THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.

For me it all started out in North New Jersey. Most people know my history with Lords of the Underground, but I guess what they don’t know is that before Lords of the Underground I was also a solo artist.

New Jersey kind of ran the hip hop scene in the 90’s. You had Lords of the Underground, Naughty by Nature, Queen Latifah, Redman, Lakim Shabazz, The Outsidaz, Rah Digga, Channel Live and the list goes on and on. Before that, before we all got noticed, I was one of the groups who ran New Jersey on the Underground tip. What people don’t know is that while I was grinding to come up and get noticed that Redman was my DJ.

“What people don’t know is that while I was grinding to come up and get noticed that Redman was my DJ.”

Redman and I were a crew, we had the whole little dancers, the wonder twins – Red’s name was DJ Cut Killa. He was my DJ but he was always a good free styling dude though. In the quest of trying to get heard and trying to get signed, I made a relationship and bond with Def Jam.

I believe it was Faith over there at Def Jam, got cool with them so they started to invite us to Def Jam parties and the industry parties. This one time they gave us tickets to the EPMD gold party but that same weekend I had won two tickets on WBLS in New York, so I had four tickets. I said OK I’m gonna take myself, of course Redman and we took two of our friends as well. We met EPMD there. Redman and my other friends were telling Erick Sermon, “Yo, I got this MC you got to hear, his name is DoItAll, whenever y’all come I want y’all to hear him.” So long story short Erick came to club called Club Sensations in Newark, New Jersey. He called us one day and said, “Yo I’m ready to hear your MC man, tell him to come to Sensations.”

Well low and behold I got sick! Redman said, “Yo, I’m going to go down there and represent for the crew.” So Redman went down there with another friend of mine called Bre. We call him Bre Da’ Begga. He’s actually the guy doing the hook on the Lords of the Underground record called “Never Faded.” If you ever see that video online, Bre is the one that’s doing the hook, that’s the dude Redman took down to the club Sensations with him. So when they get there, Erick was like “Where’s the rapper? Where’s the dude?” And he’s like, “He’s not here but I came to represent for my crew,” and Parrish [Parrish Millennium Ducats, that’s the PMD in EPMD], he was like, “Well do you rhyme?” Bre Da’ Begga said to Red, “Yo, go ahead and rhyme Red.” Red rhymed and the rest is history. That’s how you got Redman and that’s how you didn’t get DoItAll with The Hit Squad.

“I’m thinking we are about to pull off and about five minutes later Marley Marl gets in the limo with a bottle of champagne and he’s like “Yo, what’s up?” I’m just like WOW!”

So I was almost in The Hit Squad. I didn’t give up though man, I promised my moms I would go to school if the rap thing didn’t pan out so the year that I thought I was going to get on, my DJ got on before me. I went to the University of North Carolina. Fast forward through my college years, I meet a dude Anthony Coldstine who in college went by the name of DJ Jazzy A and later turned out to be DJ Lord Jazz. He said he had a friend Derek Jackson who also went to school with us who just happened to be Marley Marl’s cousin. I didn’t believe NONE of it. Derek was the type of dude who always talked fast so you always thought he was lying.

I was coming from Newark, New Jersey where people always telling you stuff that never be true. Derek was like, “Yeah yeah yeah you know Marley Marl my cousin, soon as I graduate,” because he was about to graduate and I was just a freshman, and he’s like, “As soon as I graduate Marley Marl going to get me a job ya know? Marley’s working with Heavy D and LL Cool J right now, I’m telling you.” I was just like yeah WHATEVER. He said Marley was coming down to our school for the Juice Crew Tour. They were coming on The Juice Crew tour bus. The night before they are supposed to come, I have a fight in our gymnasium and break my hand!

The next day I got a cast on my hand and Derek says, “Yo, come downstairs we’re going to meet Marley Marl.” I go downstairs to the dorm and I see no Marley Marl, I knew he was lying, I knew this dude was lying man. And he’s like, “No, he’s at the hotel,” so we go to the hotel. Now let me rewind a little bit here is the thing that got Marley Marl interested in us. Like I said DJ Lord Jazz was the big DJ at our school. Derek Jackson, I’ll tell you later who he turned out to be, but Marley told him to put together a group.

I was always going up to the Jazz radio show in college and tearing it down on the weekends. It was really a jazz station but Lord Jazz used to sneak hip hop in there for an hour. I used to go up there and freestyle and then Funke Man used to come and try to freestyle the parties and when Lord Jazz invited him up we freestyled together. He was like, “Derek told me to put a group together. Y’all should do a group together.” Funke and I were two solo artists, so we were like I don’t know about a group, but we’ll do a song together. So we did the song to Black Sheep’s “Flavor of the Month” joint, and the first song we ever wrote together was “Psycho,” done to that beat. So really that’s the song and the beat that Marley Marl signed us off of, so thanks to Dres, Lords of the Underground got signed and we wasn’t called Lords of the Underground, we was called NJ Funk. [Laughs] “Man, your getting some history, I don’t think I ever said any of this in an interview.”

Now back to the Marley thing. We get to the hotel and I still don’t see him, I still don’t believe Derek, but he’s like, “Na Na, he’s here.” I’m like, man this dude is just lying. But there’s a limo out front, so I’m like, OK there’s a limo. We get in the limo and still no Marley Marl. I’m like man this guy is the biggest fronter I ever met. I’m thinking we are about to pull off and about five minutes later Marley Marl gets in the limo with a bottle of champagne and he’s like “Yo, what’s up?” I’m just like WOW! I got a broke hand and he wants to see us perform. He was like, “Who are the two that made that “Psycho” song?” and we were like it was us. “Y’all going to perform that tonight for us?” We show up to the Juice Crew Show. We got on first and did our thing, we did the “Psycho” thing to the Black Sheep joint and tore the house down. As we used to say back then, we caught wreck. [laughs] and that was it. Marley put his hands around our shoulders and was just like, “When you going to come up to The House of Hits?”

That’s the story about how I walked into the game. It was just history to me man, coming into the game, meeting everybody, learning everything and coming up that way.