being feared by the establishment in the first place. But they might not have been such a tight unit if it hadn’t been for the hundred square miles that form Long Island.
Like any section of the eternally influential New York City, Long Island has produced its fair share of famous sons and daughters. Among them are the Murphy brothers, Eddie and Charlie; the basketball player Dr J and Mariah Carey. Long Island’s other musical offspring include classic hip-hop pioneers like De La Soul and Rakim. Newer artists include Chrisette Michelle and Nyckz. But would it be too outlandish to claim that PE are the sixth borough’s most important band?
Long Island certainly owes a debt to hip-hop’s version of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, if only for the simple fact that, were it not for them, it would never have become known as ‘Strong Island’ (soon after PE made their presence felt, ‘Strong Island’ by JVC Force hit big on its way to becoming a hip-hop classic) and, as a result, wouldn’t have been able to attain the local pride that previously only existed elsewhere across the rotten apple. New York, like any other city, has its own localised regional rivalries. Such a nickname – similar to Brooklyn’s Crooklyn, Money Earnin’ Mount Vernon or, perhaps most famously, the Boogie Down Bronx – was needed because Long Island was, and (to a degree) still is, perceived as ‘soft and country’ by other New Yorkers. It has a reputation as a quiet suburban place. It’s the place you go to escape the everyday grind and grit of the city. Long Island’s reputation as a ‘nice place’ meant that those parents who had high hopes for their children flocked there. Such a move has always held particular appeal for ambitious young black couples who wanted to escape the trials and tribulations in places like Brooklyn and Queens. Years before Carlton Ridenhour became Chuck D, the incendiary lead rapper of PE, his parents were one such couple.
Long before they considered making Long Island home Mr and Mrs Ridenhour resided in the black cultural and business mecca of Harlem. ‘They lived on 151st, they’re both from the same block and their birthdays are a day apart,’ Chuck says. The harsh realities of supporting a family meant that they had to leave uptown and up sticks to Queens where Mrs Ridenhour’s parents lived. The support from the extended family helped seal the deal. Consequently, Carlton Ridenhour was born in Flushing, Queens, on August 1, 1960. The future sports fan was born right next to Shea Stadium. Coincidentally, Richard Griffin, aka Professor Griff, who would grow to become PE’s Minister of Information as well as one of their most controversial figures and best producers, was born on exactly the same day. But unlike Chuck, his family already lived in Long Island.
‘Queens was affordable for a young black couple. I mean, my parents were young so they moved around… in affordable housing,’ Chuck hastens to add. ‘We moved to about eight or nine places in Queens before we settled in one spot.’ Chuck’s grandparents’ house and the infamous Queensbridge Projects, the biggest housing projects in the entire United States, were just two of these eight or nine spots. But Chuck’s family eventually left Queens altogether. It’s tempting to wonder for a split second what kind of hip-hop Chuck might have made had he grown up in Queensbridge. But he was just nine when his family moved out to Long Island. It was a move that wasn’t popular with the young Chuck. Leaving Queens for the country was a stark and refreshing contrast, even though it was only a short drive across an imaginary line.
‘I remember clearly thinking, “Ohh, we about to move to the country,” and then all of a sudden after a fifteen-minute drive we were in Roosevelt. The only major difference is a border.’ The short journey wasn’t the only thing that surprised nine-year-old Chuck. ‘I was in fourth or fifth grade, so I just thought it was incredible that we were coming to a town with a house that we could call our own. It was an influx of white folks moving out and black folks moving in.’ During the second half of the twentieth century, America watched many formerly predominantly white towns and cities slowly become black. ‘All of the black folks came from all of the other parts of New York City. That migration just happened ’68, ’69, ’70, ’71, ’72. My people moved out ’69.’
In the years immediately following Martin Luther King’s assassination in April 1968 Roosevelt changed from being a mixed town into a virtually all-black town. ‘It was a little tense,’ Keith Shocklee, an integral member of the legendary Bomb Squad production team, remembers. His family had also moved to Long Island after residing in Harlem. ‘It was a small town on the brink of just wildness. I had a lot of white friends growing up. And all of ’em moved out.’
Whether or not this ‘white flight’ affected Hofstra University’s Afro-American studies programme (some refer to it as the Afro-American experience) in any way is debatable. The Afro-American studies programme gave young black kids from all over Long Island (participants were aged roughly between nine and eleven) a chance to learn about black history and knowledge of self. The stuff they would never be taught at school. Their teachers were former Black Panthers, members of the Nation of Islam and, as Chuck puts it, ‘highly conscious community folk’. Those summer programmes meant Long Island would prove to be a great place to develop the consciousness of the children who would grow up to become PE. It also gave them a chance to become familiar with each other at a young age, although this wasn’t necessary for everyone. Griff ’s house was situated right behind Hank and Keith Boxley’s (they were yet to adopt ‘Shocklee’). So they obviously knew each other. Keith also played little league football with William Drayton, aka Flavor Flav, PE’s court jester. ‘I don’t know how he did it,’ Keith says laughing. ‘His body frame was so small.’ The potent combination of his musical and vocal skills mixed with his hectic personal life has made Flav PE’s most famous member, particularly in more recent years.
A combination of grants and donations meant the programme had access to buses, lunches and other necessities. ‘That was a big thing in the mid seventies,’ Keith says. ‘That opened us up.’ As the seventies progressed, the programme moved from Hofstra to nearby Adelphi University. ‘That’s where I happened to meet Eddie Murphy for the first time,’ Chuck recalls. ‘This was when he first moved to Long Island.’ The Murphy family came from Brooklyn.
Long Island is made up of more than a few small towns, and it’s worth noting that many of the main players that would go on to form PE came together in Freeport or Roosevelt. It goes without saying that none of them lived in the Hamptons. Roosevelt and Freeport, according to Freeport’s Harry Allen, a journalist, photographer and broadcaster who has been a member of PE’s sprawling extended crew since their college days are ‘kind of like sister small towns, especially the part that I lived in, the black part, the north part’.
A few members hail from further afield. Johnny Juice comes from The Bronx, the borough that mothered this rap shit, but left the projects to move to a house in Uniondale, Long Island, when he was thirteen. Similarly to Chuck, he was initially sceptical about Strong Isle. ‘When you live in The Bronx, you live in the projects and there’s a lot of people around,’ he says. ‘Then you move to the suburbs and nobody’s on the street. I was looking around like, “Where’s everybody at?”’
James Bomb, an integral member of the S1Ws, was raised in rural Pahokee, Florida, a small town of around 6500 people. As well as being one of the most important reminders that PE are very different to your average rap group, the S1Ws (S1W being short for Security of the First World) form a human rebuttal to the insulting term ‘Third World’ and are one more element of the legendary PE live show. James Bomb moved to Long Island aged twenty. Tellingly, he had benefitted from the Panthers’ lunch and breakfast programmes while growing up in Florida. The impact this had had on his young mind constitutes one more reason why PE would become a lot more than the first rap crew to instill some local pride in their home town. They didn’t fashion themselves after the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense for nothing.
