The Crew

And ANE, original podcast. The crew was very important in hip-hop culture because it solidifies everything and protected everything around you to ensure that you gave the best that you were supposed to as at MC. They protected you and I had a bad ass crew. We had a bad ass crew. The people that around me on a day-to-day basis that keep me going that hold me up, that's my crew. It's about personal crew, you know, about any boys, you know what I mean. So the four elements to hip-hop are like the four wheels to a car. You know, you need gas and you need knowledge of where you're going. So without knowledge of self, where you're going, four elements don't mean anything. They will take you to where you need to be. In this episode, we talk about the crew, your crew, my crew, their crew, our crew. What does the crew mean to you? And in this final episode, our season finale, we bring back special guest MC Shah Rock, Grandmaster Mellie Mel, Breakers, Quick Step, and Rockefeller, and the one and only Lonzo Williams. So let's dive in and explore, all right, crew? Born in the Bronx, raised in the streets from coast to coasts and worldwide, these are the stories, the moments in time, the places and faces, the origins of hip-hop. Hosted by me, Grandmaster Cas. Let's take it from the top. As we've covered in past episodes, hip-hop was incubated in a very particular cultural and socio-economic context. It wasn't interested in the radio. It wasn't interested in record labels. It was interested in community, and that interest was reflected in the structure of early hip-hop groups. These artists' collectives were a mix of family, business, club, and performance troupe. Some roles within the crew were fluid, while others like the DJ were more permanent fixtures. There were also brands that carry significant weight in drawing a crowd, but in the beginning, no one was thinking in those terms, it was all the way live. So Mel, the subject is crews, hip-hop crews back in the day. Tell us a little bit about your crew, the setup, and how that went down. Basically, the DJ, of course, that was the staple of what it was all about because it was about DJing, and actually the whole crew started out. I was a B-boy. So that's how the crew said it was a DJ, and it was B-boys, and we used to go to different block parties, dance against other crews until I got up in age, and I guess in B-boy age, and then we started getting into the MC thing. This is your girl MC Shahraq, the mother of the mic, the luminary icon, the one that set it off for all female MCs and rappers today is your girl Shahraq. My definition of the crew is loyalty, people who hung out with you 24/7, where if you all go out to a party, you can always call on that person to hang out with you and also have your back. The crew, when I was growing up, also mean the crew. If you're hanging out together, then you're all hanging out together, y'all doing the same thing, y'all rocking with each other, y'all covering each other. If a fight goes down, then your crew is there to protect you. Your crew is there to make sure that your group sound good. Your crew is there to make sure that everybody knows within your community that this is the crew that makes it happen. So a crew can mean anything. You know, a crew can mean the group that you with, the crew can mean, you know, who you rocking with at that time, you know, but when I was growing up, that crew mean your group, your group was the one who signifies everything that represented who you were within that group. The crew was everything. My name is Gabriel Quickstep de Vinicio. I'm a breaker, my crew, full circle soldiers, and first kids, Brooklyn, NYC. crew represents family to a lot of people who need a home away from home. A lot of times, artists I misunderstood, breakers I really misunderstood. We're from the streets, and the first thing new parents will tell you is, don't go to the streets, and that's the first place you go. And a lot of times, the bond between breakers is deep because of the music, because of the things they talk about, the troubles they go through. And so when they break into release, you know, the ghetto brings you to a breaking point. Breaking the dance itself builds you up, builds up the character, the confidence, your relationships with people for myself. You know, I had a hard time talking when I was a kid. I was really shy. So the dance spoke for me, and the music had my back. It was like my family, and my crew was the extension of that family. This is your boy, Lanzo, the leader of the World Clash Reckon Crew. Godfather, West Coast Hill Pop, and yes, the owner of the Eve after dark that you saw in the Super Bowl, 2022, Drake standing on the roof. What else? For me, the crew was my boys. We were the guys that handled everything on the east side of Los Angeles. We've been accused of being a gang, we've been accused of being all kind of stuff back in the day because there were so many different levels of us. I mean, people know about Dre and get clientele together, but there were guys that the Eve after dark that nobody knows about that when there was an issue. I had guys that we would handle whatever had to be dealt with. There was guys that cleaned the club up, there was girls that collected the money. That was all the part of the crew. And that was the term we chose at that time as opposed to posse because posse came out later on. That's what we had. And the wrecking crew, I started off being two guys that were part of my mobile unit disco construction and somebody named them the wrecking crew and it kind of stuck by the time we got to Eve after dark, everybody became the wrecking crew. And then we just became the crew. And you know, it just was an evolution of just people that was behind me that I rolled with and they ever saw me in a problem, having a problem out of the streets. They were there for me, the club did the cleaning, they were there for me. If we had to do mobile parties, they was there. I am known as Beager or Rockefeller. My real name is Anna Garcia and my crew is full circle soldiers. The crew always, to me, represented sort of like a family, you know, replacing the dysfunction that we all sort of face with our relatives, our blood relatives, but different. This was of your choosing. You choose these people. They choose you and you go places or you have these adventures, you share memories. They're there for you when you need support or protection, defense. It's a place to belong, it's a place to try new things, to learn and to feel that there is unity. There is a circle, there's a group of people here that accept you and you're all going through something together like a similar journey. And so I feel like the crew is really important when it comes to how we've been, you know, facing encountering some sort of, you know, oppression, discrimination, it's always nice to know that there's people who are also going through this similar thing and they accept you and we're helping each other evolve and grow and create something different, create something new. Elementals. We hear a lot about the four elements of hip hop, rapping, spinning, breaking and tagging. These aren't just cogs and the machine or characters in a play. They are the foundations of a culture and most importantly, they are human beings. They have their own perspective, their own fears and desires, their own passion and rivalry. They came to hip hop with their own stories to tell, not just to be part of the story. So the four elements to hip hop are like the four wheels to a car, you know, you need gas and you need knowledge of where you're going. So without knowledge of self and where you're going, four elements don't meet anything. So the four elements to hip hop are the DJ, the MC, the breaker and what is known as writer, people call it graffiti, but they're known as writers. And it's not in any particular order because these elements can exist on their own, but it is hip hop culture when they are all happening at one time in the same building, part jam, basement party and it happened organically. It's not really planned out. It's just that people are able to have different talents and they happen to come together. By I think 8081, it was being called hip hop but before then, it was just a phrase that we used in songs and it was actually used as a derogatory term for the breakers. Here come the shippity hoppers and they will be bounced and moved, but yeah, hip hop is a special element in itself, just as an entity that happened to rock the world. - Each of the elements have a similar through line. You are in charge of how you're creating your design. You have to be unique, but you're also pseudo competing with the other people on that same genre. So if you're a graffiti writer and you put up a mural, you gotta know someone else is looking and we'll be challenging whatever you put up on there. And so that same feeling is evident in breaking. You're gonna dance and throw some moves down on the floor and someone else is watching and they're coming in right after you and they will either test or outdo what you just did. Or they'll just do their own thing if they feel like you are a comparable contender and you earn your spot on the floor then they'll leave you in peace. They'll do their thing, but there is a subtle feeling of creativity and excellence and competition. So the aggressiveness is there, the idea that I really have to outperform anyone and everyone is there in all the elements. DJing, the definitely the lyricism, the dance for sure, the mirroring and all of it. So I believe that the four elements are connected in recreating an identity for yourself, different than what society has given you. And I'd like to add real quickly, like if you're in a DJ crew, then the members of that crew should be knowledgeable about what it takes to set up the equipment or music, how to copyright or so, there's different reasons why you're in that crew. For breakers, it's primarily to dance, to be able to put forth this play. So you want people who can do certain kinds of moves, power moves, footwork, added to comedy. But for a DJ, for a rapper, even a graffiti crew, there's subtle differences in the needs of that particular field, the genre. So the rapper needs people in his entourage or his crew or posse that will understand, okay, we're going on the road now. Okay, we need protection on stage. All right, we need water and towels. We need someone who knows all the lyrics that can be on the mic to help with breath control or the punch lines. So each crew will satisfy different needs for the person who created the crew. And so there's the needs of the members, the needs of the person who's relating or running the crew. So that's important to be said as well. - Well, you know, in LA, we had tagger crews, we had dance crews, we had DJ crews, wrecking crew with the DJ crew, we had dance crews that rolled with the wrecking crew. We didn't have a lot of graffiti artists, but our most talented art graphic designer, near rad, aka Darryl Davis did all our artwork of the world class logo, unknown DJs, techno hop logo, easy, easy, ruthless records logo. He was the graphic designer. So his canvas was not walls. It was our album covers, our labels. So it made it a little bit different for us on the West Coast. There were other people that dig graphic design, graphic artist or graffiti. But like I said, if you look at his artwork, you'll see it's some of the most talented stuff you've seen in a long time. Everything he did was freehand, everything. From some of the finest artwork you see on these album covers, it was all done freehand. So that was our version of graffiti, was the album covers. This was before Photoshop, before computers, everything was done freehand. You know, this guy's gonna give you a Rembrandt for 25 others, okay? Maybe 50, okay? He's gonna give you, we would commission him to do certain projects, and he'd have so many, sometimes he just couldn't get to all of them. I just give him the basic concept. He would bring me back something. I've never rejected anything he never brought, because I was always so impressed with it. 90% of his work was already approved just from this tablet. - I remember time when the gangs stopped calling themselves gangs and then started calling themselves Cruz. - Absolutely. - Okay, I mean, first there were the black spades and then there were these different gangs who transformed into Cruz, like the Casanova crew and this and that crew, so if you think Cruz, you don't always think Beeboys. - Yeah, yeah, but we wasn't built for that. So we was the Beeboy crew. And then they definitely had other crews, but that had nothing to do with us. We wasn't the tough guys, we were the other guys. - We were the other guys. (laughs) (upbeat music) - Cole, Funky, and Furious. Hip-hop crews represented a form of artistic solidarity within the raw but rapidly evolving cultural landscape of the Bronx, a sort of consensus about how they would carry this thing forward, protect it and grow it. The Cole Crush Brothers, the Furious Five, the Funky Four, plus one. These early groups performed together, adopted unique musical styles, had their own fashion sense and distinct lyrical formulations. - So let me tell you about the crew, the crew that I came from, the group that I came from, the Brothers Disco, the Funky Four, the original Funky Four, and then the Funky Four, plus one more. How it started off back in the '70s was your crew, was the crew who nobody was allowed to get on your microphones. Nobody was allowed to play on your DJ system. Nobody was allowed to come behind the ropes when you're performing. Your crew was also your security crew who made sure that that happened. You understand? So that way, when you out there performing and you got those long ropes separating you from the crowd and the DJ set and the microphones, your security crew was the one who stopped people from coming behind the ropes and allow you as an MC or DJ to perform and do everything that that crowd came out for. So it's two ways that you can put it, especially for me growing up in the '70s. You know, from the inception of hip hop, the crew, the security crew, as well as your group, they were everything to you. They protected the brand, they protected who you were. They protected who you were as an MC or DJ. The crew was very important in hip hop culture because it solidifies everything and protected everything around you to ensure that you gave the best that you were supposed to as an MC. It started out with the three MCs. That would be four before we was ever the Ferris who was the three MCs who was me, Cowboy and Crete. And then we put Mr. Ness in the crew which you changed his name to Scorpio and that's when we took the Ferris, so with the Ferris four. And then a little while after that, we got Rahim from the funky four and then that's when we became the Ferris five, which is what we're known as to this day. For the most part, when you talking crews, especially hip hop crews, I mean, your crew is the crew that most crews are fired to be the, your whole delivery, y'all sounded like men up there. You know what the first crew? Like a group of MCs that sounded like adults on the mic, you know what I mean? And I know my crew aspired to reach the heights that we felt that you guys were at, to reach the level of excellence that the Ferris five was at. And that was important for all crews that admittedly or not, you know what I mean? Cats might say, yeah, well, we was doing this and we was doing that, but everybody looked at upon high. And back then, the Ferris five was upon high. Before we were all class wrecking crew, we were just a wrecking crew. And most people don't realize that there's a group out of Chicago as a house band for a record label called the wrecking crew. And we, I was hit with a cease and desist letter right around 1984, not to use name wrecking crew. And we just, it was 1984, Olympics in LA. And I kept hearing this term, world class runner, world class whimmer. I called my lawyer and I said, hey, man, can we add world class and mess up the spelling? Can we use world class wrecking crew? And he said, sure, that's why there's no G and the spell C-R-U. And sometimes we just call ourselves the crew. And the crew got to roll out. And that's just a nickname for us. But people adapted it and it started to make it have a different meaning sometimes. Well, I thought it was crazy, but we always thought of the show for the wrecking crew, but some people thought it meant something else. Zulu Nation. Sometimes the crew itself is a part of a larger collective. You could call it a movement. Something that represents more than just music. Zulu Nation was the first and most sprawling of the early collectives. Founded in the early '70s and carried on in various formulations through the '90s, this collective was rooted in social and political concepts. Afro-centrism and the nation of Islam were a big part of the conversation. This plenty of dispute over those particular elements in the founder, Africa Bambadas, went against these morals in many ways. But the overall idea of unity and moving as one stood for something deeper. Hip hop used that sentiment to spread positivity into the community. The Zulu Nation was formed out of the gangs that were breaking up during the early days of hip hop. The Black Spades was one of the most prominent gangs in New York City and the Zulu Nation was basically an offshoot of the Black Spades who basically took that mentality and changed it into a community-based mentality instead of a gang mentality. An African band body was the first of the early hip hop pioneers or fathers who brought hip hop together under one roof, under one umbrella, under one union. He was the first DJ that said, okay, if we're going to have a DJ collective, everybody doesn't have to bring a set. Okay, everybody can come play on my set and we all play on one set. So we all sound alike. We all sound the same. Nobody has problems with this set. I mean, this was a big deal as far as uniting hip hop because prior to that, hip hop was like separate. Every group was unto themselves. Zulu Nation was the first collective of groups all under one umbrella. So I think Zulu Nation and his teachers and the examples of peace, unity, love and having fun, that's hip hop's credo. Zulu Nation paved the way for other collectives across the country and globe. Native tongues, dungeon family, soul querians, quantum projects, ASAP, odd future, project blow, just to name a few. Not all of them have an overt political stance, but most are tied to particular regions, even neighborhoods. They are expressions of the community. Hey, things fall apart. Whether it's financial disparity, artistic disputes, personal ambition or the meddling of managers and record labels, no crew is impervious to conflict. But that is also the beauty of dedicating yourself to an artistic movement. It's like falling in love, those sweet ephemeral moments when ego dissolves, whether it's just you and your crew on the corner or at a block party or up on stage or huddled over recording equipment in a dark studio. When it falls apart, those memories remain. They make us who we are. Trust is very important when it comes to the crew that you were a part of. Our crew in the beginning had mad trust for each other. It wasn't until we signed a record deal in 1979 that that trust had begun to start being broken. Because as young teenagers, we didn't understand the music industry. We didn't understand how being a part of a crew and not having that trust and to know how that other person will back you up or should back you up 100% is what broke the trust. In my group, the funky four and also the funky four plus one more. Trust is very important. I got this idea to get into hip hop on my own. I did what I needed to do to get what I needed to get to get involved. But it was always in my mind to have other people involved. I thought the crew mentality was more powerful than just one artist themselves. I felt like I know what I'm capable of. I know what I can do. But if I could spread this into a whole collective, I think that that would be a powerful idea. And that's where the crew mentality came in for me. And it was great. It made me work four times as much as I would have. If it was just me because now I have other people to write for. I have other people to think of. So that really helped me as an artist. But the pitfalls of working with a group, a crew, or whatever is after a while, you know, everybody grows. We're not the same kids that we were when we were practicing at my house and playing basketball and cracking jokes on each other. You know, this is serious now. And it's about putting in work. And some people put more work in than others. And then that kind of pulls you apart as well. It's like, why am I doing all the work? And everybody's getting the same amount, or whatever. And it's just about continuing for me. It was just about continuing my journey. Whether it was with the crew or without a crew. I tried it with groups. I've transcended groups. It was me and one person. And it was me and three people. And then I added another person. And I replaced this person with that person. I kept trying with the group collective, even up to the cold crush brothers. That was my most successful attempt at a collective. But once, you know, that kind of-- our era kind of was over with. So I just had to continue on as an artist, as a solo artist and just keep doing what I do. I'm still a cold crush brothers. I'm still part of my group. And we do still perform from time to time. But I never wanted my artistry or my name to be so attached to an entity that once that entity was gone, I'm gone. You know what I mean? I had to always maintain my own name, my own personality, my own reputation, my own status, as well as the cold crush brothers. So just in case the cold crush brothers ain't rocking, Grand Master Caz is still viable and still rocking. Money will make a person turn on a mama. You understand? And trust, especially if you don't really know what was going on at the time. And for us, we were young teenagers. And I'm talking in retrospect to the music industry and the business. So when you out there and you rhyming on the streets, all you're doing is doing what you love. And you're trusting the group to back you up. And nine times out of 10, that group was there for you, that crew was there for you. But when you start seeing, or you think you're going to start seeing money and the record labels, and you have different people in your ear to break that trust amongst the crew members or the group, then these are things that trust and money come together and could tear you apart in more ways that will last eternity. Sometimes people never get over the trust that was broken. And especially for us, young kids, being a part of the music industry and being the blueprint for a lot of the groups that came after us. Trust is very important, but it could easily be broken and never meant it back. - You know, people evolve and people change. I was a young club owner, DJ first and foremost. I just did a post on Facebook this morning. And one of my buddies was saying, thank God for DJing. It's done so much for me. And I responded to him. Everything I've ever gotten in life came from DJing, including all my houses, my cars, everything. And I was a young DJ, blessed with a nightclub at 22 years old. And because I was able to do certain things, I became a magnet for some of the guys in the community. And that's how you get your Dr. Draves and your DJ, yellows. And at 17, 18, 19 years old, you're still developing. And at 28 years old, you're still developing. And at some point in time, what we were doing in the beginning was very popular. And at some point in time, like any other trend, it started to fade. Something else came about. We never had a problem about it. It's just that something that I couldn't evolve into, being where I grew up, where I came from. And now we all need drain and clientele, rolled together, doing book liners right now. So everything made a full circle, man. And that's why I say sometimes, today's misunderstanding could be tomorrow's forgiveness. But you can't shoot somebody because you're mad at him today. Because it's going to be your life sentence. And you know, it's just amazing, man. We've all had our differences at some point in time. Because everybody has different positions in life. It just makes more sense when you just let it go or the time take care of it. And a lot of times, it just needs to be a simple misunderstanding, man. But you've got to give it time to heal and to grow. Most crews, and after five years, our crew is unique because we've been around for multiple generations, at least 30 years. And each five to six years, there's new people coming in and out. And like our family, some people leave. And don't come back. Some people leave and come back. And that's why the crew's called full circle. You have to allow for people to learn what's out there, the hard knocks of life. And when they come back, they come back with a different kind of intelligence, which is experience of the soul. And it's what I call a GIA, the Ghetto Intelligence Agency. You're from around the way, and you're from the block. But if you stay on the block too long, you just have a narrow view of what life really is. You need to really go around the world, come back with the information, and let everybody know your experiences. So they grow as well. Evolution is important. Expansion is important. You can't keep doing what you're doing today five years from now. There has to be some sort of extension from what you're doing, a way to leverage what you've mastered, and move through other areas, other realms. And so I think that most people will romanticize the idea of a group. crew and say, "Oh, they have to stay together, they have to continue forward," but that's stifling the members. And so we encourage people to come here, study, train, be exposed, move on, and bring some information back if they have something to offer the new generations that are coming through. And so a lot of people say, "Well, full circle, it's really quick and right." But it's not, they're actually not seeing the rest of the work that has been done throughout 30 years. Starting with quick step, I came in in '94, but continuing is 2022 when we have young people lining up, dancing with us and understanding that there is a commercial aspect and a cultural aspect to what we're doing. And you have the freedom to straddle, be in each or both, or neither at whatever point in your life, you need to satisfy your needs. Like I said, you get together with like-minded people when you're young, and you guys share a dream, and you share a goal, and you go after it, and then after a while, like I said, some people grow together, and some people grow apart. And for the most part, some people grow apart, some people grow and some don't. Okay, but you gotta keep it going. And then I think that's when it comes to your next crew. And those are the people that you surround yourself when all else fails, when the crew breaks up, when this is not going, this, I'm talking about your friends, your family, your backup, the people who hold you up, no matter what you do. And that's the crew you kind of wind up depending on more than anything else. I found out myself, you know, I love my cold crush brothers, you know, but the people that around me on a day-to-day basis that keep me going, that hold me up, that's my crew, that's my personal crew, you know, my honey boys, you know what I mean? My dudes that help me carry my equipment from place to place, you know what I mean? The people who support me on social media and things like that who waved the grandmaster calves banner, you know, even when I'm not around, that's my crew. And that's the crew that's important to me. This is the origins of hip-hop and we out. This season has been amazing, an amazing opportunity for me to sit down with some of my constituents in hip-hop, some of people I know, some people I met during this process. And it's important to continue to mission that I started almost 50 years ago in preserving this culture that we call hip-hop. It's about taking it in and now it's about giving it back. So we're giving it back to the world. The origins of hip-hop is alive and well here. The season's been a blast. Keep it locked. It's the grandest of them all. And your mama fall for grandmaster calves, origins of hip-hop on A&E. This episode is hosted by yours truly, grandmaster calves. Produced and edited by Bennett Barbaco and Rob Omjarve. Written and produced by Clay Sennishow. Our associate producer is the lovely Emma Tamikash and executive produced by Bennett Barbaco and Larry Atom. And for A&E, this episode was also produced by Aisha Jordan. Our supervising producer is McKamey Lynn and executive producer is Jesse Katz.