 |
"Mad rappers were coming up there, doing the same old
Sugar Hill Gang thing, but I came out with a cowboy hat
on, saying 'I'm the Outlaw of Funk.' Chuck introduced
me and said, 'We got Butch Cassidy here — I had never
called myself that before — and I ripped the microphone." |
The electro-funk roots of Long Island hip-hop, particularly as pioneered in Roosevelt, are further exposed in "On a DJ's Birthday," the 1984 single released by Aaron Allen aka Butch Cassidy on TNT Records. The record also provides some of the earliest writing credits for Riddenhour (a misspelling of Ridenhour aka Chuck D, later of Public Enemy) and Eric Sadler (later of the Bomb Squad). Side note: could that be Chuck D playing Butch's pops around the 2:30 mark?
Speaking about "On a DJ's Birthday," Allen once said, "I think I was one of the first ones to have a rap single out on Long Island." According to my limited records at least, he's right, as the only other singles I've written about that go that far back are Spectrum City's Lies/Check Out the the Radio and LL Cool J's "I Need a Beat." (Key-Matic's "Breakin In Space," which, like "DJ's Birthday," was written by Charles Casseus could also be considered an LI rap single from 1984 especially in that it featured the Wizard K-Jee aka Keith Shocklee on the turntables.)
Though Allen was still part of the Spectrum City crew at this time and appeared on their aforementioned single, he contends "'DJ's Birthday' had nothing to do with Spectrum." Instead, he says, "Charles Casseus said he had this idea so I wrote some lines to it, got a deal with TNT Records and put it out. I don't know how I even got that deal." Regardless of how it happened, it did. Some 35 years later, yours truly found this record sitting still shrinkwrapped in the singles section at Massapequa Park's Infinity Records (now carrying LIRR01, cough-cough), and it's a personal rip of that copy streaming below.
No comments:
Post a Comment