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 Scene
1:
New
York City – “Look, it’s Skribble! Skribble!” scream
a handful of teenage girls gathered in the unforgiving November
cold outside MTV’s Times Square studio. Nearby, a tattooed
man with dreadlocks and a kilt marches to the shrill bellow
of his bagpipe. As they flock toward Skribble, the giggling
teens beg for guest passes so they can see Korn, who are
soon expected to drop in for an on-air chat. Just once,
can a DJ get more respect than rock-n-roll’s biggest act?
Scene
2:
Clocking countless hours inside a Staten Island home studio,
Skribble and partner Anthony Acid pre-record the set for
MTV’s “Global Groove,” the hit show whose viewership exceeds
six million – just picture the entire city of Chicago on
the dancefloor. Upon noticing one of Skribble’s shirts lying
on the floor, Acid threatens to toss his ass out the window.
Can two DJ buddies – a hybrid of C+C Music Factory and The
Odd Couple – collaborate on beats and rhythms and still
live in harmony?
Scene 3:
In 1996, Hot 97’s Program Director, Steve Smith, offers
Skribble a job as host of the New York radio station’s “Saturday
Night Dance Party,” a four-hour live mix of hip hop and
house. Skribble jumps at the chance. How can a former body-poppin’,
Brooklyn B-boy raised on Erik B & Rakim and with little
passion for house music pull this off?
Scene
4:
New Music Seminar, 1994. New York’s Chippendales club. Industry
schmooze party. Stretch Armstrong is the scheduled DJ, but
he’s MIA. Skribble is present and accounted for. Former
Vice-President Dan Quayle once said that the key to American
foreign policy could be summed up with two words: “To always
be prepared.” Will Skribble be prepared? And if he is, how
will it alter his career?
Scene 5:
In 1993, Skribble leaves the Young Black Teenagers, a group
of young white teenagers signed to Hank Shocklee and Bill
Stephney’s short-lived S.O.U.L. label. They enjoyed a one-hit
wonder with “Tap the Bottle.” (While DJing that song live,
Skribble would shake a 40-ounce bottle filled with apple
juice to make it appear like malt liquor.) Why did Skribble
leave? Will his betrayed homies ever speak to him again?
For answers to all of these questions and more, refer to
the following pages.
DJ
Times: I think every DJ out there is thinking of the
same thing: How much freedom of music programming can you
possibly have on MTV’s “Global Groove”?
Skribble:
Well, when I first started, the programming was very mainstream.
But [Executive Vice President of Programming] Brian Graden
and the rest of the programming department have given me
the creative freedom, not to go overboard, but they do trust
my judgement. They know I’m in the clubs every night, so
they know that I know what the kids are dancing to. But
I also know we can’t go too far to the left, because we
still want those kids that want to hear “Mambo No. 5” –
and they’re out there. But [as for “Mambo No. 5”], I’ll
get the right mix for the show, like maybe I’ll play a white
label that works. You gotta still do that. I’m not at a
rave. I’m on TV, and that’s mainstream.
DJ
Times: So you’re in the position that most DJs are in:
You have to introduce radical ideas to a mainstream audience.
Skribble:
That’s it. You can teach the mainstream. People think that
MTV is cool, and they think if MTV is playing it, it must
be cool. It’s not that different than hip hop. When Young
MC was out, it was all bubblegum, and everybody loved it.
But then all of a sudden Cypress Hill came out, Naughty
by Nature came out, they were both mainstream. Mobb Deep
is mainstream. So what is mainstream? The whole idea is
to progress and change with the times. Educate. Educate.
It only takes a minute to teach somebody about change. But
on MTV you spoon feed, and if they like it, the spoon gets
bigger and bigger. Sometimes we’ll get shut down.
DJ Times: Do you mean MTV will shut you down?
Skribble: Not shut down. The cool thing here at MTV
is they encourage creativity, and everybody encourages everybody
else. They don’t want robots.
DJ
Times: I’m sure that your MTV exposure has helped you
book club gigs.
Skribble:
It’s ridiculous, for me personally. But even generally,
the DJ has been reborn. And I’m not saying that I’m responsible
for certain things, but people use DJs on their TV shows
now, and a lot of things are happening.
DJ Times: So a lot of these kids who come to see
you play out at clubs, they don’t know the real Skribble,
do they?
Skribble: A lot of the kids don’t know who I am,
they think I’m some mainstream cat that’s just up there
on TV playing records. They don’t know who I’ve worked with
or what I’ve done. And people who have only seen me on MTV,
and when they see me play live, some rave for 10,000 kids,
and play nothing but hardcore trance and I pound them, they’re
like, “We thought you were going to come and play some song
by Cher.”
DJ
Times: Let’s talk a little about who DJ Skribble is.
You’re a New York guy who buried his head in hip hop most
of his life, right?
Skribble:
I’ve been DJing since I was 11. I got the name Skribble
because I was into graffiti. In fact, I used to go bombing
with Joey Beltram. We used to have a crew when we were in
high school – he was in Queens and I was in Elmont, Long
Island. By the end of high school, I had gotten into The
Young Black Teenagers.
DJ Times: How did Young Black teenagers get together?
Skribble: ATA [Rodney Rivera] was my best friend
and First Born used to go out with my sister. And I was
supposed to just do music for the group, but then my manager
at the time, Gary, said he wanted me to be the DJ.
DJ
Times: And you were on Hank Shocklee’s label, right?
Skribble:
Yeah, I already knew Hank, and Chuck [D], and Dre because
they used to throw jams at the Roller Castle back in the
days of Spectrum City at [Adelphi University’s] WBAU – that’s
how I met Doctor Dre. I was 14-years-old, listening to the
whole Wildman Steve, Spectrum City Flava Flav show, everything.
Back then Chuck D was Chucky D and he used to read the news
on Dre’s “Operating Room.” It was the sickest thing. And
Flava was working for [Town of] Hempstead Sanitation Department,
doing the radio show. This was, like, 1983.
DJ
Times: They were playing electro and early hip hop?
Skribble:
Oh, forget about it. Dre was the first person to interview
Run-DMC on that type of level. And they played the whole
album on the show, and that’s how I had the album before
anybody else had it – we taped the whole thing. We were
in our school lunchroom blasting the hell out if it. That
was like a crazy great moment. And I used to pop, and the
other kids used to break, and we had a show called the Spinmasters,
and we did a show with the Disco Three, who later became
the Fat Boys. Crazy.
DJ Times: So, at that time, you weren’t behind the
decks – you were popping?
Skribble: I was so into hip hop. It was ridiculous.
The only thing I didn’t do was rhyme – I was writing, I
was DJing, I was b-boy down, in the true sense of what a
b-boy was. I lived it a lot as we grew up, and it was the
best time for hip hop, the late ’80s. I didn’t listen to
anything else. I was totally New York hip hop. Erik B and
Rakim, and earlier it was the Cold Crush tapes, the Fantastic
Five, all the crazy shit I had. I lived for it. There was
nothing else but that. Plus [what I was doing] was against
every Italian thing that I ever knew. When I moved into
Brooklyn, they didn’t like the hip hop too much.
DJ Times: Who was your DJing mentor?
 Skribble:
A friend of mine in Brooklyn, Squiggy. He was the local
DJ hero, doing all the parties, and I thought he was the
coolest. When I was 11, I asked my dad for turntables and
we couldn’t afford the crazy stuff – back then it was the
SLB-1, and SLB-10s. Those were the turntables you needed
to have. I had the SLB-100, with a straight arm, with the
rubber band, and if you pressed down too hard the plate
would stop because it would stop the motor, with an ELI
Mixer. I had to learn how to cut on that. It was just terrible.
You’d have to put so much weight on top of the needles.
But I’d practice with them in my room. I couldn’t afford
a sound system, and I didn’t know anything about sound,
so I took whatever radio I had and ripped speakers out of
old TVs and put them in little boxes and put all these little
speakers around. I had it all hooked up wrong, so I had
this crazy buzz and this crazy hum and I’d blow out speakers
because I didn’t know the difference between line and phono.
DJ
Times: DJing back then was obviously in its primitive
stage.
Skribble: Back then, there were no DJing tricks.
Most of the kids who are doing that crazy stuff today weren’t
even born – not to date myself, but it’s true. In 1984,
there were two people: Clark Kent and [EPMD’s] DJ Scratch,
and I bow down to them.
DJ
Times: Why was Clark Kent your idol?
Skribble:
His whole style and flair about him at that time. He was
also playing house and breaking into a lot of different
things. Back then, it wasn’t so much hip hop as it was everything
we could take – classics, breakbeat stuff. The DJ thing
was the key to the party. And then as I started to get older,
I met people like Kool Herc and Bambaataa, became close
with the Zulu Nation, and would spin at their anniversaries,
and then I hooked with Crazy Legs and the Rock Steady crew.
He put me in as a DJ. It was all these hip-hop things that
I was growing up with and then all of a sudden I was living
it. I used to go to Run-DMC shows, the “Raising Hell Tour,”
and now I know them and I work with them. I’m still a big
fan, so it’s the sickest thing to me. I’d be doing Zulu
Nation anniversaries and I’d start doing my tricks…
DJ
Times: What kind of DJing tricks?
Skribble:
It was the basics. Back then, it was all about speed – who
could go the fastest. It was “Good Times” flashing back
and forth and then cutting.
DJ
Times: I guess there was no transformer scratching back
then.
Skribble:
It was very primitive. Jazzy Jeff pretty much took that
scratch and brought it to the mainstream, him and Cash Money,
so they’re the two that I look to, and they changed the
game. Every year someone in the DMC would change the game
and made DJing more and more of what it became. When Cash
Money won in England, it was the transformer scratch that
did it. He came out and he did the get down-thing from LL
Cool J, “Call me a sucker boy, s-s-s-s-sucker boy,” and
then everybody went home and practiced that routine. And
then we came up with our own routines. Now the game is so
different.
DJ Times: That was the dawn of the turntablist.
Skribble: Yeah. I’m not a turntablist; I’m a DJ.
I have so much respect and admiration for the kids who are
doing [turntablism]. I came from a whole different time.
But I can cut, I can scratch, and I can still do battle
tricks.
DJ Times: What are some of your favorite battle tricks.
Skribble:
During the Young Black Teenagers, I was on tour with PE,
EPMD and The Afros, and I was doing shit behind my back,
under my leg, a little beat juggling. A lot of body tricks.
That was my forte: Skribble can do sick body tricks. And
then DJ Scratch gave me the idea, a long time ago, the rotation
thing, when we go around each other on the same turntables.
That was his thing. He gave that to us and I started doing
it with Slynke and I know the X-Men do it now, but it’s
a real old trick. We’d spin off each other. A lot of the
tricks are so old; you just have to re-invent them.
DJ
Times: You hardly ever see the body trick thing nowadays.
Skribble:
Now the body trick thing isn’t so big, because it’s
more about the art of cutting and scratching, and who can
cut and flare, one-cut flares, two-cut flares, crabs, orbits
and babies. Q-Bert and those guys have just re-invented
the whole thing. It’s so sick. I like to play, and in the
middle of my night I’ll get a little nuts and just do my
thing. That’s the difference between a turntablist and a
DJ. No disrespect to a turntablist, but you can’t put them
in a club for four hours and let them play. You put them
on stage there for 30 minutes and they’ll put your mouth
to the floor, but after that… I took pride in being able
to cut, scratch, blend and getting into all sorts of music.
DJ
Times: That’s one of the peculiar things about you:
you’re a hip-hop junkie who got into playing house music.
A real throwback.
Skribble:
I liked the old Todd Terry house, and then it started getting
all soulful and I got out of it. It was in and out for me,
flash in the pan, and then I went back into my hip hop thing,
and that was the whole party era, “Tap the Bottle,” “Jump
Around,” “Hip Hop Hooray,” that was a fun time for hip hop
and I was totally into that.
DJ
Times: You said the toughest thing you ever had to do
was to leave the Young Black Teenagers. Why?
Skribble: I knew it was time when we were going to
pick the second single from the second album. We had graduated
from four of us staying in one hotel room on tour, to Hotel
Nico. We wanted to go with a song “Blowing Up The Spot”
– and this is before the old school thing was big. This
was 1993, and Hank Shocklee wanted to release “Roll With
the Flava.” I was like, “What are you nuts? That’s stupid.”
But he had ways of manipulating stuff, and we knew the song
was not the one, but we wound up releasing “Roll With the
Flava.” I don’t know why they did a lot of the things they
did, honestly. There were a lot of poor decisions. It was
the typical first-group thing. We even signed our first
deal without any lawyers – we got a pack of Newports and
Puma sweats. Typical, first-group, let’s get jerked let’s
make a record. And we got royally screwed. In the end, the
group saw things one way and I saw things another way.
DJ
Times: It’s every hip-hop DJ’s dream to be in a rap
band.
Skribble:
It was weird, ’cause they kind of turned their backs on
me and for a long time they didn’t talk to me. I still don’t
speak to First Born. Camron, I speak to once in a while.
I guess they were thinking I’d fall flat on my face. There
I was, five years I was on the road and I was baling out
on it. Then it got really rough.
DJ Times: How tough did it get?
Skribble:
I had been living with First Born, in Brooklyn, and when
I left the group I had to leave his apartment. And there
are two types of Italian fathers: there’s the Italian father
who says that no matter what happens you can come home at
any time. Then there’s the other type. The other type says,
“Once you’ve flown the coop, you’ve flown the coop. Now
you make it.” I respect him for that. I respect him for
a lot of things that I didn’t know at the time.
DJ
Times: Sounds like a tough-love sort of thing.
Skribble:
Not really. He felt one way. He thought I should get a real
job. And I felt another way. I wanted to do music. I couldn’t
even think about doing anything else, which was weird. He
was a singer in a doo-wop group. Now he doesn’t even have
an identity – he’s Skribble’s father and he’s the proud
dad, which is great. But it was tough. I was living in my
apartment, and I didn’t have any dough, trying to get by.
I was making $75 to DJ in a club, any club, and I didn’t
care. I just knew that I had to bury myself in the streets
and in the clubs.
DJ Times: Were you getting club work in Manhattan?
Skribble:
I was DJing clubs in Long Island because I couldn’t get
gigs in Manhattan. I DJed every club imaginable on Long
Island.
DJ
Times: So industry-wise, your break came how?
Skribble:
It was at the New Music Seminar, and Stretch Armstrong was
supposed to DJ for an industry party at the old Chippendales.
For some reason, he couldn’t make it, and, thankfully, I
used to keep my records in the trunk of my car. I happened
to be at the right place at the right time, and that’s how
record companies [became aware of me]. If I was lucky, they
knew me as Skribble from the Young Black Teenagers – if
that. And they saw me do my tricks and stuff, some crazy
stuff, and people, I guess, were like, “He’s good.” And
then I started doing clubs in New York.
DJ
Times: Still all hip hop you’re playing at this point?
Skribble:
All hip hop. It wasn’t until I got on Hot 97 that I started
playing house music again – in, like, 1995. But before that
I started working at Big Beat Records, doing record promotion
and college radio.
DJ Times: How did you take to working at a record
label?
Skribble:
It was miserable. I loved to perform. I loved to DJ. I would
take a group out on the road, like Artifacts, and I’d end
up DJing for them. That part of it was cool. And I was still
doing all the Rock Steady stuff and Zulu Nation anniversaries,
and I was doing college radio at Hofstra and Adelphi – and
Dre and I were still good friends. And then me and Slynke
started doing stuff together, because he was getting better
and better.
DJ
Times: DJ Slynke is your partner in hip hop, right?
Skribble:
Yeah. Slynke used to come to a club called Industry
in Long Island, and he would just watch me DJ. I started
to teach him a lot of stuff and now he’s like a Q-Bert crazed
nasty – he’s that sick. He’s invented scratches. He’s an
amazing turntablist, but he can also play parties – although
he hates it ’cause he’d rather battle. He’s such a confident
DJ that he’ll say, “Give me two records that you used and
I’ll use them.” And he’ll adapt and do it. Actually, we
didn’t talk for a while, because when I left the Teenagers
he replaced me and I guess I felt a little betrayed by that.
But he had to do what he had to do, and now it’s great.
DJ
Times: You were doing some fill-in work at Hot 97.
Skribble: Yeah, I was doing stuff with Dre and he
let me fill in on the “Traffic Jam” in the morning, and
he asked me to do the final, final episode of “Yo MTV Raps.”
It was my first time on MTV. I DJed for Rakim and KRS-One
– they were freestyling. It was unbelievable. I got on Hot
97 after that. [Hot 97’s] Steve Smith asked me to do “Saturday
Night Dance Party,” which was a live broadcast from a club,
for four hours, from 10 to 2, hip hop and house. The only
problem was I didn’t know too much house music at that time.
DJ
Times: So you took the job at Hot 97, but you didn’t
know too much house music. Sounds like a problem.
Skribble:
Yes. I was good friends with Razor – I grew up with him
and had known him since he was 16, and he was the nastiest
house DJ. When I did my first “Saturday Night Dance Party”
on Hot 97, I bought him with me, because I didn’t know what
the hell I was going to do. He had all the house records
and he would hand me the records. I could mix, that was
the easy part, but I had no idea what to play. Even after
I started doing Hot 97, I still didn’t really like house
music.
DJ
Times: What was it about the music that you did not
like?
 Skribble:
I don’t know. I was so tunnel-vision to the hip hop thing
at the time, and then they took me to The Tunnel and that’s
when I heard Junior [Vasquez] play, New York-style. It was
just the sickest revelation of a night I ever had. That’s
when I realized there was a whole world to DJing that I
didn’t know about. That’s when I decided I wanted to do
both. It’s so cool because I’ve gotten to live two separate
lives. I’ve lived the hip-hop life and I’ve gotten to live
the whole dance life equally, and I have respect for both
sides. Usually, either you’re a hip-hop DJ or you’re a house
DJ, there’s no in-between. Also, the clubs are segregated,
too. If it was a house club, it had a little tiny hip-hop
room; if it was a hip-hop club, it had a little tiny house
room. Back in the early ’90s, it was different. It was everything.
DJ
Times: Like an outgrowth of Larry Levan, who’d play
The Clash and…
Skribble:
Yeah, like if you went to listen to Louie Vega, he would
play dance music all night and then all of a sudden at 2
in the morning he’d go into all these breaks and everybody
would start breaking on the dancefloor. It was nuts – you
got everything in a club. The whole club thing went through
a dark period, like hip hop became all gangsta and all the
DJs got quiet. Then the music changed again and the tempo
came back up and it was cool to dance again. You used to
go to the hip-hop clubs in 1993, 1994, and it was like people
standing against the wall. They were too cool to dance.
And now it’s great again in the clubs. People are dancing.
DJ
Times: After seeing Junior, you dove right into the
house thing.
Skribble:
Before Junior, Razor was helping me out with house; after
Junior, instead of Razor saying, “Do you have this? Do you
have this?” I would say to him, “Yo! You got this?” That’s
the way I do things. If I’m going to do something, I’m 100-percent.
DJ Times: Still, though, there’s quite a different
vibe for a DJ to start playing house music after playing
hip hop for so long.
Skribble:
It’s two different energies, from hip hop to house. When
I’m playing hip hop, I slam everything and there’s so much
reaction. With house, you’re taking them on a whole ride,
and you play for eight hours and you can take them wherever
the hell you want to go – get dark, get trancey, get progressive,
everywhere. It was a whole new energy that I discovered.
It’s cool. I got three turntables in front of me, a Denon
2500, ’cause I got a lot of unreleased stuff that I burn
on to CD – which I first didn’t like, but acetates cost
too much – and I have a little sampler, the Roland Boss
[SP-202 Dr. Sample].
DJ
Times: In terms of what you do behind the decks for
a hip-hop set and a house set, what are the differences?
Skribble: I noticed my approach changed when I started
doing raves. The first one I did was at The Roxy, warming
up for the Chemical Brothers, and that was really cool.
I started cutting over house music, and at a rave that’s
acceptable; at a club, it’s not. If you’re playing at a
club in New York, they want it all tribal and you won’t
cut. But at a rave, it’s cool. Me and Johnny Vicious would
go and do raves, and I’d bring Slynke, and all of a sudden
we’d have six turntables. Johnny would be playing house,
playing his trance set, and then he’d break down into some
crazy breaks, and then me and Slinky would start going at
it scratching. And the crowd would go nuts.
DJ
Times: Besides house and hip hop, you’ve also done some
DJ battling with metal bands.
Skribble:
When I was on tour with Public Enemy, I DJed with Anthrax
and Primus. [Primus bassist] Les [Claypool] and I would
come out every night and battle each other: he would play
the bass and I would cut. And then I would make up stuff
and try to get sounds that would imitate his bass, transformer
sounds at different pitches, and the crowd would just go
nuts.
DJ
Times: You’ve issued four Traffic Jams records,
two of them hip hop, the others house.
Skribble:
I do all the hip hop with DJ Slynke. On Traffic Jams
2000 (Warlock), for instance, we recorded all brand
new music with AZ, Common, Kurupt, and then pressed everything
to vinyl, and then did it DJ style. A lot of people make
mix CDs, but it’s new music that’s been edited together,
with no scratching, no nothing. How can you call that a
mix? It’s not mixed; there’s no DJing. Even hip hop got
lame for a while, everybody was rhyming off of DAT, then
all of a sudden they started seeing alternative groups using
a DJ in their show, so the DJ is back and alive in hip hop.
It’s weird. The DJ is supposed to be the main part of what
they do. That was one thing about the Teenagers – we never
went off a DAT. Our first show was nothing but breakbeats
– 27 breakbeats in a12-minute show, two DJs.
DJ Times: And Anthony Acid is your partner in house
music on the MDMA (Warlock) albums. You two are cooped up
together in the studio quite a bit. I hear you’re a bit
of a slob. Is that true?
Skribble: [Laughs] Anthony Acid is an old man. You
would think he’s 75-years old. He’s the most anal person
you’ll ever meet in your life, and he smokes 60 packs of
cigarettes a day. If the plate setting is not in the exact
diameter of the circumference in proportion to the table,
he’ll have a fit. There’s a difference between being nice
and neat and being obsessively obsessive. But I love him
to death, and behind the boards, in terms of programming,
he’s got a sick ear.
DJ
Times: So tell us, finally, how did MTV select you for
“Global Groove”?
Skribble:
MTV was having Spring Break in 1998, they asked me if I
wanted to do “The Grind” in Jamaica, which was cool because
I could play hip hop and house. I went down there, and I
did my thing, entertaining people. My whole thing is to
get the reaction from the crowd, and I got the reaction
from the crowd. And MTV didn’t have a slot for me, but they
did have an exercise show called “The Daily Burn,” which
I did for one summer. At the end of the summer, MTV asked
me if I wanted to do “MTV Jams,” because [Funkmaster] Flex
was supposed to do it – he had done it all summer, but for
whatever reason it didn’t happen. So that’s how I got to
do “MTV Jams” and then after that they gave me “Global Groove.”
It’s all been unbelievable. If this were taken away from
me tomorrow, I’d still be the luckiest guy around. I’ve
never done anything else but DJ, and I consider all of this
a gift.
Copyright
© 2000 DJ Times Magazine
TESTA
Communications Publishing
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