Paradise Gray Part 1

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of Iheartradiots. Supremo Supremo role called Supremo shut, Supremo role called Supremo Supremo role called Supremo Sun Supremo role. I'm an owner, not a GM. Yeah, joints creeping to my d ms. Yeah, I represent freedom. Yeah, Hey, Steve, what rhymes with the last corner? Supremo role called Supremo Supremo role. My name is Fante. Yeah, I got my moisturizer. Yeah, what time is it? Yeah, grand Verbaiza Supremo Supremo role called Supremo Supremo roll call. My name is Sugar. Yeah, where's my per diem? Yeah? Self sabotage. You're an asshole, hit bill? Yeah, you Number one is the border. Yeah, it's time for tails quarter Supremo roll Suprema So Supremo roll. It's like em. Yeah, it's so nice. I've been talking about the Latin quarter. Yeah, finally we got Paaradise Supremo roll Suprema. So my name is Paradise. Yeah, I'm twice as nice. Yeah, lecekating on ice Yeah, I can't say it twice Supremo Suprema So Supremo roll Suprema, So supremo, Ro Supremo supremo. Roll. Wait there, man, that's what I mean. Many, let's go chill. This is what they called the when when you have like a special episode. Well, no, no, but the this is the longest stretch of finally getting to the tail ends of what the show has been about for the last what seven seven years? Seven years? Good luck? Yes, Okay, there we go. You know, we've been talking about or joking about the Latin Quarter with every hip hop luminary that has made their mark in this culture in the late eighties, early nineties, and we've heard many a tale of the Latin Quarter. But as a walking Smithsonian pack ratter pop culture hoarder, of course, you know that I easily got excited about doing this particular episode of course, Love Supreme, because you can't have any tales of the Latin Quarter without our guest today. And you know, for damn near five decades, our guest has been preserving, building, shape shifting many a career in hip hop. But more than that, he's embarking on what I would deem probably his most important project, which is a proprietor of the Universal Hip Hop Museum. Yeah, and you know not to mention he's an author. Currently your your show about your collections in hip hop. Yes, hip Hop Treasures, which I the fact that you just had to wherewithal to know that this stuff was going to be value speaks of your characters. So and also, welcome to Team Supreme with us. Yes people, what y Bill? I'm back? Yeah, you're back where you been? Sorry to cigarettes. Okay, no, for real, Welcome Paradise Gray, to Claude, Paradise Gray, the man that holds our history in his hands, to Court Love Supreme. So, uh, sir, have you ever heard of the Latin Quarter? How are you did that? I'm a absolutely fantabulous Okay, well real, this is a great, great pleasure. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You look amazing. Well, I thank you. Look, let's just beginning. Where where does your hip hop journey start? Your very first moment in which you're meeting the elements of what hip hop is. I don't know if it's hearing a passy for the first time, or my journey in hip hop started in my mother's living room. You know, my mom was a supermom. You know, she was the curator of all culture in our household. You didn't touch the TV knob unless she did it. You didn't listen to the radio unless she programmed it. She was my program director, and every Friday she would come home from work and go to the record store around the corner from my house and come in the house with a fistful of brand new forty fives. And she introduced me to James Brown, George Clinton sline of Family Stuff, the Last Poets, Gil Scott, Heron, Marvin Gaye A and goes on and on and on. And then she used to play those records and cook and clean the house while meet my brother and sister sang and danced with her. And then every Saturday morning we would watch Soul Train, and after it went off, we would do our own Soul Train line in the house because we had all the records that they just had on TV already in the living room. So she prepared me to be a DJ and a selector. And the first two crates of records that I had when I started DJing in the streets, I took it from my mother's record collection, you know, really yes records, well two crates the records, I mean, I had a lot of the breakbeats right from the door. You know what I mean? Because my mom she listened to every genre of music, you know what I'm saying, So she prepared me well. So one day, growing up in the Bronxdale Projects, I was going to the store and I heard this music coming from beyond this door. There used to be a laundry room. But a DJ that lived in my building. His name was disco King Mario. Oh yes, okay, so this was another address that should be remembered with fifteen twenty cents a consider seventeen fifteen Bruckner Boulevard in the bronx Dale Projects. And I heard the music coming from the door. I cracked the door open and there he was disco King Mario with two turntables and a Bozac mixer with a knob, and he was playing a song I think called Gotta Get a Nut, oh by a New Birth and then then yep, the infamous Yeah I sold Can You Keep a Secret? Drum breaking? And then right I was standing there with my jaw like, oh wow, what does he do to those records? Like you know what I mean? And he was like, man, come in and close the door. I came in and I sat down and I was surrounded by stacks and crates and equipment and speakers and records. And you know, he uh had a bad habit of when he DJ, he didn't put the record back in the cover. So his records was all over the place. They were dusty. And because so, because my mother had conditioned me to wipe the records and put them back in the sleeve, I systematically started organizing Mario's records. I was seven years old and I wiped them records. You better not touch my record the floor okay, you know what I mean, in horrible condition, And I said, I came in with the kit. You know, they had the alcohol in it, remember that with the velvet, and they wiped the record. He loved it. I organized his crates and that began my journey as a real DJ. I want to do a slight sidebar because okay, so as a family, we've been together for seven years, but I don't even know your actual journeys. If we can keep it under three minutes, Like what was your first hip hop moment? I would say my first hip hop moment was my uncle taking me to the Fresh Fest at the Greensboro Coliseum in like eighty This was eighty five A six. I was like six years old. Did you not hear rap music before that? Yeah? I heard rap more did Okay? So what was the most impact, like your first impactful? Like me hearing rappers delight was like what is this? I think probably the first we're talking just hearing the music. It really wasn't rap. I mean it was like records like you know, Nucleus Jam on it and it was those kinds of records because my mother would take me with her to the park and DJ's will be out playing those records. You know he should have win last, but seeing it and some bullshit, but not seeing it that was like that was It was eighty five run DMC, Fat Boys and Houdini and that was just that was it for me. It was done. I knew what I want to be, all right? So like you next? Now, first of all, we're in d C. Or were you in Philly? In Atlanta, d C. That's where I worked for fifteen years of my life. But I mean, I feel like mine is more disconnected through TV because I was babysat by the TV, so it was through movies. It was Beach Street, it was breaking one Breaking two, Breaking Book. I'm gonna tell my truth. Breaking Boogloo was my ship man let to judge. Okay, Okay, I saw the movie three times when I went to the theater. All right, Steve, Yeah. Uh. Besides, you know smoking with Snoop Dogg at the studio. Well, now, did you want to tell me you stole we from Snoop? Yeah? Okay, but he's so smoking right now. I think I told that story when we interviewed Snoop. But it was a Fat Boys and that first run DMC album rock Box. And but the thing was, I heard all this stuff at my Jewish summer camp where there were no black people. I didn't know what was going on or what I was listening to necessarily, but then you know, everything happened in I guess high school breakdancing. I mean, you can tell me what year was that was that first run DMC album eighty three. Wait, this is weird. I'm noticing now, And you know, we should probably try to get cool rock Ski on the show. That the Fat Boys is actually a lot of people's first introduction to hip hop, which is kind of crazy to me. But even jay Z said the very first hip hop tape he ever brought was the Fat Boys. So it's almost like because hip hop was kind of contributing, you know. Again, my parents went to that ye Christian Berry, like, yeah, you ain't listen to that whatever, But they had no problems with me having the Fat Boys because they were too funny. It was funny. They were too funny to be threatening, you know, whereas all Right on paid Bill. Yeah, I think the Fat Boys. I think Heavy D in the early days, and then like I came up in like the Vanilla Ice, Teenage Munan Nina Turtles era, but then Ninja I did. But then I know it's hard to say out loud. I don't want I don't want to dismiss that because only because LLLL and I were talking about this on tour. Well, concerning Hammer and Vanilla Ice both selling ten million units, like between licensed to Ill, Hammer's second album and Vanilla Ice, like those three records were the first three albums to sell more than ten million units, and for a lot of people that are in the hip hop now, like that was their fat which then led them to everything else. So I can't even be dismissive. I mean, I don't like the mag goodness of X Clan's first tour was with the Ghetto Boys and Vanilla Ice. What what was that like? Man? One day I was in my room. We would go on stage, rock and bounce, you know, so we didn't know what was going on with the other we know, you know, Scarface and the Ghetto Boys was one of our favorites. But the first time I even heard the name, this beautiful girl was knocking on my hotel room after the show opened the door. I was like, wow, She was like, where's Vanilla Ice? I was like, I don't know what chocolate is? Right here? Babies, now we use it because I know this is actually a subjective fact. If that's such a thing in your opinion, When did hip hop start? Because I keep hearing from many a person that, no, no, it wasn't August nineteen seventy three. It was Da da Da Da da da. Honestly, who's gonna win this tug of war? I have no idea, okay, but I will be honest. August eleventh, nineteen seventy three is an arbitrary date, okay, but we had to say it started somewhere. But I believe that hip hop started when the first man walked hip hop started when the first person rapped. Hip hop started, when all the elements were developed hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago by our ancestors. For us to say that we created hip hop from nothing in the Bronx in nineteen seventy three is totally disrespectful to James Brown, George Clinton, sline of family, Stone, pig Meat Malcolm, you know what I'm saying. It's disrespectful to at Hotel Malik el Shabaz, to Muhammad Ali, to the Black Arts Movement, a Mary Baraka, Sonya Sanchez, you know, to watch prophets, the Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, you know, the Jubile Ayers, Pigmy Malcolm. You know, can I ask you so? When I was a kid and I was eight years old when Rappers Delight came out, and you know, for a line's share of America, Rappers Delight was for a lot of us our first hip hop experience. We never heard of anything beforehand. Even though I lived next door to a DJ, so you know, I would hear like, let's dance to the drummers beat and he had like two turns in, but I thought he was a disco DJ, right, although he wasn't scratching. Before nineteen eighty three, every DJ was a disco dj. Okay, if you was not a disco DJ in New York, you wasn't making no money. And hip hop is the bastard child of disco, funk, R and B, gospel, jazz and everything that came before it, But it's closest related to disco. Think about it. First rap record you said was important was What Delight. It was a san but it was a disco record, Good Times, you know what I'm saying. As matter of fact, every record that came out in nineteen seventy nine was a disco record that people was rapping over, with the exception of Grand Master Flash and the Serious five Freedom, but rapping and wait right, even Super Dune that all of those are disco beats. You know what I'm saying. Rapping and rocking the House that was a disco beat, or you know King Tim the Third that was a straight disco record. If you look at the video to the sugar Hill Gang and you turned the volume down, you would not believe they was rapping. They got silk shirts on with big old collars. You know what I'm saying. They wearing dress, slacks and slippery bottom shoes. It wasn't no Adidas, it wasn't no Pumas. It wasn't you know, no Nikes, no Gazelli's, no Kingos, none of that. If you went in the club, our elders was in the club with slippery bottom shoes, gators, jackets, and hats on. That was it. The question I'm asking you is that I'm under the impression that this culture got its name only because it's the very first two words that Wonder Mike says on the very first hip hop record that anyone ever heard. I would agree with that, yeah, because my parents used to always be like, you better hip hop, your hands in bed, you better hip hop, and this is hippity hoppy and to hip hip hop, and then Dad would do exactly the same thing, right. So I was asking you, was were you guys even calling it hip hop? No? Okay, I get it, no more than like the first two words. And that's the thing. Even I didn't know the song was called Rappers the Light. The first day I brought it, I went to the store, like, you got hip hop? He's like, and he hands me a you know record. What were they calling it? Then? Well, we was calling it jamming. We was you know, we're gonna jam today, you know we're gonna go out. We even call it rap music, the rap music. Well because they called the song Rappers the Light. Then it's like, oh my god, yeah, like Rappers of Light contains a lot of the elements that we still use now, like writing, fiting, the the label label, ribbon off, the artists, the foundations. But you know what those Sylvia Robinson does not get as much credit as she deserves. You know, she was the one that saw Hollywood and loved Bug Starsky in Harlem and say, yo, this is important. You know, do you know that little note? First of all, Sylvia was the first hip hop mobile, yes, period, you know. And second of all, she engineered this song and mixed it. I heard she played bass on it. She probably did. I heard she got so much skills and talents. And are we to assume that her business acumen came from like the men and the people that came before her. The most to the business acumen came because she owned seven labels. I was just thinking she ran with Mars Levy. If you know about Mars, like mars Levy was the Jewish night the word first YouTube was like, huh what I heard? Levy? And I was like, Bill too young, Mars Levy owned, uh, you know Roulette Records, read the book Hitman for real gangs that stuff. Can you just describe as visually as you can what an average jam was like in the Bronx, like sound wise, because you know we'll see you know, sort of like not revisioned or you know, like people will give their stories or tells of it. But I want to know. I have watched sue footage from nineteen eighty three really of me and my crew DJ Playboy Paradise and the Brothers three and my other rap group to throw Down four in nineteen eighty three, and we're dancing, we're doing graffiti, and we're DJing and rapping organically without Beach Street, you know, without Hollywood. And one of these days I'm gonna screen the footage that we found and then interview. Almost every single one of my homies in video is still alive. It's a miracle, yes, sir, but guess what the miracles called hip hop? Every single one of my homies that rap danced dig graffiti, except a few, very few of us perished by natural causes or by murder. But the friends of mine from Highbridge who didn't rat and wasn't in hip hop man decimated. Is what you witnessed in terms of any park gyms you went to, was that the only existence of that culture in that particular thing. Or on a Sunday, could there be nine block parties happening? You just good? Well, the first block parties were live bands. We had a lot of live bands in Highbridge, which is where I moved after I moved from the Bronxdale projects. I lived less than a mile from fifteen to twenty Sedject considered okay and quite honestly, in their early years, there was a lot of other teachers that were rocking simultaneously with Cool Hurt, and before Cool Hurt, in my neighborhood, we had a DJ named Pete DJ Jones. So can you explain who DJ Jones is for our audience. Yeah, Pete DJ Jones was a mobile DJ. He was one of the top two mobile DJs in New York City period. The other one was Grandmaster Flowers from Brooklyn, hip hop's first grand Master. And a lot of people may say, well I never heard of him, Yeah right, I got one hundred fliers with him on the same flyers with Hurt and Flash and Bam and all of them, you know. And he opened for James Brown as a DJ at Yankee Stadium in nineteen sixty eight. Oh wow, So you know, hip hop just crushed August eleventh in the Yankee Stadium. But Yankee Stadium has deeper history in the Bronx, you know. And there's a lot like a lot of people's say, well, Pete DJ Jones, he was a disco DJ. Once again, we can't do that. He mentored Hollywood Loved Buck Starsky, Curtis Blow, and grand Master Flash. Get that, man, it is hip hop credentials today or no. He passed away a few years ago, but there's some footage on it on YouTube with him stealing it speaking with his own words. He was amazing dj. He was great at mixing. He did not cut, he did not scratch, he didn't do any of that. But he played breakbeats two and he ushered in Hollywood Loved Buck Starsky, Curtis Blow, and grand Master Flash. I wanted to ask, of Paradise, how does the DJ somebody like Larry Levan, How did they someone like him that played the Paradise Garage. Was that in y'all's kind of radar at all time? It? Well, it definitely was, because we loved disco music and dance music and actually, you know, disco to us, that word is what stops a lot of people from understanding what we're talking about, because when we say disco, it wasn't a genre of music. It was a place to be tech. It was a disco tech. It was the place where they played music at and when we went to the clubs, the disco techts, they are a shout to DC. We played Go Go too in the beginning of hip hop, and a lot of Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers and a lot of those EU and all of those guys. They contributed to the to the creation of hip hop too. You know a lot of people from Philly contributed greatly to the creation of hip hop and they don't get the credit for it. You know what I'm saying. The Juice Crew and Cold Chilling records that came out with Rock, Sanne Chante, Bismarck, Big Daddy came in. The Juice Crew that we know that started as pop art in Philly, you understand, So exactly. There's so you know, we migrated from the South and we brought a lot of these things with us. There's a rap group that was a gospel group in the twenties and thirties named the Jubile Airs, who rapped with the same cadence as the Sugarhill Gang. Yep, you know. So if we ignore our elders and ancestors and don't speak of their contributions, they taught us hip hop. We learned hip hop from our elders and ancestors, and if we eliminate them, then we got to write for young people today to not remember us or attribute our accomplishments to us. Because we disrespect our ancestors, we deserve to be disrespected too. So I'm trying to think of the proper way to ask this question though. But is it because disco was the current music of the time? Is that why it became? You know, let's say beginning of hip hop was because disco is funky and disco is that shit? Man? Come on, one of the biggest greatest breakbeats in the world, Frisco Disco. Come on? Come on? You know brown, Yes, you know what I'm saying. Come on, where would hip hop be without the Isley Brothers. You know what I'm saying. We where would we be without Motown, Stacks votes, you know what I'm saying. Mcfatten and white Head, all of these guys were geniuses. We learned hip hop from them and we remixed it, we sampled it. Hip Hop is a sample of Afro indigenous culture worldwide. It's the best of everything that ever existed. If you make a beat that we like, we don't care if you're corny white rock group with long hair. We didn't let it go that far, but we love give me that. It's hip hop now. Hip hop is a cultural and musical version of Star Trek's Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated new generation and after you. Yeah, the things I learned about you? When do you say that? Hip hop started making its uh sort of its trek into nightclub culture where it starts as block party culture. That's where Cool Hurt, the Zulu Nation, Grand Master Flash, the l Brothers, Graham with the Theodore, That's where the Disco Twins come in. These guys took it to those places, you know what I'm saying. And we use disco records as break beats. Come on, what would hip hop be without? I want to thank you having for all the you know what I'm saying. I mean just there was just some amazing music being made by some of the greatest cultural geniuses who ever lived, and we got to call them out and give them credit for what they created. Bob James, are you kidding? Meet? You know, we had amazing the meters. You know, we had amazing teachers who taught us to beat, and thank god Jane Brown put it on the one baby. Can you talk about any historic first that you've seen in the first fave, pre pre Latin quarter of your hip hop experiences as far as like shows are concerned or not clubs you've been to or any of those things. We hung out at the Fever, the Disco Fever Halem World, the Renni which was called the Renaissance Harlem World, I mean the Disco Fever. The Fever was in the Bronx right down the stairs, down the Joker stairs from my community high Bridge. It was at around one hundred and sixty seventh Street, not far from Yankee Stadium, right by River Avenue. So that's where you had to go to hear those particular non main street. So if you was open enough to go there, we got everything we needed right in the street for free. You know, we speak on it. There was the pa L, the Police Athletic League. Denzel always talks about that. Yeah, there was a lot of venues. We even had a disco called burger King, which basically was a Burger King restaurant. At night, one of the brothers that worked there would move the tables and chairs and we would charge twenty five cents and we would do hip hop parties in Burger King and nobody would be the wiser. Nah, they cleaned it up and and you know, nobody knew anything about it. You know, we did. We used school yards, we used talent shows. We was in the streets. You know, we did see the park. You know, there was hundreds of parks all over the city, from Brooklyn to Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx where you know, DJs would just come bring their equipment out, set up and get it cracking. And it was illegal. Everything about hip hop was illegal. We stole most of our equipment in the first place. We were stealing ship way before that. But that gave a lot of They gave a lot of people who wasn't as bold or as good thieves like we was an opportunity, but uh, you know, we we brought our equipment out in the park and we partied without a permit. When you say we are you speaking? Were you associated with Black Spades or like I was a Baby Spade when I lived in the Crew culture the Black Spades, A lot of people say they were a Black Spade, But the Black Spades is from the sixties. Have you ever seen the movie A Bronx Tail That was a story of the Black Spades and the Bronxdale projects. They organized very similarly to the US group on the West Coast, and very similarly to the Black Panthers. It was out of necessity. The white kids used to live right above where we was in the suburbs. There was a couple of blocks that separated the projects from the suburbs. And the white kids were sons and nephews of Italian mobsters. And they wore thelether coats like Phronsie with the collars, you know what I'm saying. They had the grease hair bag, and they had revolvers, chains, bats, and switch blades, and they would come down into our community and pray on us, beat us up, and rob us and do whatever they wanted. So the Black Spades, my dad is from New York and he's about ten fifteen years your senior, and it was different for them because they used to throw bottles off the top of the of the buildings and hitting the kids on the ground in Manhattan. So it was, you know, it's interesting to hear the Bronx verst of what was going on in the other boroughs. So the Black Spades fought back against these white gangs and pushed there but was way up off us, and the crew got so big that it became the biggest black gang in the Bronx. In Brooklyn, they had the Jolly Stompers and the Tomahawks, and they were represented by the Black gang in the movie The Warriors. Okay, the group at the end that was the Tomahawks and Jolly Stumpers, which later were organized into a black movement by my elder Sonny Carson in Brooklyn. To your knowledge, because to my ears, when I'm listening to Justice Doing Going Way Back or listening to Karaswan, do the roll call of like what the South Bronx like, all the names and mc shann who did the roll call from Queens. Well, that's why you get the bridge. You know what, do the other girls have their own tails? Hell to the year that just didn't have good marketers, yeas the Bronx did exactly. So who was first like Chicken on the egg or I'm asking, like, you know, because I hear of Queen's having a history that we don't hear about. I don't know much about Brooklyn's history. I know about Grand Master Flowers, but my boya and there was a bunch of them. And there's a DJ that moved from Brooklyn who used to DJ Whip Flowers to the Bronxdale Projects who actually predated Mario even but he wasn't a cutter or scratcher either. But they they played break beats and they blended and they did the things that were the predecessor. The DJ culture is the foundation and the predecessor of hip hop and rap music, and we really have to really do a better job of shouting these people out and researching. Me and my partner, Prime Minister Pete Knights from Third Base mar Cole curator at the Hip Hop Museum, we found the earliest flyer that we could find with the words hip hop on the fly and the flyer was from nineteen seventy nine and it was from Brooklyn, So you see what I'm saying. So another battery exactly. So there was many DJs, and include Eli Tubo, the great legendary hip hop producer that produced Eric B and Rock Kim you know, and engineered those sessions. He was a popular DJ in Queens. Russell Simmons was a popular DJ in Queens. He actually knew how to DJ. Yeah, he wasn't cutting and scratching, but they would dat. Ralph McDaniel's from Video Music Box, very popular DJ. Was Hollywood's Terrain in a nightclub only or was he also a street DJ? And is there a difference between street block party culture versus nightclub cultures? There Most of the time street DJs didn't make no money. We did it for the popularity, for the culture, for the love, you know. But we spent way more money than we made, you know, buying big speakers and records and turntables that was crazy expensive on young people. That's why I was telling you it was illegal, you know. Those that didn't steal. We pieced our sound system together. I had one turntable, He got one turntable, he got a mixer, he got some records. This guy got a speaker. Somebody else had the power amp, so we would form Voltron to even create hip hop. How are those speakers being built? Do you have any knowledge of is it as loud or yes? Herk had some monster speakers and he was running through people in the Bronx until he ran into Breakout and Barren with the Mighty Sasquatch sound system. So Herk was killing him with the Herkalrre sound system. And then he ran into the Mighty Sasquatch, so the loudier system, the louderier base that like you would win. I tell you why. There was a DJ by the name of DJ smoke or DJ Smoky in the Bronx not far from where Herk was, who was DJing and popular at the same time HRK was. He played break beats and he had his version of bee Boys, which were called Smoka Trons. Had Dj Smokey been able to defeat Herk, we would be calling the bee Boys and breakdancers Smoka Trons today because it was the same thing, right. Smokey battle Hirk on numerous occasions. He lost every time because every time he'd set up his equipment, Herk would turn the knobs on him and blow them out. You couldn't even hear them. So what constitutes a battle? Like do you guys choose a ground and then this guy sets up his speakers over there? This guy says, speakers over there is Jamaica styles in like five minutes you and five hours. It depends. It just depends, like hirking them. They ain't have no rules. You'd be in the park jamming and they come and they set up they shit right across from you. Oh, disrespect you. They just turned the knobs up and you can't even hear your headphones. And you got to pack your ship and leave tail with your tail between your legs. Yes, that's what you mean. When when Hirk started battling Grand Master Flash, Flash had a great sound system too, plus he was a way better DJ. So Hurt had to recruit one of my favorite mentors and DJs of all time, the Grand Imperial dj JC, which most people never heard of because he left the Bronx and moved to Yonkers at an early age, but him and Grand Mixer d x T were the two best DJs back in the day period, hands down, no question. That was literally, what'll going to be my next questions? Like, you know why what? Because they related to you? What do they were both drummersids off the books? Can you talk about your relationship with I'm about to say Lou Adler Lou Waters, the owner of the infamous Latin Quarter nightclub by that point, how did you bring your vision ad mission to the Latin Quarter Nightclub? First of all, I never met Lou Walters, Barbara Walter's father, right, I know he owned the spot, so I didn't know, right, But the guy that bought it off of the people that brought it off of them is my people. I first went to Latin Quarters with the Awesome Two DJ Teddy Ted and Special K. Yeah, and actually Donald B. The Awesome two was Special K and Donald B with DJ Teddy Ted Okay, So they were on WHBIM, the same radio station made popular by the Supreme Team UH and UH surch Use missed the Magic and they would have a show that they played rap music Saturday nights four o'clock in the morning and they would play anything demos, h mixtapes. They didn't care if you send it to 'em they would play it. So I went down. I was promoting records at the time. I was working with Russell Simmons and Rush Productions and Early Death Jam, and I would promote records and I would listen to their radio show and they wasn't playing the stuff that I was promoting. So I was called a request line over and over trying to get them to answer, and they never answered the request line. So me being me, I got on the train and went up there, knocked on the door, introduced myself and I said, why don't try to answer the request line. They said, oh, well, cause we ain't got nobody to do it. I rolled my SLA, was up, went and sat down and there you do. Now it is organize their records on the floor. Know what that organized? Organized the call to people who were calling in. And what we did was we were able to filter out all the horrible stuff that they was playing and started playing the most requested stuff. But anyway, they got a gig working at the Latin Quarters on Tuesday nights and they called it Celebrity Tuesdays, and they invited me to come to the club to be a judge. It was like showtime at the Apollo for rappers. You know, you get stuff thrown at you, you get booed right on stage, you get a bottle like he ever was one second. So, but the thing is is like how open is the establishment to this culture coming into to play? Because well, a very interesting and wonderful Jewish man bought the Latin Quarter. Okay, his name was Mike Goldberg, and he was a hustler. You know what I'm saying, say Steve, Mike, sorry everybody, But the Lant Quarter was Mike Goldberg's train set. It was his play thing, his playground. You know. He was a multi millionaire that managed the magician David Copperfield, who was making twenty million a year on Vegas a loon. So this is just a side thing. Yeah, okay, this is a side thing. And Mike would just be all up in it. He would go stand in front of the box office and collect the money himself. Don't even let you put it in there to the lady. He's standing there and give me. You know, he'd got a fistful of money. Sorry everybody. Hey, he just had so much fun doing it, you know what I'm saying. So one night I decided, like the celebrity Tuesdays that the Awesome Too was doing was cool, but it wasn't packing the club, you know what I mean. And it was nothing like what was going on at the club on Fridays and Saturdays. So we used to go to forty second Street to the kung Fu house called Sinny forty second and we used to get three Kung Fu movies for five dollars, you know, and you get like three movies, popcorn, hot dog, and a drink ten bucks, you know. So we all hung out down there watching Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, you know, the Shaw Brothers movies. And that's why hip hop became so synonymous with Kung Ko movies in those early days, because it was all concentrated right there. So I come out to Kung Fu movie and I said, let me see what's going on at the club, because I've never been there on a Friday or Saturday. So I go to the club. There's a Jamaican after work dance party and it's so packed that you can't even walk around in the club, and the floor was undulating with sex and bass. The bass was turned up so much sex that if you stood on the dance floor, you would probably be dancing without moving. It was just undulating. It was like watching the matrix, you know, that singing and zion at the end. That's what it looked like to me. I was like, there's no place in hip hop that you can go and have this experience where every party's on the dance floor and all the dudes are dancing with women. You know. So it gave me the idea of epiphany that this could be an actual hip hop dance club. You know, we were going to those clubs and my man was talking about Larry Levon and those DJs and stuff. There was another movement of freestyle dancing that was going on in New York at the time, around eighty five eighty six. People wasn't break dancing in New York no more. All the rock STEADI Crew, the Dynamic Breakers, all those dudes was on tour in Europe, China and Japan. They was rocking over there, but nobody was in the club b Boy no more in nineteen eighty five eighty six. So the new style was the style that they was doing, dancing to disco and dancing to club music. They went back in time to win the Latin Quarter was the Cotton Club, and they borrowed the old dancers from Sammy Davis Jr. The Nicholas Brothers and Cab Callaway and they modernized those dances and danced hip hop with it. If you look at the way Salt and Pepper danced Store, if you look at epmds you got the Chill video, you know. If you look at Big Daddy Kane to see Schoob and Scrap, you know what I mean. You look at Houdini and you see Dot the Ice and the Kango Kid and the young Jermaine Duprie. Those were the dancers that were being done in the Latin Quarters. The ghosts of the Cotton Club was reborn in the dancing at Latin Quarters. And we had a group called the Iou Dancers and the jac Dancers and the Jason Dances. Was Buddha Stretch who went from dancing at the Latin Quarter to choreographing Michael Jackson's Remember the Time video and being the lead dancer in that video. You know, because those doing that Egyptian style, all those interesting dance styles were coming out of the Latin Quarter, you know. So fifteen year old Queen Latifa was working at Burger King in New Jersey when she decided to go to the Latin Quarter to do dancing and she saw MC light for FUM. It was like, oh my god, I want to do that. So that's how the club was. When do you mark the grand opening of the Latin Quarter? Well, in my era, the one that that I did, that's called you know that made it be renamed. Yeah, it's not calling the Latin I know, it's a history. I just spent. Like the name of your parties was was called it was LQ. Well, I'll just say the LQ. When do you consider the LQ period of the Latin I say, no tricks in eighty six is time to build because by eighty six rap music had blown up internationally. And if you went to the Latin Quarter on the weekend, Curtis blow Run, DMC, the Fat Boys, Houdini, all of them would be hanging out there because they were my friends, and I would let them in free and give them drink tickets, you know. So all the hip hop would convene there. But I couldn't put Melly Mel on stage to do a show. He would get on stage even though he would get on stage and do a little impromptu stuff, and he was at actually the catalysts that help turn it into the Golden era hip hop because he was the filter if these legends. And I mean, you know, I understand that one year here also to represent the opening of a museum, which is like, hey, preserve the culture. But I mean even you have to admit that hip hop is very big on this sort of disposable adult culture and like the youth run it and once you hit a certain age then it's like, all right, well that was then, But that's because of the record labels man and the music industry. When when black artists and hip hop get older, you got pay him. They know the game. They're not seventeen eighteen years old. You're not gonna just run some bull crap contract on them no more, damn. So when it came that, yeah, it was all economics. They're like, you know what, y're old, We're not paying y'all. You know, kick rocks and kind of the way that that I really transform here pop at the Latin Quarter was for the same reason. It was economics. I had Mellie mal Houdini run DMC in the club, but I couldn't put him on stage. So if if Grandmaster Flash in the Furious Five wanted to perform at the Latin Quarter, I would have gave him the stage. Great gladly passed them to mic. Okay, you know what I mean. They getting arena money now, they wore no club money no more. You know what I'm saying. So so so I put biz Monkey on stage, Roxanne Schaan, Te mc shan, Big Daddy, Kane, Salt and Pepper Kid and play E P M d Eric Ben rock Him, stets of Sonic, just Dice care us one. They was all hungry and they weren't They didn't have record deals. You rocked the Latin Quarter on a Friday or Saturday, you had a record deal Monday morning. Not that A and R's was in the crowd. Russell Simmons is in the crowd. Tom Silverman is in the crowd. Fred Maneo is in the crowd. Aaron Fuchs is in the crowd. You know, they knew where the bread was buttered, and they knew that if they did not show up that they were going to miss out on the next big hit. Okay, without the threat of getting hit with a lawsuit, anytime I mentioned these two names, can you clarify to me what exactly is Aaron Fuchs's role in hip hop? Because I know of him only when I see a relatigious situation happening right on Tough City Records. He was an independent record owner at the time when we started Latin Quarters, the majors hadn't come in and dominated and buy out all the independent labels. But because all these new artists were emerging every week, the majors was getting wiped out, and they say, you know what we better get in this game. You had Jive RCA, Fourth and Broadway, Columbia, you know, start to actually recruit and sign these artists, and we replaced the whole generation of artists because of economics and sound. You know, the new artists at Latin Quarters they started making hip hop dance music. And if Red Alert who was my DJ on Friday nights or Chuck Chillout, who was my DJ on Saturday nights, if they played your music in the Latin Quarter and the IOU and JC dancers didn't rush the dance floor and start tearing it up, you might not hear your record again. So people changed the sound. They made it more up tempo, we went a little more James Brown heavy, a lot more boomed back, and you know, a lot of new artists started emerging. Okay, so we also live in a time now. Now, we live in a time where it's really hard to break a new artist out. Like you know, as a DJ, I'll play if I think something is dope, I'm gonna play it, and you'll clearly see an energy shift where it's like I don't know this song, so let me go to bathroom or whatever, and then it will wind up being a hit later, you know, once it goes through the system, if they pay for it to go through the system. But you know, to hear me tell it, a lot of what we consider just the classic bread and butter basic food groups of hip hop nightly are just getting debuted, like play Top Building for the first time and the audience is going crazy. But you had to how how okay? So how are you telling me that a deaf jam rep can go up to the booth to red Alert and be like, hey, rock this join like there's no because people do that to me a lot. Thank God for like the system of Sarato now where it's like, you know, I don't my hard drive them Like, I can't immediately play it. I don't like playing some unless I hear it first. Right, Well, we had a great sound system in the DJ booth, and you could bang something and listen to it in the DJ booth without playing it out to the house. But what I mean more or less, it's like if DMC walks in the club and say, yo, this is our new ship, you know you're going to give it a chance. But if if if MC butter Butt come in with it, you know whatever, and you know who who Audio two is? I did or is it? I hated the Audio two at the time, but I loved them as human beings, as people, but they had horrible music. I like Cherries. I was gonna say, I was going to say, let me take Cherries. Was the A side? No, No, the A side was making it that was produced by Daddy, right, okay, you know, and the B side was Top Villain and it was it. It was only like about two minutes in the beginning, right. So what happened was Matt Robinson Milk's dad, who owned First Priority Music record label. He had every DJ in New York playing Make It Funky except one Cool DJ, Red Alert and my partner rests in peace to Robert Lamma Carson aka Procesess, an ex. He was Nat Robinson's good friend for years and years, so he would always come in back, Paradise, please get ready to play that record? Man? Where gotta play it? You know? You know they're right there, They're almost there. They just need Red Alert. And I wasn't feeling milking kids myself, so I wasn't pushing red I do not ask Red Alert to play anything because you will get embarrassed. Red Alert is unbiable. I was just about to ask that you cannot offer Red Alert no drugs, no women, no money. Red Alert had the most integrity. But if he said no, no said are you right there now? Where? Okay? He don't care. He wouldn't play Bam bodis record. And he was a zulu. If he wasn't feeling it, he ain't playing it, you know what I mean, no matter how much peer pressure come. So Nat Robinson came one day and he was like, Paradise, please get ready to play it, man. We got this people listening for it, you know, and it'll take us over the hunt. Please. I was like, I took the record in the in the DJ boot before Red Alert got to the club, and I was just dropping the needle all over the record, like there gotta be something that's playable on this, and I flipped it over to the B side and I couldn't believe my ears. I was like, oh my god, this is dope. The initial thing was it's dope. It's dope, okay with time out pause of the thing. Now, when I heard it, it was such an unorthodox song. Lady B premiereda in Philadelphia, so I'm certain whatever Red Alert was doing, she co signed it. Next it is an unusual song, yes it is. That's why how did you see the light? You know what made me love that song? Milk is Chilling? Spending uncounted hours in the studio with Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin. If you look at the early records that he produced, it doesn't say produced by Rick Rubin, it says reduced by Rick Rubin. And Milk is Chilling was bare bones, raw, uncut hip hop that I was used to from being a street DJ in the Bronx. That it reminded me of a street jam and somebody put a beat on and somebody it's sellaneus MC came running out the crowd and put it down on the mic. It was so catchy and so sing songie. I knew it was to hit the first time I heard it, so I gave it to my house DJ DJ Roman. He played it about five or six times before Red Alert even got to the club on the Latin quart of sound system. That beat hit so hard. Right. So Red Alert shows up after coming off with Kiss FM. He's headed for the DJ booth. I'm like ecstatic. I go running over to him with two copies of this record and I was like, yo, Red Yo, you gotta check this out. And he snatched it out of my hand and threw it across the room and it smashed on the wall. He was like, Yo, this cit is a Frisbee. I wish y'all was stopped coming at me with this frisbees man. I told him I'm not playing it. I don't like it. I was like, Red, why you do me? Like? I was like, dud ever tell you to play something that's whack. He was like no, but I don't like that. I said, you ain't even hear it yet. So when he went to go to the DJ booth, I beat him to the booth, and I made sure that the last thing that played was Top Villain was Top Villain. I put it on and he walked into booth and the crowd was going banana. They were bouncing all over the place to it. And I walked away and I said, Yo, that's yours. And you know, I tell the story that after that they started banging it. It was a big hit. Milk tells the story. Yo, Dice, he still hates it. He still don't play it. He might have played it a couple of times for you after that, but he still hate us. Still. Yep, that's what all that says. I love that. Okay, QLs listeners, this is where we're cutting it. Please come back next week or check your podcast for you for part two of our again, the Studio Conversation with Paradise Gray. In that episode, he speaks more about the glory years of the Latin Quarter, his action of hip hop artifacts, and so much more. Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast is hosted by a Mere Quest Love, Thomas boss Man, Like Here, Saint Clair So Black, Andy Black, Myself, Fontidelo, Fonte Goldman, Sugar, Steve Mandell, and unpaid Bill Sherman. The executive producers are Amir Quest, Love Thompson, Sean g and the Unbothered Brian Calho. Produced by Brittney Benjamin, My Dog Cousin, Jake Pam My Motherfucking Man and Like he Is Saint Clair My work Wife, Edited by Alex Conroy. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown and Mike Johns. Audio engineering by Graham Gibson aka double G at Iheart's LA Studio. Thank you for tuning in. Check us out next week. What's Up Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.