With the Wyandanch High School football squad
(from Rakim's Instagram page).
This post takes the site full circle in a sense. As some readers might remember, the famous live recording of Kid Wizard Rakim, Biz Markie, Grandmaster BMC (aka DJ Belal) and MC Chilly Dawg at Wyandanch High School was featured in one of our earliest posts (the fourth to be exact). Today, we have a much, much longer recording from that day.
The jam kicks off with DJ Fantasy and a rotating cast of MCs. It's tough to make out all the names, but one I did recognize called by the DJ (whether an audience member or someone who steps up to the mic) was Teddy Ted, who may have been a former rhyme partner of Ra's from his day's in the Almighty 5 Mcs. At any rate, most of these rappers from the beginning of the jam sound cut from the old Busy Bee body-rock cloth of the early '80s. However, at around the 32:40 mark Biz Markie takes the mic (yes, there is about 30 minutes of Biz before the "main event").
With the Milton L. Olive Middle School basketball team
(same source as above).
Biz's opening routine is so raunchy for the time it's shocking to think it was actually performed at a high school without the whole show being shut down. (Then again, remember Belal saying they basically turned the high school into a house party, so this fits that narrative perfectly.) The Diabolical one follows this up with a long beat-boxing set, and MC Chilly Dawg joins in around 49 minutes in. Now keep in mind, all of this comes before the cypher featuring Kid Wizard Rakim. He comes in around 55:30 on this recording. There's also some more beatboxing by Biz and an early performance of "Make the Music With Your Mouth Biz," both of which come after the Rakim cypher, so you're getting a bunch of additional gems in this longer recording.
Below, I've included two streams: one from YouTube, one from Mixcloud. The latter sounds much louder, but those of us in the U.S. can't rewind it due to licensing issues, so take your pick.
This concludes Long Island Rap Blog's 5th Annual Rakim Week. I hope you've enjoyed the sights and sounds. Thanks again to all of the creators, as well as the original listeners who had the good sense to record what they were hearing for posterity.
EDIT: The previous YouTube recording has been taken down. Another version has been uploaded by Tape Deck Wreck, but it doesn't look like the time stamps above match up with it.
Last year, Rakim was honored at the 50th Annual Wyandanch Family Day. In recognition of his contributions to hip-hop and the community, Rakim received a Legacy Award and had his name placed on the town's "Wyandanch Welcomes You" sign. Also present at the event were Eric B., Alvin Toney (the producer/manager who introduced Eric B. to Rakim), Eugene "Groovy Groove" Allen, Darryl "Chill" Mitchell and many others. In addition to the award ceremony and other regular festivities, the day featured performances by Groove B. Chill, Das EFX and Nice & Smooth.
Below you'll find a number of photos from the day (several courtesy of Dre's House TV), some videos posted by DJ Maniack, and finally an interview with Rakim by Brittany Marie.
This live performance by Biz Markie, DJ Grandmaster BMC and MC Chilly Dawg (of Groove B. Chill), and Kid Wizard Rakim was ripped from a tape owned by Long Island MC/DJ Oxygen and uploaded to the Old School Hip Hop Tapes blog by that site's owner, Dutch. Much respect due to both of them for preserving this piece of Long Island hip-hop history. To help ensure that it doesn't get lost in dead link land, I've taken the (off)liberty of re-ripping Dutch's stream and posting it to Soundcloud, so now you can once again download the performance audio by going to https://soundcloud.com/longislandrap/biz-markie-rakim-wyandanch-1985. Rakim gets on the mic at the 5:06 mark and drops his famous "7 MCs" line at 6:55. As for the picture above, that's Rakim, front and center, playing the baritone saxophone at Wyandanch High School. (I wish I had some recordings of that too!) The photo comes to us direct from the Facebook page of Ra's classmate Daniel Quintana, who appears in the back right.
