Public Enemy #2: "We're Down with the DJs"

It's a WBAU radio promo cut by MCs Chuckie Dee and Flavor, it hit the airwaves years before Yo! Bum Rush the Show, it was played in regular rotation by DJ Doctor Dre, and it's NOT "Public Enemy #1." It's "We're Down with the DJs," a track that's been online since at least February 23, 2008 but was recorded well over 20 years prior. The Slam Jamz website dates "We're Down with the DJs" to 1985, when Flav and Chuck were hosting back-to-back Saturday night radio shows on WBAU. The MC Flavor Show would air from 10:00-11:30PM, and the Super Spectrum Mixx Show with Chuckie Dee, Butch Cassidy, Wizard K-Jee and DJ Mellow Dee would come on from 11:30PM-1:00AM. Afterward, they might be heard at the Twilites Nite Club aka Entourage in Bay Shore. (Above, Chuck holds a Spectrum City jacket up outside the club.)

Slam Jamz also tells us this record was cut at 510 South Franklin studios, the home base of Pubic Enemy and the Bomb Squad. While comparable to the dissonant style of the latter, the beat on "We're Down with the DJs" is actually "Close (To the Edit)" by Art of Noise. "This promo was typical of what [WBAU] had in supplementing the records out at the time," says the Slam Jamz site. "DJ Doctor Dre flew this into rotation just as he did the Public Enemy number One promo the year earlier. DMC of RUN-DMC still says this tape was an influence. The names mentioned are all DJs who contributed to the pioneering WBAU radio scene." Among those DJs shouted out in the track's chorus are: Wizard K-Jee, Mellow Dee, Doctor Dre, Rusty J, Butch Cassidy, Hank Shocklee and of course MC Flavor and Chuckie Dee.

Read more about WBAU in Jesse Serwer's "Bomb the Suburbs" article from a 2006 issue of Wax Poetics and stream "We're Down with the DJs" below.