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