MY MUSIC...MY LIFE...PART 1

I began spinning back in the early 80's in Newark, New Jersey. As child and witness of early hiphop and its' humble beginnings, I came up in an era of "doin what you gotta do" to survive in this world. I came from a single parent household with my strong Haitian mother raising me and my younger brother, Joe. Thanks to the watchful eyes of my mom, I grew up always doing the right thing...never did drugs (that didn't come until later in high school) never got locked up and certainly kept good people around me. My running buddies at the time were Leslie & Jean-Marc Jeudy, two fellow Haitian cats that had a strict old-fashioned mom. Man was she strict!! They could never wear popular clothing or have the popular haircuts. I felt pretty lucky that my mom was less stringent and definitley alot more easygoing. Maybe it was because she was alot younger than Ms. Jeudy...I dunno. Our other boy was Eric "Fu" Freeman who lived not too far from us. Fu was such a cool cat and I am still touch with all them cats today. We lived in the section of Newark called Vailsburg (affectionately kown as Hoodaville). We did what normal kids would do at that time...play basketball..go to the parties...and chase girls.

At that time, Hiphop began to really break out in a BIG way. We would watch Soul Train and shit like that and there would always be at least one or two cats on there that would be poppin', lockin', and breakdancin. We studied those moves and we started doing it. Jean-Marc was always better than all of us I thought, however, we all studied moves and started to breakdance and battle and at the parties. Back then it was all about house parties until we got to high school. We listened to one particular radio station at the time...92 WKTU!!!! Man oh man! We reveled in the mixes of Aldo Marin, Jellybean Benitez, and cats like that. They did the serious pause button-style mixes and songs like "The Message", Rapper's Delight", "Planet Rock", "Numbers", "Play At Your Own Risk", and "IOU" were in heavy rotation. "Planet Rock" in particular set it off every time for the poppers and breakers at all the jams...It was always ON when them joints came through the speakers. And then we discovered turntables....

To be continued.....