Louder Than A Bomb

I spent Saturday evening listening to Hank Shocklee reminiscing over the early days of hip-hop in the New York boroughs while heavily made-up women plied me with beer and sushi…who dares say the new Dublin has nothing going for it?

Eventually his history reached the rise of the MC and his realisation that his soundsystem was dead on its feet if he couldn’t find a good MC to front it.  In those days, he said, “Good Times” was the record, and a DJ couldn’t drop the needle on it without turning around to find a line of guys standing behind him waiting to get on the mic.  One night he was playing a party at one of the colleges, dropped “Good Times”, and sure enough, every guy in the audience was up there trying out a couple of rhymes.  Every one of them, he said, was just dismal, so when the tune ended he took a break and let a guy on to make an announcement about a fraternity party that was happening the following week.  Just chatting about a frat party, this guy demolished everyone…it only took two years of constant begging from Hank Shocklee to get Chuck D to join what became Public Enemy.