Microphone King Donald D has had a long and varied career, spanning back to the park jam era, onto the downtown club scene, radio and then records, both as a member of The B-Boys and as a soloist with the Rhyme Syndicate. Now residing in Italy, Donald took some time out to detail some of his experiences during the formative days of the culture.
Robbie: How were you first introduced to hip-hop?
Donald D: Going to the parties, watching Kool Herc in the parks and Afrika Bambaataa in the parks. That was my first experience seeing these DJs out in the park.
You were living in the Bronx at the time?
Kool Herc used to play at a park called 129, which is not far from where I lived. Then I would go to Bronx River Center and watch Afrika Bambaataa throw down outside. All of this took place in the South Bronx, where it all started.
How old were you at that time?
You’re talking about junior high school when I was seeing these guys play. At the time we was going to a local place all the kids would call The Boy’s Club. We would go there basically to play basketball, swim. I had other friends who would become hip-hop legends and superstars, so you’re talking about at that time Easy AD, who became a member of the Cold Crush Brothers; you had Lil’ Rodney Cee and Jazzy Jeff who were part of the Funky Four; you had Master Rob and Waterbed Kev who became part of the Fantastic Five. There were a lot of these guys who were at the time unknown who became legends in hip-hop. We all would be playing basketball together as kids [chuckles].
Did you realise how important this new style of music was at the time?
It was basically the same music that my mom was playing in the house, whether it was James Brown records or The Temptations. But the way they played it at these jams was different, where they would find the best part of the record – which was the break – and it made everybody groove, where everyone was dancin’, then you had some b-boy’s spinning. I even tried my part at trying to be a b-boy in the beginning, but it was not my passion. It all changed for me when I went to a jam and watched a DJ by the name of Disco King Mario, and he had an MC on the microphone named Busy Bee Starski, and that kinda changed my whole outlook on what I wanted to do within hip-hop – to be an MC!
What was the next step?
At this Boy’s Club you had to have a membership card. At the front door you had to present your card and there was a guy who would check-off your member [number]. It was a way of checking that you were there. We didn’t know his name in the beginning, but he used to have this giant boom box and he would have all of these breakbeats playing. At the time we didn’t know that he was cutting it up. He told us one day, ‘Do y’all guys know how to MC?’ We messed around, but we didn’t take it serious. We told him, ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘Why don’t y’all come to my house and let’s make a tape?’ So we went up to his house, me and Easy AD, and we started rhyming. At the time we didn’t even really have names for ourselves. He went under the name of DJ Rasheed and we just came up with these names. I called myself Donald D and he called hisself Easy AD, then this guy was like, ‘Alright, we’ll call ourselves the Ocelon Brothers.’ We became a crew that did parties around in the Bronx. [laughs] It’s funny how it all evolved.
I didn’t really know how to write raps, ‘cos when I saw Busy Bee rhyme I went to the local bodega store and I got a paper bag and a pencil and I was writing down everything that Busy Bee was saying. Our first jam that we did with Rasheed I did Busy Bee rhymes, reading it off the paper. The first party we ever did – if you saw the movie Beat Street, they did that party inside an abandoned building, where in one room you had the DJ set-up and then another room where people were dancing, so they didn’t me actually rhyming these words off of a paper bag. [laughs] They just heard my voice. Then there was somewhere with us there doing it and they were like, ‘You know what? You have to make up your own words.’ Because someone said they heard Busy Bee doing these same rhymes. That’s when I decided I had to go home and write my own rhymes, and the start of my journey in hip-hop I guess. [laughs]
How long did the crew last?
We was trying to make a name for ourselves, and at that time it was kinda hard ‘cos you had the Grandmaster Flash group, you [Grand Wizard] Theodore with the L Brothers, you had Breakout and them with the Funky Four, you had Bambaataa, you had Herc, so all over the Bronx you had all of these groups which we looked at as big time. I remember we got the owner of a place called The Black Door – in the movie Wild Style it became The Dixie Club – the guy said we could do a party there. At the time you had to make up flyers and present them to all the people in the neighborhood. We thought we was gonna be doing this party, and all of a sudden the guy was like, ‘You cannot do a party tonight, we got Grandmaster Flash and the Furious doing the party.’
You got bumped?
Yeah, we got bounced out of the place. We ended up still going to the party and stood at the front and just watched them and I was begging Melle Mel – and at the time Scorpio was going under the name of Mr. Ness – ‘Can we get on the mic and say rhymes?’ They was looking at us like, ‘Who are you guys? Get outta here!’ For some reason we felt all those people that was there were actually coming to see us, because we gave out all the flyers way before they decided to do the party. Even though we didn’t get to do the party, it was a very good learning experience for us to see how they interact with the crowd. Cowboy – just me getting to witness him rock the crowd, the crowd reaction to him. ‘Say ho! Clap your hands everybody!’ Seeing Kid Creole on the art of working the echo chamber, saying rhymes with the echo delay behind it, and just hearing some incredible rhymes coming out if Melle Mel’s mouth! It gave me the education of it all, right there, with those five MC’s. Also Raheim and Mr. Ness, telling the stories. And also seeing Flash, how he interact with them during routines. It have me a lot of information that would be very good for me as I grew in hip-hop.
We still was a group, trying to make our name, and then one day me and Easy AD was walking down the street in the area called the Grand Concourse, and who did we see walking out in the street? Kool Herc himself. It was crazy, all the other times I just saw Kool Herc behind the turntables. We told him we had a group and if we can do a party with him. He was willing to let us come do a party at a club called The Sparkle, but before this party could take place this club wind up burning down. The party never happened, but I’ll always thank Kool Herc because he was the first that was willing to give us, as unknowns, a chance to be able to do a jam with him.
After a while, being that we were going nowhere, the group broke up. I found out the DJ moved back to Jamaica. Where I lived there was girl who was a neighbor and she told me that she had a boyfriend who had a DJ crew. It turned out to be DJ Afrika Islam. I had seen him do a few parties with Bambaataa or with is crew, the Mayberry Crew. She had heard me rhyming in the local center so she decided to introduce me to Afrika Islam. He told me was I willing to try out for his group? So we went to try out for his group. We were in the basement of this DJ named DJ Superman, and all I remember is he had these gigantic speakers that I only saw at Kool Herc parties or at Bambaataa parties. They put on the disco version of ‘Seven Minutes of Funk,’ which is a very long record, and then they asked me to rhyme and they asked Easy AD to rhyme, and after they told us to go wait outside. They called us back in and they said they liked me, they didn’t like Easy AD. They already had two MC’s in the group – one went by the name of LJ, and the other one was Kid Vicious. Before I decided anything I asked Easy AD, I said, ‘We can both leave.’ He said, ‘Nah, this is your big chance. You can be part of the big league.’ It hurted that they didn’t want four MC’s at the time, but it turned out great for Easy AD because he became a member of the Cold Crush Brothers.
They changed the name from Mayberry Crew and we became The Funk Machine – Afrika Islam, DJ Jazzy Jay, Superman and Three The Hard Way MC’s – me, Kid Vicious and LJ. I went from being behind the ropes at Bambaataa parties to now being on stage with guys like Pow Wow, Mr. Biggs, MC G.L.O.B.E., Luv Kid Hutch, Lisa Lee. It was like a dream to be on the same stage, saying rhymes with the Zulu Nation, so I became a member.
So this is the late seventies we’re talking about?
Exactly, so that’s before anybody was making records. We were all superstars in the neighborhood with our voices on cassette tapes. We were doing jams with groups like Grandmixer DST and Infinity Rappers, the L Brothers, Theodore. DJ Cool Clyde, you still had Kool Herc, you had DJ Kenny Ken, you had DJ Charlie Chase. So many DJ’s – Breakout and Baron with the Funky Four. In my projects you had Reheem from the Furious Five, Sha-Rock from the Funky Four, you had Tony Tone and Grandmaster Caz from the Cold Crush – a lot of MCs and DJs who became superstars and legends later on.
Through all that it was making it’s way out of the local school and park jams to where it was now making it’s way into the midtown Manhattan scene, which was more known for the disco scene. Bambaataa [Zulu Nation] – they were the first to start taking it from the ghetto part of the hood to midtown. A lot of us didn’t even know that was going on, that they were down there. It all started with Cool Lady Blue, who was from England. She had the clubs down there in midtown – along with Fab Five Freddy – they were bringing the breakdancers and Bam and the Zulu into a lot of these clubs. Whether it was Negril, it was Danceteria, and then The Roxys scene became huge. That’s when I first started making my way down there when Afrika Islam became one of the resident DJs, along with Grandmixer DST, Jazzy Jay and Bambaataa. He would ask me [to] come down there and get on the microphone and say some rhymes, so I saw a whole new scene that was way different than the parties we were doing.
In the Bronx it was mostly the blacks and the Puerto Ricans and the Spanish kids at all our parties, but now we had a white audience. They were dressed different, it was more of leather with chains and whips, then he [Islam] was telling me, ‘This is more like the punk scene.’ You would see people like Billy Idol and David Bowie there; The Clash, Malcolm McLaren mixed in with the hip-hop scene. Even Madonna, before she was famous, in The Roxys with us. It opened us up that hip-hop can travel beyond the five boroughs. Then I start seeing some of the graffiti artists work in different galleries in Manhattan, whether it was Phase Two or Dondi or Futura 2000, Doze. Then the b-boys were at these upscale places, breakdancing. It was a whole new scene opening up. By this time the group The Funk Machine was basically over. Afrika Islam came to me and said, ‘I’m gonna be doing this radio show, I’m gonna call it the Zulu Beats. It all evolved from The Roxys, from us being in that downtown scene.
That scene inspired him to start the radio show?
Yeah. His idea was: ‘I’m gonna take what I’m doing at the parties and do it on the radio. What you do at the parties with me? We do it on the radio. You MC on the radio, I play the breakbeats, I play the beatbox and we gonna just do it live on the radio so that people who can’t be at the parties will be able to hear what we do, all over New York.’
Was Mr. Magic on the air at this point?
Mr. Magic was on already, he showed us all the way. But Mr. Magic was more of a DJ who talked on the radio and played whatever was the hit record. We took what they did at the parties and brought it to the radio. Islam cutting up the beats right there in the station, DJ Red Alert was also part of the team. We would have live guests come down and we would do interviews – Rock Steady Crew, Fab Five Freddy when he was did the first promotion for the movie Wild Style. We basically had our friends come to the station and we would interview them. A lotta unknown artists at the time were sending promo tapes [songs] to promote the radio station. We had Daddy-O from the Stetsasonic do promos for us; Craig G – who became part of the Juice Crew – was sending tapes and [would] call in. We had people that weren’t famous at the time [become] part of the station’s history. At WHBI it was not just us – you had Mr. Magic there at one time, but it was also the World Famous Supreme Team that was on the station, the Awesome Two was there.
People were telling me how the tapes made it’s way into the UK scene and that’s how they knew about Afrika Islam and Donald D, from cassette tapes making it’s way into Europe! We’re not knowing that what we’re doing is influencing people in other parts of the world. Now Peanut Butter Wolf wants to take all of when I was rhyming on the Zulu Beats show over Afrika Islam’s beatbox and put it on vinyl. [laughs]
Where were you getting your records from?
At that time there were no record pools so we bought the records ourselves. We supported the culture. Zulu Beat is ’83, so there weren’t that many rap records out, a handful of groups. It wasn’t like 1985 when there were so many rap records all over the place.
Have you got a favorite moment from the show?
Wow. The first time I ever rhymed on the radio, that was an incredible moment, because that’s the first time my voice ever was on a radio show. All my friends calling down to the station, congratulating me, and just getting [acknowledgement] from all my peers – whether it was Melle Mel or Rodney C or Sha-Rock, any of them – just saying they heard me on the radio. That was a surreal moment. Or just having our friends come hang out at the station. Frosty Freeze from the Rock Steady Crew was a real good friend of mine, and I always said he was the hip-hop almanac. He knew everything about hip-hop. Not just the b-boying part but the records, the rhymes, the breakbeats, the DJs. He was a hip-hop historian, I always loved that dude. He would come down to the station just to be around it and just love it.
And just learning so much music from Afrika Islam. All the breaks he played helped me, as an MC, to not just rhyme over one style of music. It taught many of us from that era. Whether it was Latin music, whether it was Calypso, whether it was rock, James Brown, it showed us we could rhyme over many styles of music.
Did you have people helping out on the phones at the station?
Nah, we did it ourselves. I was the phone guy. When I wasn’t on the microphone rhyming I was answering the calls. I would relay people’s shout outs, I’d write ’em down and then I’d give them to Afrika Islam and he would say ’em on the radio show, or sometimes I said ’em or maybe sometimes Red Alert may have said it. It was a team effort there.
That was before I made records, but how I got my first record deal was through the Zulu Beat radio show. Vincent Davis came down to the station ‘cos he wanted us to play his songs, and he asked was I willing to make a record? I wanted to make a record so bad, and I wanted to always be part of the Celluloid family – Phase II had that song ‘The Roxy,’ and I love that record; DST had his records; and then there was Fab Five Freddy with ‘Change The Beat’ – I would always ask DST and he was like, ‘Yo, don’t worry. I’ll check with Bernard,’ who at the time was the owner of the record company. But then Vintertainment beat ’em to the punch.
I had never been in a recording studio in my life. My whole thing was, ‘I want Afrika Islam to be part of this, we’re the group.’ But when I went to the studio Chuck Chillout was there. Vincent was like, ‘I have this idea of a group called The B-Boys – you and Chuck Chillout.’ Afrika Islam said, ‘Go make a hit record, make me proud!’ He gave me his blessing so I went in the studio and recorded those first records with Chuck Chillout. At that time period in hip-hop we said rhymes that were so long, so when Vincent said, ‘Can you make a rhyme in eight bars?’ I was like, ‘What is that?’ [laughs] He said, ‘Make your lyrics about everyday life in hip-hop.’ Up until then, I never had anyone tell me how to make raps, so I wrote ‘Rock The House’ about everything I see.
In the beginning I didn’t really like the music of it, because i was listening to all the beats coming out of Celluloid. The song that K-Rob and Rammellzee had [‘Beat Bop’] was one of the main instrumentals that I rhymed over on the Zulu Beat show, so I was hoping to hear music like that with a bassline in it and some kinda instruments. The Vintertainment stuff didn’t have none of it, it was just a beat! We kinda went with it, not knowing that years later it would become one of the most sampled phrases in music history. Within the b-boy culture, it was a big breakdance record.
Why did you the Zulu Beat show finish?
WHBI started changing their format. I guess they felt it wasn’t bringing in enough to their station. All the shows ended – the World Famous Supreme Team, Awesome Two show – everyone started looking for something else to do.
When did Brother B get involved?
After we did ‘Rock The House’ Vince asked me, ‘Do you have any other friends that MC?’ I had another guy named Original Mark that lived right across the street from me, in the same building as Raheim from the Furious Five. I brought him down to the studio and we did another version of ‘Rock The House’ where we went back and forth, kinda like how Run-DMC rapped, and then we did a rap on ‘Cuttin’ Herbie.’ Those songs were never released by the label, Original Mark didn’t last. By this time, Chuck Chillout had left the group and decided to do his solo thing.
I always liked interacting with other MCs on stage, going back and forth. Brother B came to mind, we used to always rap at a lot of the jams. We called Brother B, he was at work and he auditioned right over the phone for Vincent Davis. We recorded ‘Stick Up Kid’ and during the session I was in the recording booth, waiting for the engineer to start the music, I started rhyming some of the ‘Girls’ lyrics. Vincent Davis was like, ‘What is that? You need to go home and write a whole song in that style!’ I gave Brother B some parts to say and the b-side became the big song of that twelve inch.
‘Girls – Part 2’ had all those different coloured vinyls too.
He made all these different coloured vinyls, which at that time was unseen. Everyone was trippin’ over, ‘Yo, do you have the blue? Do you have the yellow? The clear?’ What’s funny is I hated the beat. We were just rhyming over a kick drum and a hi-hat, and I was telling Vince, ‘Why don’t we rhyme off the part of the chorus?’ ‘Cos that was the full beat. But he was like, ‘Nah, those lyrics are so crazy I want people to concentrate on the lyrics!’ We still wasn’t satisfied with the beat, so when it came time to do ‘Girls – Part 2’ and he had the same beat we was really heated. We didn’t know the music business so we didn’t have much say about it. Being that we didn’t have a DJ, that’s when we brought in Master T. I mention his name on ‘Girls – Part 2’ but that’s Chuck Chillout scratching. Master T became our live show DJ.
How long did the group last?
‘Girls’ blew up big, and Afrika Islam invited me to go to Los Angeles with him in 1985. He had an extra ticket and that’s the first time I met Ice-T. That’s the first time I get to see how LA’s gettin’ down. I’m at the parties, I’m seeing Shabba Doo and all these guys I saw in the movie [Breakin’] and the b-boys are dancing off ‘Rock The House’! I’m hearing the DJ’s play ‘Cuttin’ Herbie’ and I’m buggin’ out! ‘This is music is over here in LA?’ I’m playing a cassette tape of ‘Girls’ and ‘Stick Up Kid’ and everybody’s buggin’ out. The songs ain’t even out yet, and Ice-T and everyone are like, ‘This is some crazy, next-level music! Your lyrics are crazy!’
I get a call from my mom and she’s like, ‘The record label is looking for you.’ I didn’t tell nobody I was going to LA. Back then you could go buy a ticket at the airport and get on a plane – there was no book in advance – so I didn’t tell the company anything, I just went to LA. They were like, ‘You have to get back to New York, this record is taking off! We’ve got all of these shows lined up, we need to have y’all rehearsing.’ So I get back on the plane real quick and head back to New York.
He [Vincent] was like, ‘We’re gonna do shows with The Boogie Boys, Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick, Sparky-D.’ So now we’re out doing shows with all these other groups, and I’m like, ‘Wow!’ Even when we did ‘Rock The House,’ me and Chuck did a few shows with New Edition and LL Cool J in ’83, but when ‘Girls’ came out it took us to different cities where we were performing the song.
That show money must have been nice.
At that time no one knew the business, all those artists from the early eighties didn’t make no money off their records, it was all from the shows, ‘cos nobody knew about publishing. If I knew about publishing I’d be rich just off them sampling ‘Rock The House.’ It was still, ‘We havin’ fun!’ Until people started saying, ‘You need to get a lawyer!’ I think Russell Simmons was the first one to approach us for management. We didn’t realize Vincent Davis was like our manager, our road manager, our lawyer – he controlled everything – so when he saw Russell Simmons was trying to get at us he shut it down. He didn’t want us interacting with none of them, like after a show stay inside the dressing room. He didn’t want nobody getting into our ears, talking to us. I think it would have made Vintertainment even bigger if we were affiliated with RUSH Management.
The big thing was to be on those tours with Fresh Fest, and it never happened because Vincent Davis kept us in this closed area where we couldn’t branch out. We didn’t even know our music was big in the UK! The first time I found out about was 1989 when I toured with Rhyme Syndicate in Europe and people are asking me, ‘How come you didn’t perform none of your b-boy songs?’
At what point did you decide to break away from Vintertainment?
We did ‘Girls – Part 2’ and then we were supposed to record a full album. Joeski Love came to the label and he recorded the ‘Pee Wee Dance’ and the song became big. Vincent Davis kinda forgot about us, he went to California and he made the video of the ‘Pee Wee Dance’ and Ice-T and all of those guys are in the video. Doug E.Fresh was on the label at the same time, when he did ‘The Original Human Beat Box’ and then he was having problems. We were having problems, Brother B started stressing out and did his own thing. None of the artists were truly supported.
I was looking for something else to do, and then a label called Rockin’ Hard Records approached me and I did one record for them called ‘Outlaw,’ the b-side ‘Dope Jam’ in ’87. I recorded a song with Bronx Style Bob and the members of Bon Jovi called ‘Are You Ready For Freddy,’ which was supposed to be on the soundtrack for Nightmare On Elm Street. The movie [people] loved the song, ‘The song is incredible!’ But they wanted a bigger name to do the song so they took me and Bronx Style Bob off and put the Fat Boys in our place. We thought the Fat Boys would go in and do their own version – they ended up doing the version that me and Bronx Style Bob wrote.
’87 was the year that I got the call that Scott La Rock was killed, and I things was getting kinda crazy now. I was looking for a change. Islam had moved out to Los Angeles, was doing things with Ice-T. They called to find out the situation with Scott and through this conversation Ice mentioned to me planing Rhyme Syndicate.
Was it a big culture shock moving to LA?
It was much different than the Bronx! It was sunshine, palm trees, no train – and the beaches! I loved it, it was relaxing to me. They had rappers there, but it wasn’t as advanced as we we had in New York, so I thought maybe I can help build the culture. I had a history of making music, being part of the Zulu Nation, so I fitted in well. We recorded the Rhyme Syndicate Comin’ Through compilation album. Def Jef was originally meant to be on that album.
Did you bring in Lord Finesse or was that through the New Music Seminar?
My DJ at the time, DJ Chilly D, was one of the founding members of D.I.T.C. So through him I met Finesse, Diamond, A.G., Showbiz. Then when we was at the New Music Seminar we were just hanging out. That was an event that you had to be at at that time period in hip-hop. That’s also how we met Bango, ‘cos Bango was battling [Grandmaster] Caz. Ice-T was like, ‘He’s crazy! We’re gonna put him down with the Syndicate.’ Not even knowing that Bango was originally in a group with DJ Lord Jazz from Lords of the Underground.
My favorite song of yours from that period was ‘Hell Raiser.’
That was a non-album b-side. When it was time to release the next single, which was ‘Notorious,’ the management was asking me what I wanted to put as the b-side. That’s one of my favorite songs, with the Steve Miller [sample] and the ‘Funky Drummer.’ I was like, ‘”Fly Like An Eagle”? let’s go!’ Afrika Islam had all those beats and I was writing those lyrics while we were travelling on the tour bus. After that tour, Ice-T approached me and he said, ‘You can come out on the tour with me to Europe or you can stay in LA and record the album.’ I wind up staying in LA so I think he took King Tee and Bango to Europe. So we recorded the album Notorious.
What inspired you to write ‘F.B.I.’?
At that time, especially in New York, the crack epidemic was really outta control. It was destroying so many lives and communities throughout America. You had a few groups making songs about it – Public Enemy ‘Night of the Living Baseheads,’ Brand Nubian had ‘Slow Down’ – so I had my tale on it. I was inspired because unfortunately Brother B had started using drugs, that also played a part of the B-Boys not being a group anymore. When I sat down and started writing the song, the first verse was about him. It wasn’t to bring him down, I was trying to show the effects of what this drug can do to you and help him get his life back. He thanked me for reaching out to him like that. The second verse was about an ex-girlfriend of mine who got caught-up into smoking crack, and from there the song evolved around people in sport, the rich people, that were all smoking crack. I didn’t think the song was gonna be big, but ‘F.B.I.’ was the first song that KDAY started playing.
You also did ‘I’m Gonna Smoke Him’ for the Trespass soundtrack.
That’s when I was recording the Let The Horns Blow album. That song was written around Ice Cube‘s character in that movie, he was always angry. The guys that were on the soundtrack watched the film before it came out to get pointers on the movie. The movie was originally called Looters but the name was changed because of the Rodney King uprising.
The Let The Horns Blow album was released in Europe, and the European version was different than the American version because I had to go back and remove samples off the album. I was in the studio at the time the Rodney King thing happened, so there was a curfew in LA. Here we are at night, going to the studio, and the national guard are thinking that we’re looting.
I added ‘I’m Gonna Smoke Him’ to the American version, ‘cos the European version doesn’t have that song on it, but it has the interludes and everything that I had on it. I’ve got a video for ‘I’m Gonna Smoke Him’ but it was never released. Ice Cube and Ice-T released the video from that movie and then the second video was Gang Starr. My video was supposed to be the third video but then Ice-T’s ‘Cop Killa’ thing happened and Warner Bros got rid of their whole rap department. The Let The Horns Blow album in America, they just put it out. There was never no promotion on it, the video was never completed. I still have it on VHS tape [laughs]. At that point I decided I just wanted to produce music for film and television. QDIII was telling me he did the theme song for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air so I started doing music for films, FOX Sports and stuff.
How long have you lived in Europe?
At first I was going to stay in Japan and then I came to Italy in 2001 and I started hanging out with some of the Italian guys that were doing hip-hop and I put out an EP that was called B.R.O.N.X. I ended up just staying.