Come to Life
The mid to late seventies would see New York slowly but surely become hooked by the last great cultural movement of the twentieth century. While it was still very much a ghetto secret for much of the seventies, by the end of the decade hip-hop fever was spreading everywhere. Like rock’n’roll in the late forties or soul music in the early fifties, hip-hop was still very much in its infancy, but the vibe was unmistakeable. Hip-hop probably fascinated its first era of fans more than any subsequent generation. It would never be this fresh and new again. It was into this that the Spectrum City crew came to life.
The first incarnation of Spectrum City consisted of Hank and Keith Shocklee and Richard Griffin. But they took their original name from the childhood partnership Keith and Griff had formed. ‘We used to call ourselves the KGs, Keith and Griff.’ Keith recalls. ‘Eddie Murphy used to come DJ with me too. He used to come to my parties and get on the mic and say his thing in high school.’
The budding mobile DJ crew didn’t name themselves ‘Spectrum’ until 1976 when the trio were in their teens. The ‘City’ was added for marketing reasons on WBAU radio around 1984. Operations were based at their local youth centre. They managed to convince a lot of the local youths that a radio station was housed inside, although that wasn’t strictly accurate. But music was being played in the place, courtesy of some old turntables, a mixer and some speakers. It also meant that their mothers didn’t have to worry about them running the streets and falling prey to the many temptations therein.
When Griff left Long Island to join the services, the Shocklee brothers continued doing parties, and watched their local business grow as time progressed. ‘Around our way we was just picking up from what the guys were doing up in The Bronx and Brooklyn,’ says Keith. ‘Brooklyn had a lot of mobile DJs when we was growing up.’ Other popular DJs in Long Island included DJ Hig, whose little brother Brian Higgins would eventually become Leaders of the New School’s Charlie Brown.
Keith was also making mixtapes and earning a couple of dollars doing beats for local groups as early as 1976. ‘A lot of mobile DJs were making mixtapes but I had to make special ones.’ Cos I used to make them for different people, cats would come to me like, “I don’t want the same records that you put on his.” Or it would be, “I don’t want the same records played the same way. I want mine, my own unique mixtape.”’ Consequently, he would spend literally hours in his basement making sure his stuff was on point.
Mobile DJs became popular because in 1970s New York racism was still very prominent and certain things were understood if not spoken. ‘Most of the clubs was white clubs and, you know, they had the white DJs playing there,’ Keith says. After a while, a lot of ghetto celebs began to pass through their events. Everybody from Grandmaster Flash to Grandmaster Caz came by. Chuck first saw Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel aged eighteen at Roosevelt Roller Rink.
He was overwhelmed. ‘I had no words, believe me. They came out to Long Island and tore that shit down. I couldn’t even believe it, man. It was one of those things where I said, “Shit, I don’t know about rapping,’ cos nobody in the world could be better than this.” So that kept me away from rapping. Fo’ real, I’d just never heard a dude so good. And Flash was a DJ that was just never, never, ever off beat. And these two guys together? There was nothing like that DJ and that emcee, man. They were a million miles ahead of anyone else in my mind.’
Nearly ten years after the Ridenhours moved to Long Island, when he was eighteen, Chuck connected meaningfully with Hank Shocklee, and their friendship was born. This was the first crucial meeting that would eventually lead to the formation of Public Enemy. But before Chuck linked up with Hank’s Spectrum City DJ-for-hire collective as their emcee, he had to pay his dues and watch from afar. Like a large number of Long Island youths, Chuck was already a fan of Hank Shocklee and Spectrum.
Chuck first hooked up with Hank during the early months of 1979. At this time he had returned to Adelphi University, one of the spots that used to host Afro-American studies, to study graphic design. Besides sports, graphic design and the burgeoning hip-hop culture were his main obsessions. Strangely, Chuck has his mother to thank for creating the circumstances. ‘Really, my moms hired Spectrum,’ he admits with a laugh. Chuck’s mother was involved with the Roosevelt Community Theater, and they were looking for people to play music. Hank and Spectrum fitted the bill perfectly.
In late seventies Long Island, if you needed some DJs for a function of whatever kind, you could do a lot worse than the Spectrum crew. Keith emphatically insists, ‘From the beginning we were DJs and we knew how to rock a crowd.’ Although they wouldn’t start playing even a few rap records until the eighties began to loom on the horizon, they did have ‘tons of r’n’b records, that had a great vibe and a great funkiness to it’.
So while the likes of Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five were the first to blow Chuck’s mind, Hank and Spectrum were largely responsible for making Chuck decide to form a lasting relationship with this new music. Like many, Chuck was amazed at the way hip-hop DJs used their turntables to extend certain sections of records to make them last longer than their creators had intended. At the time, ‘Galaxy’ by the LA-based funk and Latin group War was one of his favourite records. One night, while in a basketball gym watching Hank DJ at a local night called Higher Ground, Chuck became more and more stupefied by how long his favourite song was lasting. Of course Hank was just back-to-backing, or mixing and blending the break section of the record, extending the appropriate section for as long as he saw fit. Not so much of a big deal today. But at the time, that was some shit. ‘It was the same record I liked but no words came in. I was bugging out like, “How big is this record?” Ain’t no words came in. It just played on and on till the break of dawn,’ Chuck says with a ‘those were the days’ look. ‘When I found out that two turntables, two records did this? And it was a mixer in between? That’s when I got bitten by the hip-hop bug.’
By this time emcees were just beginning to make their mark and the subsequent rise of their popularity would eventually see them become the main attraction at the DJs’ expense. Technology played a part in this too. The echo chambers used by Keith never failed to get the crowd hype. ‘That was like, “You’re listening to the sound, sound, sound, of the K, K, K, G, G, G”. That style was new to people. Words repeating on and on and on and music is changing in the background. That was sorta new.’
‘Watching Hank Shocklee and Spectrum was riveting, like seeing a band,’ Chuck says. ‘But they didn’t have an emcee.’ This is the gap Chuck would eventually fill. The heads in his neighbourhood were perhaps the first to notice that Chuck was blessed with a voice tailor-made for oratory and performance, and encouraged him to explore these talents further. But another skill would enable him to break the ice with Hank. Chuck was, after all, serious about graphic design. So after one of Spectrum’s parties, Chuck decided to approach the local hero he’d been watching from a distance. Even if the thought of becoming Spectrum’s emcee existed in the back of his mind, he kept it there, and approached Hank on a design tip. Chuck was specific about the kind of art he wanted to produce. He wasn’t about graffiti. Kids did that, and he was already in college. But a combination of graffiti and commercial art was cool.
‘I was also into flyers,’ he says, ‘so after one function, I used to go to all the functions, I approached Hank and also EJ the DJ.’ Everett James was Hank’s business partner. In years to come he would share PE’s headquarters on 510 South Franklin Avenue. But for now, Chuck’s main goal was to persuade Hank and EJ that the reason they were sitting outside of a failed gig was because they didn’t have a flyer that was good enough to advertise their talents. ‘I said, “You guys are too good to not have a flyer nor an artist represent what you guys are doing.”’ This first attempt didn’t really bear much fruit. Chuck recalls, ‘They were on some “yeah okay… go away” type shit.’ Keith concurs: ‘My brother Hank was handing out some flyers and Chuck saw one of the flyers and said, “Yo man, your
