One Song - Interview with Fab 5 Freddy

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Have you ever wondered where the name hip-hop came from? This week, Diallo and LUXXURY sit down with artist, television host and cultural steward of the early New York hip-hop scene, Fab 5 Freddy, to discuss his new memoir Everybody's Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture. They touch upon Fab 5 Freddy’s earliest graffiti works and how he helped usher graffiti art into the mainstream, his work on seminal hip-hop film Wild Style, his friendship with fellow New York artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and the members of Blondie. And stay tuned for next week’s episode, where Fab 5 Freddy joins the show again to break down Blondie’s “Rapture” Songs Discussed: “Rapture” - Blondie “Love Is The Message” - MFSB “Bad Girls” - Donna Summer “Good Times” - CHIC “More Scorcha” - Count Machuki “Just To Get A Rep” - Gang Starr One Song Spotify Playlist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luxury. Today we've got part one of a very special two-part episode where we talk to a champion of the melting pot of New York art and culture, the very first host of YOMTB Raps. That's right, Tiala. In this first part, we'll be talking about the downtown New York scene and the origins of hip-hop, disco, and New Wave. And in part two, we will break down Blondie's Rapture, a song our guest was immortalized in. And sort of encapsulates that. So welcome to part one of our very special conversation with the one and only. Fat 5 Freddie. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time.

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The Volkswagen Atlas is a seven-seat powerhouse that actually makes sense for real life. It's got cargo space for all your gear, the dogs, and even half of your rec league soccer team. And under the hood, a two-liter turbocharged TSI engine that hauls up to 5,000 pounds. The seven-seat Atlas, you deserve more space. Visit vw.ca to learn more. S-U-B-W, German-engineered for all. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Dialla Riddle. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers,

Interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before, and you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify. While you're there, please like and subscribe. If you're looking for even more music facts, more conversations, and more us. these two guys. We've got a Patreon now.

Go to patreon.com slash Diallo Luxury. That's Patreon.com, D-I-L-L-O-L-U-X-X-U-R-Y. In other words, our names. Do all that spelling. As we mentioned, we have a very special guest with us here today,

a pioneer in graffiti who brought that art form and many others to the mainstream, the co-producer and soundtrack co-creator and star of seminal hip-hip-hop film while style, the first host of YoMTV Raps and now author with his memoir. Everybody's Fly. It's out now. You have to buy.

You have to read it. Oh my gosh. Please welcome Fab Five Freddie in the building. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Thank you. That's in me. Honored to be here, big fan. We are so happy to have you here.

Your book, by the way, which we've been reading. It does such an amazing job of giving everyone who wasn't in New York in the late 70s, early 80s, it paints such a vivid picture. You talk about the confluence of hip hop, disco, punk, graffiti, art books. I grew up, my father was a painter. Like, I grew up with all the art books in my house. You bringing up some of them, I've just, I haven't thought about that name in so long. Wow. And importantly, because we're both DJs, you talk a lot about the DJs in New York at this time. It all starts with the DJs. Oh, it all starts. Yes. Let's give us a tour of the downtown scene in 1980. Well, I guess

even a little before the downtown scene, I'll just give you a taste as a younger kid coming up before I hit the scene. What really was the most exciting thing were the mobile disco DJs. And these were guys, some of the names I talk about

that were wildly popular, was the original Grandmaster, Grandmaster Flowers. It was Pete DJ Jones, Maboya, plumber, out in Queens, you had the disco twins, you had Infinity Machine. These guys have massive sound systems, and just the idea of keeping the music going continually, as opposed to...

Without the fade-out. No, well, as opposed to in most people's homes, you had a spindle, you'd put five or six-forty-fives, the arm would swing back, the record would drop down, the record would... The arm would go play, play the record. That's how records were played. If you had a party, that was the mode. The idea of continually keeping the music going, just mixing from one record to the other, was a huge innovation. And that is what the mobile discos DJs did. They weren't cut and scratching or mixing.

But they made being a DJ super cool, super sexy. And these guys would pack. Now, as a young kid, I didn't have any real paper to go to the clubs they spun at. They'd come out in the summer, play at block parties and park jams. And it'd be three, four, five. 600 kids or more in these parks until 2, 3 in the morning. This is a classic story. These were the guys that figured out how to bus open the base of the streetlight,

know which wire to connect to because the wrong wire you get fried to a Chris. Plug into the city's power supply and rock until the, you know, early morning. I got to bring this up because your book is so good. It's called Everybody's Fly, Fat Five Freddy's book. So many key details that I thought I knew everything about this period. I did not know everything. The idea that these guys would steal the speakers out of train, subway trains, and then try and play music through that.

That was so desperate to be DJs, man. How do I get a system together? That sound quality was absolute garbage. Horrible. Horrible. And like I said, like the- You were saying flowers and some of the other ones had like these big speakers, right? Like they-

They'd have big bass bottoms. This is where you first saw brands like Sirwin-Vega, parties that these guys spun at. would be promoted with how many watts a different DJ system had, like, 3,000 watts. That was an attraction. You know, like, oh, shit, this system is louder than the next cat. They're like, you're not going to be listening to the one, the one, two, three train speakers at this party.

Yeah. But what we had heard was because the Bronx was the poorest borough. And kids everywhere wanted to do this, they were like, let's put a system together some way somehow. People would, most people in their homes, this is before stereo became. a ubiquitous thing. People had high-fire systems. Oftentimes it was a TV, like an FM radio, and one big speaker.

Maybe a turntable on the top of it. Turntable on the top, radio on the top, big TV, big massive piece of furniture. And guys would dismantle those to try to get a speaker to cobble together some type of system. But it weren't stereo yet. Stereo became popular later. WBLS, I know in the black community, real popular radio station, the way they did their station ID, oftentimes it would go WBLS,

which would move from the left speaker to the left. That was like, oh my God. I was censor round 3D AI, super duper high tech. And New York, WBLS and New York, 1007.5, N-Sdury. And that made people like when you talk about, yo, I was at so-and-so's house and shit went, went from this speaker and that speaker. I got to get me a stereo. Because what your moms typically had

or your parents had was a high-fi, short for high-fidelity. Everything was high-fi in the mid to late 70s. I want to take a second to talk about flowers because in your book you say that he would open up sets. I'm always interesting. What were DJs playing then? What are some of the forgotten songs?

And I remember you mentioned one of the big closers, I think, was Love is the Message by MF. S-B. Is the message was referred to as the anthem. And then mobile DJs, that was a huge song that was just, oh, my God, that was an epic record. And it was really interesting. It was coming out of Philly. It was out of Philly.

It wasn't a New York record. No, it wasn't a New York record. Gambling Huff. Yeah, Gambling Huff, that Philly Soul Sound. S-O-P. Had some orchestration. It was like an orchestra. It was like real instruments.

They're like 20 musicians. on that track. Man, listen, this record was incredible. That's an orchestra. And the actual original record was built up, once again, to this crescendo, a break, if you will, which was one of the most incredible breakdowns. And then that record was, once again, it was a staple across all these mobile DJs. But then on the beginning of rapping side, people wanted to go crazy on that breakdown part.

So Cass wanted to hop on that mic. And that eventually, as people learn how to remix records or the idea of capturing the most exciting part of a record, then versions would come out just an elongated break of that Love is the Message breakdown, which was so epic, so incredible. And Mansell Spacefunk is another one with like one of those epic breaks right at the beginning. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I have a question. I didn't know I was going to ask this question. Okay. I got to ask this question.

Why did guys really seek out the first? break beats to rap over? Did they just not want to sing over? Did they not want to rap over music? Or was it because the breakbeat was like the hypeest part of the song? Hypes part of the song, the most fun part of the song. If you knew the record, you're at one of these jams.

You were waiting for that part. That was the climax. That was the big peak of it all. And, you know, the whole story, which when we take it into the beginnings of rap that grows into hip hop, and then you have the genius Grandmaster Flash is like, I want to be able to continue the energy.

He saw there was a decided elevation of the energy when that breakbeat came in. But it was always really brief. And Herc, when Flash goes, when we go up to the Bronx, was trying to, what they call needle drop, pick that up with his hand and just physically drop it back in the group.

You catch it, you might not catch it. Flash wanted to keep that going continuously and seamlessly, which led him on a research and development mission of every turntable available, Marantz, Gemini, Panasonic, whatever, until he hit. It wasn't the techniques, 1,200. It predated that. Right. But it had the direct.

It's like the AK30, what is it called? It might have been that. Different signature. Different signature, but it was a direct drive. So when he held that record and let it go, it was up to speed instantly. And that makes a big difference because then you don't have to I was thinking for whatever reason last night About like how I used to kind of like when you would stop a record

It would be like yeah It didn't even like it had like a cool style It took a minute But that's not helpful in a party Yes it was helpful And so Flash was obsessed with And he figured out this was the turntable That allowed that to happen

So that was a major innovation Towards what hip hop would bring to the table But the mobile DJs just basically mixed and blended all the popular songs of that day that, you know, you would hear on the popular black radio station, but to be outside in a really loud system that was a rarity to hear music with that level of fidelity, especially if your system was dope so you could feel the bass, you know, and you'd feel it. It was something that people, that we all talked about and was sort of in. in awe of this massive systems that these mobile DJs brought out into the parks. At the same time, Richard Long is building a massive system at the Paradise Garage. Well, Richard Long definitely did the garage. He did many clubs and many systems, but he also helped a lot of these mobile DJs with

their portable systems. He developed something which became known as a coffin, kind of creepy, which was the all-in-one set up where the turntables would be in there. The mixer. And then he designed these speakers that were just massive. So a lot of the mobile DJs like, I know guys in Queens, like, oh, I got a Richard Long system. And it was like, woo, name was ringing.

And then Katz tried to emulate and recreate and make their own versions of it. So that was the thing that really drove the fidelity once again. All these innovations are happening on the mobile DJ level. And then they start to make the move into the clubs like Paradise Garage. Well, yeah. But before the Paradise Garage, that was the epic, the cathedral, the Vatican of Discos. But there were many that led up to that to what the Paradise Garage was. And that was Richard Long's, like, prize.

And he continually worked and tweaked. I went to the garage many times. They would add baffles in the ceiling to refract the sound. I heard that he could control. I had the pleasure of me, Mel Sharon, from Western Records, like a million years ago. but like he told me that Larry had a dial in the booth where he could actually control the temperature. Like he had control over the heat in the garage. Yeah.

So like if he was like sneaky with it, like always he like bringing like the tempo and the vibe of the party up, he'd actually increase the heat so everybody was just like losing their minds. Yeah. He'd increase the heat. He wouldn't make you cool up. He would increase the heat. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Just, you know. And you said that like the floor was built on sand. Like it's just an amazing. Sand and on, I heard on springs. And he would, in between like, periodically the garage would close for updating and maintenance and a lot of it would be things

that Richard would be adding to the system to make the sound better. So there was a progression to get to that. The club that was the big inspiration, I didn't get to go to this one, the big inspiration to what the Paradise Garage became was David Mancuso's loft, which I think he might have actually lived in. I think it was off of Broadway, maybe in Houston, you'd go upstairs, and it was like house party in a way people describe the vibe. Great documentary called Maestro that a young Latin kid made early 2000s. He wasn't even at the garage, but it's the best kind of film about that era, about many of the people. They had incredible footage that shows the garage.

Unfortunately, that was the final weekend, which was too, it was like, I was like, I had many friends that were going. I think they partied nonstop from Friday into maybe like Monday morning. Never stop. These are the legendary clubs that we've both grown up reading about and wishing we had been there for. And the thing that I want you to talk a little bit more about, because I don't think a lot of people know this, the history of DJing and this era and in this place, was the eclectic music that's being played.

Talk a little bit about to us what you're going to be hearing at a David Mancuso party, Larry Levan at the garage. It's not single genre. He's mixing it up, right? That's true. They were playing a broad variety. They might sprinkle a little African, a little Fela, maybe in the mix. And there were different sounds.

I can't, to be honest with you, I'm not completely up on all the records they were playing, but they were playing the hottest dance music. And then they were developing this idea of extending the mix and things that were later replicated on the extended disco mix record, the whole long, as disco became the thing. But these are places where the DJs that were the true architects, like the real Michelin chefs in the kitchen, Larry was there, oh, what's my man, rest in peace, that blew up house music.

Frankie. Frankie Knuckles was in the room. Nicky Siano is in the mix. Yes, these cats are there. And in that maestro doc, he talks to different people, and he'd get a real sense of what they were doing, and the vibe and the way they played. And so Larry was there, and I guess what they say,

learned a lot of the techniques that he would later execute at the garage. I think Larry, you know, he was doing the Continental Baths, and that was like a big thing for Larry. And then he took a lot of the lessons of the content. Go ahead. No, we were talking about Plato's Retreater earlier. The Contra of the Vast was the other one. It was also swingers. No, these were primarily like gay.

I was primarily what they say. And what, hey, look, that was a scene. That was a scene. That was a big aspect of. the disco scene as well. It was like the gay people could be themselves, let it all hang out. They would really get up, they would help shift the party into overdrive with the abandon, with the wildness of that energy. It was so wild. I mean, like, people don't realize, first of all, the Paradise Garage was actually a garage. Correct. It was just like it was.

It was a place for cars. And you would walk up this long ramp and as you got closer to the doors, you'd hear the music get louder and louder, build up this anticipation. Yes. You know, the other thing this really interesting about this period, I think, is, you know, there are a lot of DJs in the mix. And one thing that we wanted to ask you was, were there DJs that you thought were great? And we just, they just never got the attention. Oh, man. You know, well, a lot of those mobile DJs that I talked about, particularly the ones that I, that were playing in Brooklyn in the streets, the Pete, DJ Jones, the Maboya, the Plummer, the Grandmaster Flowers. These guys never really made records. So they played music

well, they had decent sound systems. Once again, the big innovation was the seamless flow of the music. The music never stopped. The only person who did anything close to that was the radio guy who had the ability to continue the music, which, you know, we could later- Frankie Crocker? Who were talking about here? Frankie became the most influential

black radio jock because most radio, when he was a kid coming up, was heard on AM stations. Right. So in New York, the main black station on AM was WWRL, 1600. And most people then, also the boombox hadn't come into play. You had a transistor radio. It was kind of mono. You know what I'm saying?

And so you might have, you know, FM. It's weird to think of like Curtis Mayfield, like, oh, man, I can almost hear those drums. We're so spoiled now with like perfect sound. But what happened was Percy's, you know, like, Percy's. Sutton, who was a major play in the New York scene, he was an attorney, he was in politics, and he was in business, he headed up a group that acquired an FM station. They had an AM and an FM station, it was WLIB AM, and then it was WLIB FM, but then they changed the call letters to WBLS, which was short for world's best-looking sound. Frankie Crocker had worked his way

up. He was on some white pop station WMCA in New York from not mistaken. Then he went to the main black station on AM WWRRR, 1600, which would have like commercials for cheap ghetto wine, like Thunderbird and shit like that. There will be no Thunderbird disparagement. No Thunderbird. No money down. You know, pay for the rest of your life like ghetto furniture. They'd be offering these. I was going to say it.

You know. And so when Frankie went to BLS, he wanted to elevate. He was a part of the like George Jones. Jefferson moving on up thing. Black folks was like, wait a minute, it's time to get classy, fly, sexy at another level. So he was the program director at WBLS and the main DJ. And he came on from four to eight every day. And man, that became like a huge thing for anybody in the know.

You could walk through different parts of the city and hear BLS coming from people's houses and cars. and he would close every show playing this amazing jazz record, King Pleasures, Moody's Moose for Love. My parents love that song. I mean, everybody in that era knows every lyric. There I go, there I go, there I go, there I go.

And you could check your watch. It'd be right around 8 o'clock and Frankie'd be going on. You're like, oh, man, he's playing Moody's Move for Love. But what Frankie did to get it popping in the beginning because there wasn't big advertisers, the promoters of these mobile disco parties, the Pete DJ Jones, the plumber, all those cats,

they would commandeer restaurants. In that part in the 70s, the city was broke, and people needed help with their businesses. So these promoters went to these restaurants to say, hey, listen, we want to do a party here. You can split the bar or you get the bar and we'll get the door. They would take the chairs and tables out,

and they would promote them on beach. You would think these were clubs. You were in Brooklyn, you wouldn't know that this is really like a restaurant. Oh, that's funny. But it'd be like- Because the restaurant's probably closed by that hour anyway. Correct. Restaurant would be closed after hours, nothing much popping on the weekend.

So a lot of these DJs played in these places, and they would advertise on Frankie Crockett show. So Frankie, you'd hear these parties like these DJs will be playing at this place. Nell Grins, Nemo's, Superstar Cafeteria, different spots. I wasn't in the mix yet, but I'm hearing all this stuff. I had an aunt, my aunt Pearl was, you know, hip and fly, and she went to these parties. It's always that cool aunt, who turns you on to so much. Yeah, you know what I mean, got to have cool relative and whatever. But basically what Frankie would also do, he would be at a lot of these parties.

And the hot record that moved the crowd, he would program and start playing these records on BLS. So he wasn't following what the playlist said, what the top 10, top 20, whatever on the black charts was. because he was a program director. He can play, oh, somebody's playing something hot. So as Frankie now is this megaphone, if you will, and he's tapped in to the coolest thing going on, he was playing these records that these DJs found and blowing them up.

So he ended up breaking a lot of what became the foundations of disco, like Donna Summer. Oh, my goodness. I got to imagine. Sheik, of course. He'd be playing these. records first because he saw them rock the crowd at this party or that party. And that was huge because if you were tapped in, you'd be like, oh, wow, nobody else is playing this. And then

Frankie would interview these guys. So he was a huge force in making disco go from a street underground kind of gay thing into the Saturday Night Live Studio 54 level when it became like People magazine feature stories. It was like Frankie. And he doesn't get enough juice, but he set a lot of that Unfortunately, when hip hop eases in, as a lot of older blacks from a previous era, they, you know, the aggressive on-the-corner-street energy. They didn't like it. He wasn't trying to mess with it. But he was a big inspiration to a lot of it, but he kind of was like, ah. I think one thing that happens during this period that, again, I didn't know until I sort of read your book was the blackouts in 1977.

You know, we're talking about the equipment and how the equipment affected the DJing and how the DJing. and how the DJing affected people's music tastes. With the blackout, people stole some turntables and some speakers from those stores. I mean, everybody went crazy. Lutin, not that, you know, it was a horrible thing. It's horrible. It's horrible.

You respect private property. And this is something like Grandmaster Caz and other cats from the Bronx shared this in different hip-hop, you know, history. Like when the blackout in 1977 happened, cats hit the major shopping. areas and the electronic stores that had all the stuff. You're standing in the window and man, I'd love to have that.

Look at this. The generation of mobile DJs was born. A whole generation of mobile DJs got good equipment. Some of these guys were pulling the speakers out of the train station, you know, the shit making announcements. I've seen guys trying to jerry-rig shit. I mean, it was such a compelling thing to want to be in that mix, but a lot of cats got their hands on quality stuff.

And the Bronx kind of stepped up a few knots. considerably. Cats now got it. Because listen, the bottom line is this stuff costs money. And it costs a few thousand dollars to put together a real system. It's a really good documentary that I took part in, friends of mine made, including Ron Amin Ra Lawrence, one of the great producers of a lot of 90s music, a brother, a good friend of mine, Hassan Poh. They did a documentary called Founding Fathers, which really is about this era of DJs that predate hip hop. And they focus on a lot of these guys out of Queens. And some of these guys were like, their families were a bit more well-to-do,

had a few dollars to give their kid to $3,000, $4,000, to build the system. That's probably in this, in the 20, 30 grand in this day's money. But four or five grand was a lot. And that's what a lot, a lot of these guys, the jumpstart to go out and put together these substantial sound systems. That sounded great.

And so to have that, was a desire. But what the Bronx guys would do was they would completely innovate, disrupt, shake up the whole game in a super significant way because they couldn't compete with what these other guys were doing.

But thanks to Cool Herk and other people, they came up with something completely different. That was game-changing. All right, well, we're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we'll continue our conversation with Fat Five Freddie and ask him,

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For Jeff, trying any salsa is like, playing Russian roulette with a flame thrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. All right, welcome back to one song. We're here with our guest, F5 Freddie. You're so deeply enmeshed in the early hip-hop scene. What is it that people get wrong about it? When people mythologize that era, what are people focused on that's the wrong thing? What are they missing?

One of the things that I think is connected, connecting to what I'm explaining now is the whole, and this, I think primarily because hip hop became so big, so pervasive, so massive globally, that this idea that because Kuh Herk was of Jamaican ancestry, born in Jamaica and came up, they figured, oh, he must have brought this whole dance hall thing up, and that's what the big inspiration for hip-hop was. That wasn't the case. because when Kuhir comes up, he's like 12 or so years old. He's not trying to emulate what King Tubby

and the big producers in Jamaica are doing. I spent a lot of time in Jamaica. I directed most of Shaba Ranks' videos, and I loved the Jamaican scene and sound. I talk about it in my book when it first popped off. When the U.Roy, I Roy, Big U.F, I was into all that stuff. But basically, what I feel was happening, which was even more interesting,

is the Jamaican dance hall DJ and the mobile disco DJ were emulating what the record DJ, which is the actual original DJ, the disc jockey, was doing. He was the guy on the black side deck and talk, some slick jive patter, sounded cool, had all the hot records. He controlled music and playing music. And that's what the DJ actually wanted to do. So when you look, check the early Jamaican sound system. If you really dig in deep, you'll know that the Jamaican DJ when the weather was right

was able to pick up the black radio station coming out of New Orleans and coming out of Florida. Yeah. Coming out of Miami, all the black DJs had late night shows. But when the weather was right, you could tune in and hear. And that inspired what the early. That makes so much sense because the early Jamaican. DJs, rather MCs, were called DJs. Count Machukee in the late 50s, early 60s.

He was a DJ, and then the DJs were called selectors, because they're selecting the music. Thank you. Step at this station for identification, I'm gonna turn it over to your song to mention, your music producer, everybody on the ball. So that all makes so much sense to connect those dots there, that what they share in common was they were both separately

influenced by DJs on the radio. That was the guy that was doing it. And the New York guys, it was the same thing. You now have the power to be like the radio guy, but he's bringing that to your community. And he can keep the music going. It never stopped. That was like, oh, my God, one record to another.

Especially if you had a party, come on. The main reason for these parties is guys want to get with chicks, right? So, boom, if the music is flowing, you can dance with a girl for three, four records. if the DJ kept it moving right. But on the other old style with the 4-5s on the spindle, the record was a 10 or 20-second stoppage. You got three minutes to close a deal.

You got three minutes, and then you got a 20-second awkward pause. And the other thing that's long gone, I don't know if you've got to realize this, is the every party back in the days, house party, whatever you were. There was a section where the DJs would play slow jam. That still existed when I was. coming up in the 90s. Like when I was in college in the 90s,

I always ended the night with like one or two slow jams. Yeah, in the night. But there were intermittent parts through the party where there'd be a slow jam section and you'd want to hopefully have a nice chick

that you maybe dance with on a dance record. And then if the slow joints come in you would hope honey would stay there with you and then you got the hole of tight and get your rub-up on. That was epic. That was huge.

And then if the DJ can play three or four slow jam. I mean, come on, you practically making a baby. I had my first kiss to a Mary J. Slow Jam. There you go. There's a little bit of hot guys. I'm glad you bring up cool hurt because there's been some debate online about the specific date of birth of hip-hop with, you know, the camps that have said, you know, and I think pretty much everybody embraced a 1973 thing because we just did the 50th year, a couple of years back.

But there are a lot of people who will say, hey, look, 1970. way more accurate. I think even in your book, you're like, you know, the guy's throwing the cardboard down and like just dancing on the spot. Like that's more like 75 than it's 73. And do we, what is your opinion? Do you think we should clock it from 73, 75 or somewhere else?

No, listen, what Kirk, what Herk did at that party, him and his sister put together 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the boogie down Bronx was incredible. It was pivotal. It was a spark, if you will, that set off a series of major moves that would happen,

including Flash going, wow, I hear what he's trying to do. He's doing the break, because Kirk is doing the break beats, but they're a little wonky. As you said, he's needle dropping. He's needle dropping. He's playing some stuff.

He doesn't have a system. He doesn't have a system to actually keep the beat going continuously. But what he's doing, and his party's is dope, and he lays the foundation for the whole thing. He's got the two records and the two turntables, so he's got step one. Once again, yes, so he has that going on. But the key thing, and I get into this in my book,

it really wasn't hip-hop technically yet. It was the beginnings of that, and the beginnings of the form of manipulating the records. Flash will tell you, when he was doing his thing, when he figured it out and he was bringing his set out into the parks, he said people wasn't dancing. They were just standing there staring because they were so amazing. Remember like, how are you doing this?

This is amazing. I haven't heard this anywhere. So Flash was like, yo, people just stand at me. He wanted to make people move. So Flash was like, man, if I can get somebody to get on the mic and keep them talking and talk to the crowd to get them off of just staring at me and people could get a move, you know, throw your hands in the air,

waving like you just don't care. All of that stuff, which is the basic beginnings of rapping. That was when the first rapper stepped up. And, oh, my God, I'm not sure if it was Kid Creole or Keith Cowboy, but one of these guys stepped up and talked about the DJ because most of the early rappers, their job was to talk about how incredible the DJ was

because he was the one that brought everything out into the park. He was the focus of attention. Is that the same Kid Creole with the coconuts? No. That's a different kid Creole. Yeah, that's which is actually Melly Mel's brother. Kickrio with the Furious Five. It's interesting news.

Right, it was a Kid Creole. I always get those two. There's like multiple Dr. Dre's. There's like a couple of names that you can recycle. You mentioned it a couple times already in our conversation. It sounds like the really important thing was this continuation. The second things began continuous, began to be continuous in terms of the music not stopping. That was the, like, hypnotic moment where things shifted into overdrive.

Music's not stopping. You're blending. It was really like blending one record into another, so the music never stopped. That was like, wow. It's almost so you could say hip-hop don't stop. That's exactly, exactly right. All right. Stop the episode right there.

We're done. Hip-hop and you don't stop. But what actually happens, and I really elaborated on in the book, in the ideas that I had, which became hip hop's first film, Wild Style. Yes. The idea, once again, was to showcase, I mean, myself, an aspiring painter. Nobody was looking at any of these cultures with any kind of love, or it was just, we were the scourge, you know, graffiti was, you know, whatever, whatever.

I wanted to. So many things. Everything seems illegal. It's like, why are you talking tough over the song instead of trying to sing and make it beautiful? Why are you spray painting on walls? Like, it's like, why are you creating noise? in these parks after dark. Correct.

It was no real love there. Yeah. But in trying to take control of the narrative and shape a context for who we were, myself as a painter to show that a lot of it was vandalism and just crazy, wild, crazy teenage energy, there were artists and art that was emerging. If you looked at it and said, well, it's, okay, it's illegal. Probably shouldn't have spray paint it all over your, you know, the windows and everything on the train.

But God damn, that's a pretty good Bugs Bunny. You know, the letters look wild, and you got the 3D drop shadow, right? It's like, hey, it's... And so, you know, my thing... I loved it when you said you were going to make the train look like a loaf of wonderbread. You're like, that's a moving statue. That was exactly what Lee and I... So the first idea was, you know, had gotten...

Found out about... Lee Keonis. Yeah, Lee Kinyas. Very famous graffiti artists. Very famous graffiti artists that I linked up with and had these ideas that we could, we should be able to... I figured... Let's find a way to elevate out of just doing this on the subways and get this work into a space where it can be appreciated and looked at as artists as opposed to teenage delinquents. Yes.

And Lee got it. And I had gotten really into the work of Andy Warhol, the other pop artists, Lichtenstein. And I'm saying, wait, these guys are looking at similar stuff to what we're looking at. comic books and advertising and soapbox big bowl bright lettering. And Warhol, of course, was just such an inspiration. And I was like, man, I think if we could paint a train covered in Campbell's soup cans as a homage to him, it would also send a message. And some of us down here know something about art history. We know what's happening on the other end of this island.

Exactly. And so we did that train. Lee assisted. We went and executed, did a Campbell Soup can. I did two versions of it. But what we planned to do, we were going to do a wonder bread and tasty, which were two lobes of bread,

but it was going to be Wonder Fred and Taseley. And we're going to make them look like the loaves of bread. It was going to be best. I just want to call attention to this because what's incredible and important is that your background as an artist and one who studied, as you mentioned, Warhol, you are able to recognize and identify

that by framing what was going on in an artistic way with maybe the language of, and maybe you knew the art world. You understood. I was learning. I was figuring it out. You were figuring it. You understood that if you could sort of package what was going on, maybe use the right terminology to the right people in the right way.

Correct. You could reframe the narrative. And you did. I did. Exactly. That was exactly my idea. But where was I going to find an audience I could share these ideas with? That was the new wave punk folks.

And looking at what that was doing when it was page two, hard news New York Times stories about the sex pistols scaring the hell out of the establishment. I was like, wow, this is wild. These people sound, wow, crazy, super disruptive. How could I connect with some people in that space and share these ideas? I would eventually get to do that

initially through Glenn O'Brien. Glenn O'Brien has this article, has a column. He has a column. Interview magazine. An interview called Glenn O'Brien's beat. Actually, once again, this grows out of me learning more about Andy Warhol. He started a magazine.

He made films. All this multimedia stuff Andy was doing. And having fun, in the heart of the 60s, a lot of the coolest stuff was emanating out of Andy's crew, the factory, the superstars. And it was like, man, these guys, it's not the like state kind of corny, academic kind of artist.

These guys are partying. They're having a good time. You know, drugs and shit. It was like, it was going down. Because we're parents, I just want to point out, you do not really partake in all the drugs. No, I did not. No, but I'm just saying. And that's why you're here talking to us today.

Yeah, but I mean, in terms of what we know about in the 60s, sex drugs and rock ones, this was happening. Right. And a lot of the creative, the creative energy, a lot of it was coming out of Andy's team, the kind of light shows, and they would do these kind of wild, psychedelic. And you had the Velvet Underground was the House Band. He was producing and supporting the Velvet Underground, which featured Nico and Lou Reed and You hear about this cool, Jimmy Hendricks, all passing through this mix.

This is the world I wish I lived in. I was born too late. It just seemed really good. So in reading about all that stuff, it just seemed really cool. So basically, Glenn O'Brien was in that mix and was the original editor of Interview Magazine when it really focused on underground filmmakers and really extreme stuff. It shifted a bit after Andy got shot and he kind of backed off of a lot of the, it was literally an open door policy at the factory.

Anybody could wander in there And a woman wandered in there It's like Andy Warhol is controlling my wife And like shot him And I think it was interestingly On the same day earlier than RFK RFK was shot

And that took the later that day That took Andy off the front pages Sorry he literally got 15 minutes Ha ha So basically Glenn had this column Deep connection with Andy and that whole scene, but he was writing about music. And it was fascinating. He'd write about dance music, chic, disco, New Way, Brian Eno, the talking. They had a public access TV show too,

right? TV party? Yeah. So what happens was when I, I'm doing a college radio show, me and this kid had a show about reggae. It was called The People's Beat. I'm reading this guy's column, and he talks so effectively about reggae, and I'm learning, and I'm going about some of these records, and I'm like, wow, you know, Dillinger, CB200. I'm like, really? I'm like, man, let me see if I can call this cat. Maybe he'd come out and be a guest on my college radio show, which he did. So he comes, we interview him. And then, in walking him back to the train, him heading back to Manhattan, this is Meg Gever's

college in Brooklyn, the community college. I'm pitching these ideas, these ideas, graffiti as art. There's this new kind of music where people are rapping over the tracks in the Bronx. and I kind of see this stuff is all linked together. And he was digging it. He says, you know, in three months I'm going to be doing this public access show on cable. Cable was still new. Brooklyn wasn't wired yet.

I'm like, public access, but cable TV. Yeah, I'm going to have this TV show. I'd like you to come on and talk about these things. I was like, wow, really. And basically three months later, he calls me to be a guest on the show. I also end up being a cameraman. So I'm like become a regular participant in a public access TV show. This is where you'd pay about 30, 40 bucks.

If you got a time slot, you would get a half hour or an hour to do. You'd curse, you could do nudity, which was unheard of back in those days. Unheard of. That was even about cable. Robin Bird. Robin Bird. I used to live in New York. I know about it.

I should take this opportunity. My brother Anthony Riddle was the head of Manhattan, Eminem, N, for a long time. Yes. Yes. That's my brother. Y'O King. He ran brick for a long time. And so public access TV is like something that runs deep.

It's a New York family institution. But yes, exactly. This is, these are the lawless days of Manhattan Public Access. Completely. And so when I show up three months later to be a part of this TV show, the cream of the downtown new wave scene, the intelligentsia are there. And they're the audience and the guests on the show. So this is how I connect.

It's co-hosts of Glenn O'Brien's TV. party is Chris Stein from Blondie. And so I get to meet these people and as I become friends, I share these ideas I'm developing and they're loving it. Oh man, I've seen that stuff on the train. So a lot of that stuff's really great. Oh, wow. And I'm like, whoa, so we're trying to figure out how to do this and do that.

And Glenn, they became like mentors, advisors and really good friends. And that really shifts these things into high gear, this idea I have to make. make a film, an underground independent film about all this, to show all these elements that I think are really interesting. So to jump forward a little bit, if I can, as we put pieces together, me and Charlie Ahern is the guy I meet at a very significant art show called the Times Square show, the most radical shows. It's on the Village Voice, the first radical art show of the 80s. It's 1980. I'm like, this feels like the armory. show of 1913, which introduced Marcel Duchamp and the idea of really extreme modern art.

Dada. Yeah, Dada and all that stuff pops off for the first time. I'm like, man, this art show and it was held in a former massage parlor, which essentially was a whore house in Times Square at the time. And I'm like, man, I want to be a part of this. And so anyway, I eventually meet this guy. I was like a new wave curator. His name is Diego Cortez.

he's, you know, tapping into what we're doing. And he's like, yo, I know the guy that's putting it together. Let's go to one of the first events. At this event, I meet Charlie Ahern, who's, and I pitch him this idea. Charlie's done an underground film about Kung Fu shot in Super 8. It's a real urban kung fu film called The Deadly Art of Survival with a black kung fu teacher, you know, fighting another kung fu thing. I don't think I know this film.

Super ultra low budget. It never really got major distribution. Anyway, I see this guy, Charlie. I've seen the poster for the deadly art in the Lower East Side. I know it's one of those underground independent films. I say, man, you know, I got this idea. He goes, man, I love it. And he's heard of Lee's work because where he made this film is in the housing project where Lee lives.

the Smith houses at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Anyway, Charlie and I team up, and we begin to start working on what becomes wild style. So what happens is we immerse ourselves in the scene. We go to all the hip-hop clubs in the Bronx, T-Connection, Ecstasy Garage, the Dixie, Celebrity Club, Disco Fever. So we meet the key players, and we is like,

these guys are great. This group's great. The Funky Four is great. because they have just female, Shah Rock, a Busy Bee is a riot, a great star personality. So we are shaping this film. We can't raise any money from all the independent financing sources, but we actually, Charlie connects with the people from German TV,

the people from the fourth channel in England, and they believe this idea we... Channel 4 in England, and they give us enough money to get the thing. moving. So anyway, we're making the film, we're in production. There's no name for this whole thing.

We refer to it as rap, because that's the main thing, but there's DJs and there's... We don't have the expression hip-hop yet. Doesn't exist. Expression exists among rappers as a way to take a breather, if you will. I'm sure there's a probably...

Hip-hop you don't stop. A more proper music term for when you just take a breath in between your rhyme, you could say this to the crowd, to the hip, the hip, the hop, the hop, it's kind of placeholder, like kind of... Kind of a placeholder, kind of a...

The name of the genre could be, yes, y'all, if somebody else had made the decision. Well, we were thinking, we're thinking, I'm like, what are we going to call this shit? And then I go, I said, Charlie, you know, I said, every other rapper says this as like a refrain, if you will, which might be the term for this moment,

when you're literally thinking about what your next rhyme is. So after you spit a nice rhyme, 12, 8, 16 bars or whatever, you back to the hip, the hop, you know, throw your hands in the airs, a bunch of little things in between your rap. To Charlie, I think we should just call it hip-hop. Because in looking at the new wave in the punk scene, which I had been looking at closely as a movement, we knew what that was called and what it was.

And the differentiation between punk rock and New Wave and then no wave and post-punk and all that stuff. You kind of knew what those genres were. Once again, you had the insight that somebody named something. You can frame it. You have to because I'm reading these articles in the NME. I'm reading all the sounds and the journalism. It's usually coming off of a journalist deciding to call it something,

and then other people pick up on it. That's right. Typically it is. And typically it's not. And that's the thing that also inspired my thinking is Max Roach, who was my godfather, the great bebop jazz drummer. Never liked the term jazz. His bio that he never got to release,

although he worked on it with Emory Baraka, the former Lira Jones. He would always tell me, I'm going to call my memoir, jazz is a four-letter word. The origins of the term jazz apparently comes from New Orleans and it was a slang expression for sex in the whorehouses.

I think jazz me was, I think, in some jazz book I read evolved. They have a relationship to another word too. Okay. And that's totally true. Yeah. So that's totally true. I thought he prefer.

I don't know what he preferred as an alternative, but being like an intelligent black man and not being able to have the control of the genre in the ways that they wanted to was frustrating. And I picked up on that. But I always, in saying, look, these guys are already saying hip hop,

It felt more encompassing, and we could fit all these other components of the culture up under that umbrella. I did run it by Bambata. He totally said, yes, without question. And then in reference to what you were texting me about, which I think the other brother that wrote that book mentioned in terms of these years, 7375, the first time hip hop is used in print, I reached out to Michael Holman, who I turned on to the game in the culture. and Michael got locked in. He was managing the New York City Breakers. The East Village Eye does a whole issue with several different articles.

The idea was the promotion of Wild Style. We were gearing up for our release. And this is a key downtown paper. So I said with Michael Holman, we're going to be calling it hip-hop. And when Michael did his piece, I think an interview with Bandbott, he referred to it as such.

It ends up being the first time it's referenced. And then as we imprint and as we continue on to promote the film, this is how we reference what all of this is. And so essentially that sticks. And I feel like I like to look at it as a fact like, no, I didn't name it, but it was a word that was there that I just pushed into help. But to be clear, you kind of named hip-hop is kind of what we're hearing. Let's be clear.

Once again, I didn't want to, I don't. You didn't say that I did. Yeah. But essentially it was there and I just helped nudge it in the place. It needed to be called something. And we had a film coming out. What are we going to call all of it rapping? It's rapping along with this dance and this art.

It's like, huh? So it felt a lot better. It came, I feel, from the community who had popularized use of that term. It was there being used. So it was an effortless move. And none of the many hip-hop flyers, which are in numerous collections, nothing references it as hip-hop until after that period. period of time. But I was going to ask, are what we now referred to as the pillars of hip hop?

Was that a thing at the time that people were starting to like articulate? Well, Wildstyle, once again, this is, this is what we frame up in Wildside. These were the elements that I felt, this is what I wanted to showcase in the movie, to show that we were not the delinquents. What annoyed the hell out of me in this process was whenever you saw a young black or brown kid with swagger, hat to the side or whatever, it was always connected to something negative. Right. And I was like crime.

And I'm like, damn, this is wild. Like, we all are not that. Just because you put on, you know, the right track suit, you got the right fit, cool sneakers, pumas on or whatever. And I didn't like that.

And I just, another motivation for me was to frame this up and to show us as creatives, which we were. And then the other concept of Wild Style was to use the actual players in the various forms to play themselves. I'm one of the few people actually acting.

A lot of people still think I'm from the Bronx, but I play this character. We actually wanted Phase 2, who literally was a legendary New York graffiti writer, who then progressed to designing flyers, some of the early hip-hop flyers for Existency Garage and different gigs. We couldn't get him to play the role. He just wanted to keep it on the ground.

So Charlie Ahern talks me into looking at me weird one. I'm like, Charlie, why are you looking at me like that? Fred, you could be this character. I'm like, I heard that Lee Keone has made them get to like the scar across the nose because he was like, yeah, I don't want the police to recognize me. And then I think it was Charlie who's like, dude, your face is going to be 40 feet tall on the throat. They're going to recognize you. Lee was so reluctant. It was a religious experience, the idea of painting for him.

Even though he's, we get him to play the movie. We get him to play the role. We had auditioned different people like Jean-Carlo Esposito. We saw in an off-roadway, Negro. ensemble playing. We were like, this guy's great. But he was sag and the film wasn't. We were super dumb, ultra low budget.

Like, how are we going to figure that went out? But what Charlie cleverly came up with, Charlie Ahern, was he told Lee, well, listen, we'd cast Lady Pink, and they were an actual item at the time. He said, well, yeah, Lee, you know, we're going to definitely have an actor play this role. And of course, you know, there will be a makeout scene. And Lee was like, and Lee was like, whoa, okay, I'm going to play that part. But Lee was like, would not allow us to film him painting a train.

So we got Dondy to double for Lee. So when you actually see somebody walk up to do the painting from the back, it's Dondy, rest in peace, who was a master of it all. So we went through all these kind of wild, hoops we had to jump through and climb under and to get the film made. And it's remarkable that we did. And first movie, first hip-hop film.

We love that movie. We've talked about it on at least four, maybe five episodes now of this show. Oh, I guess it's one of my favorite movies. I remember when they finally got his proper DVD release. It was one of the first things that I purchased. There's a story, I think, about the stick-up kids. Those are actual stick-up kids, right?

Well, I'm not sure if they were stick-up kids, But when we were shooting at the Dixie Club, all the interior performances, these guys were just neighborhood guys that were hanging out. They would be watching us make this film. So Charlie had this rinky dink. It looked like the kind of sick shooter. Kids would play with.

You put caps in it. Fake is. It looked very fake. There's like cable TV. You can curse here. Fake as fuck. Basically. So these do,

so we're actually doing a run-through with a scene, which I'm in, I came out and kind of saved the day. We wanted to have a moment that let people know. This shit is just not some howdy-duty. Yeah. This shit is still edgy of it. We're in a buggy down bronze,

and it's edgy as fuck. So these dudes watched us do a run to with the gun. They said, yo, man, man, what's that? Yo, that's some bullshit. Let me show you something. The dude goes to his car

and goes up under the thing and takes out this sword off. Which was the thing back in. Which is illegal then. Yes. The sword off shotgun. And he says, yo, I was like, yo, that's crazy.

Yes. And of course your armorer on set came over and inspected it and made sure it never been. We had none of that. I used to look at films. I remember when we were preparing for wild style, I looked at books about independent filmmaking, underground filmmaking at that time.

And one of the books said, because we had no permits or nothing, And it's like if you guys wear NYU sweatshirts or whatever, you could say you're like students. So I was like, Charlie, we got to get sweatshirts to the team in the brunt. Yo, they were drive-bys. They didn't even look twice. We were shooting, you know, a little crazy crew.

They never paid any attention to us. But basically those dudes, hookie and another guy was his name, played the stick-up kids and improvised their own stick-up lines. Which is iconic. A to the K. A to the K, A to the M motherfucking Z. Which makes almost no sense. It makes almost no sense.

There's kids that have emerged. I've seen in little chats and shit that say, oh, here's what that really meant. Blah, blah, blah. But I'm like, no, I'm like, dude. They made that up on the fly. But the thing of what was dope about those kids, they was believe it.

They was real. The way they rolled up, what's up? You know, because stick up kids were a thing. That was a major thing. A big hustle in the hood. I would rob you for your clothes, your jewelry, your little money, your sneakers, take them up, run it. Like, I directed a video for, you know, I grew up close to a lot of that stuff.

I directed a gangstar video called Just to Get a Rep. Just Thinking of a Way and went to get the brother. There'll be long gone before the kid recovers. And back around the way, you'll have the chain on his neck, claiming respect, just to get a rap. A classic, you say, oh, this old gangstar song. But it was about that whole stick-up kid. thing and just

doing it to get a rep. And I was like, oh man, I know this so well. And there's a mad, low budget video. But I said, yo, I got this, guru. And guru and Primo and put that together. But anyway, those guys pulled that off and it was an amazing moment in the film. Yes,

A to the K. They couldn't even get together on A to the what. One says A to the K. A to the motherfucking Z. And he pulls the shotgun out. And then I walk out. Hey, those people are cool, man. my people who baby ease up. Oh man, I had no idea.

They were your friends. He improvised the whole shit. He just let him go. So that was wild style. And the soundtrack to this is insane. I mean, like, you know, obviously we did an episode about Nas' Illmatic and the intro to that album, which incorporated so much of it.

Yeah. What can you tell us about those break beats? I mean, like, was it how that happened? Well, here's what it was. So once again, super low budget film. sampling hasn't even begun, but in terms of the foundations of hip-hop, it's these DJs

with these really rare, initially hard to find breakbeat records. This is a foundation of the genre as it develops that Herc helps set off. Records like Apache, Mardi Gras, Bob James Mardi Gras, impeach the president.

I mean, there's a list of these breakbeat records that are the foundation of the hip-hop scene. And I'm like, Charlie, come on, this shit is nobody going to know. Like rap is barely emerged. Maybe rap is D light and a few singles are out. I'm like, let's just use what they use in uptown, baby.

Charlie was adamant that we should, it's going to be a problem. And years later, it clearly would have been. So he goes, no, Fred. And I go, that's a high. I'll go in the studio and make these beats and make the music. So I get this cat who's a drummer, white cat, real cool, rest in peace. Lenny Ferraro, but we called him Lenny. Ferrari, funny guy, great drummer.

He worked on some Atlantic sessions with a wreath and shit like that. He was together. I said, Lenny, man, I need to create these. Okay, so I took Lenny into the studio, played him. The Supreme Team radio show on WHBI would have a section called the Supreme Team breaks. They would play a section of break beats in this show. And I recorded that. That's how you got it.

So you had your tapes. Yeah, we were talking about that. shit ready to record, you know. And so I played Lenny some actual break beats, some different varieties. So we went in the studio and laid down a bunch of breaks. Then I knew this cat out of Philly,

David Harper, that played with a bunch of Philly groups on the road, first choice, just that and the other. I said, man, he did the bass. And then I realized, then I learned in the studio, well, you should have the bass and drums recording together. I'm like, shit. We had to fix that and get that. So then we get the

found that. And then Chris Stein comes in, with all different kind of pedals and guitar stuff, add different sounds. To make these little short one-minute tracks, I came up with about 12 of them, and that's how we create the foundation of the music that then I pressed up about 100 pieces of vinyl of those songs and distributed them to the different DJs,

Grand Wizard Theater, or Charlie Chase and Tony Tone, Flash, they all get so that they can pick the different songs they want to cut and mix for when the DJs perform. Most of them hear the other ones using Down by Law. That's what we want to use to. That's why a lot of the performances they here have Down by Law, but we do use some of the other breakbeats.

And then we record that. The first whole time we filmed it all, we screwed up, had to reshoot all the club scenes, the big amphitheater thing again, because we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We had a stereo Nagua. That was the tape deck you'd use at the time. Didn't have it hooked up right.

Sound was over-modulated, butchered trash. I love it, though. We were talking about that. As you were walking into the building today, we were playing it through this speaker in here, which looks like she belongs on a subway screen. But we were playing it, and we were actually literally talking.

We love the fact that you have so much, like, mic bleed and, like, the mic is clipping. Like, there's something sort of raw about the whole... experience that makes it, ironically, like, you were such a fan of punk and that sort of, like, raw sound. Like, it just sounds raw when you listen to, like, the fantastic freaks at the amphitheater. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's what makes it endearing. That does, and that's so nice to you to say.

So because we had a super low budget, people have asked me, Kenny Dope put out... The Masters at Work and Dance Music, sort. Yeah, but he put out a special 45... set of those breakbeats that I did because it became, as we went into the 90s and DJs began digging and also looking for everything ever sampled and more things to sample, people were like, what did they use in Wild Style? They assumed I'd sample some 60 soul, whatever or whatever, and nobody knew. It was this big thing. And I'd meet guys that were major D's. I'd say, man, What did you use?

And I was like, oh, shit, I made all these records and boom, boom. So they never came out as just the instrumental records. And Kenny Dope did a whole thing and did a really exhaustive research on the line of notes and the packaging. Photos of the one-inch box with all the writing and all that stuff to give you that sense. And so those came out at that point, and that was really cool. But we put all that together and it was just pretty cool. Well, that's amazing.

So that was basically the foundational period. where you start working with Chris. Yeah, and Chris Stein comes in and adds all this incredible sound. It was really a big inspiration through it all. And then released the soundtrack on Animal Records, which was his own label under Chris List at the time. They were the initial people that released. Chris really believed, and I mean,

the Blondie was one of the biggest pop bands in the world. So we were able to use their name a lot. That's dope. You know, Blondie's helping us. blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we got Chris and Debbie from Blondie. Oh, really? To help get over hurdles we had.

And it was super helpful and supportive of all of that. All right, that's the end of part one. Stay tuned for part two, which will be posted here next week, where we and Fat Five Freddy will break down Blondie's Rapture, a song that forever immortalized his name. And trust me, even if you've heard this song a million times, you've never heard it broken down like this. Thanks for listening.

As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram. Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-A-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo-R-R-L. You can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at Luxury X. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at One-Song podcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. Just search for One Song podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe.

Also be sure to check out the One-Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in these episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, you're officially a part of the One Song Nation. Show us some love. Give us five stars. Leave a review and send this episode to a fellow music fan. It really helps keep the show rhyming. And by the way, if you're looking for even more music facts, more conversations between Diallo and Luxury and basically more of us.

We've got a Patreon now. You can find us at patreon.com slash Diallo Luxury. That's right. Diallo Luxury. Luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and every, Friday night from 10 till midnight KCRW DJ luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Dialla Riddle.

And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Casey Simonson, mixing and engineering by Eric Hicks.