into the Juice Crew because we wanted enough females to complement Shante. Eventually we also had Debbie Dee, so they were like the three girls in the Juice Crew.

FL: It was strange seeing the Juice Crew tour in England. You had future legends like Kool G Rap just doing the one song.

MM: Yeah, because they were new. What we’d do is have the next crew coming out on Cold Chillin’ open up for the others. If you wanted to know who the next Juice Crew star was, you saw who opened the show. We did the Apollo and we had 2 days with 3 shows each night. It was all sold out. And we hooked up Westwood for a live broadcast.

FL: What memories do you have of that Juice Crew tour around Britain?

MM: Oh, you know, a couple of crazy stories. Ty could tell you better – I don’t like to talk about myself. One time were in Liverpool… I don’t know if I should go there!”

FL: You should.

MM: Well, we had tried to get some ‘ladies of the night’, let’s say. Being that I’m the oldest, me and Ty went and scooped a couple of the girls and brought ‘em back. I think they were charging, like, 20 pounds. So we were in the hotel, and I don’t remember who went first. Me and Ty we did our thing separate. It might have been Kane went first and he gave her the 20 pounds, but when he went in, he took the same 20 pounds and passed it to the next kid. So she went through the whole Juice Crew and by the end had the same 20 pounds she started with.

FL: You were involved in the ‘Bridge Wars’. How did that feel at the time, was it just a friendly radio thing for you?

MM: Well, originally, KRS knew someone that Ty knew, and they had come down to the studio to see me and the song that they let me hear, I didn’t like it. They say I disrespected them. Looking back, I might have said a few things that… ‘Fuck you, that shit is wack!’ It actually made them better. Remember, I come from a background of battling, back when I played in the clubs. Battling would always bring out the best in you and it kept everybody interested. The battle thing is really for supremacy, it never really got personal. Maybe once in a while it’d get a little personal – a lot of testosterone back in the day.

FL: So, as Red Alert was backing BDP, and you were backing the Juice Crew, did you get on in real life?

MM: Yeah. Well, it took a little time for us actually to ‘hang out’. Me and Red was always cool and a lot of times we were together on tour. Red was on Kiss and down with BDP and that’s how the whole battle thing automatically formulated. They were on opposite me, so we always had the nicknames, we used to call him Red Dirt and Duck Illout. They’d call me Mr Tragic and Marley Moon. So we always had the back and forth type of thing, like the Yankees and the Mets.

FL: There were lots of spin-off record as well, from the likes of Poet and MC Mitchski.

MM: Yeah, Poet from the Bridge, he used to bring us records. Poet is Juice Crew. He didn’t actually get a shot. But those records is how it went down, and if you can’t answer the bell, don’t get involved. Anybody from the Juice Crew would battle at the drop of a dime.

FL: There’s an interview where Just Ice said he wasn’t involved in the battles, he was just looking for you with a shotgun.

MM: Just Ice, he’s down. He’s Juice Crew. You see, with guys, it’s always the ego that makes you do that. You always wanna go after the best. The only way you can be down is if you’re capable of being with the best. We’ve got love for Just Ice.

FL: What do you miss most about those times?

MM: Let’s see. I think what I do miss most is the lyrical skills. Today’s rappers have the music and the hooks, but they don’t exercise their lyrical skills. That’s something we’re trying to bring out now with our new artists here at the Brooklyn Music and Arts program.

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