Marley Marl
Hailing from Queens, Marley Marl revolutionized hip-hop when he pioneered the practice of sampling drum sounds and creating his own proto-boom-bap rhythms, yielding gems like MC Shan’s joyfully noisy (and unintentionally beef-inducing) QB anthem “The Bridge.” The sonic architect of Cold Chillin’ Records and the Juice Crew, Mr. Marl was one of rap’s first super-producers, crafting huge hits for Eric B. & Rakim, Biz Markie, Big Daddy Kane, and LL Cool J, among others. His tenure on late, great broadcasting partner Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack radio show on WBLS was immortalized in the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy.”
In his 2014 Red Bull Music Academy lecture, the legendary “engineer all-star” talked about growing up in Queensbridge, working with MC Shan, some of his most famous samples, and much more.
Hosted by Jeff “Chairman” Mao How’s everybody doing, all right? Welcome to the afternoon lecture. We’re very
excited to have our guest here today. I think when it comes to looking back at
the history of music, there are producers who have made some of your favorite
records, maybe they made a lot of classic records, and then there are the ones
that have made records that really changed the way you hear the music. This
gentleman definitely falls into the latter category, so would you please welcome
Mr. Marley Marl. [applause] Marley Marl Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Thank you for being here. Marley Marl Thank you. I’m happy to be here. It’s a long journey. As you can see, I’m
still getting my voice back from yesterday’s performance. We had fun at
Harlem. Anybody here was at the party yesterday? Audience Member Yeah. Marley Marl How’d you make it here? [laughs] But thanks for coming out, I appreciate the
love and I appreciate everything that’s going on here. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You once said that you actually hadn’t considered yourself a producer, but a
remixer. What did you mean by that? Marley Marl Well first, I was Mr. Magic’s DJ and I never really considered myself as a producer
because I was just making the music better as a DJ and it just opened the
doors to becoming a producer. The first time I saw a producer credit on a
record, I actually bugged out. I was like, “What are you doing? I’m a DJ!
You’re going to mess up my DJ [career].” [laughs] I didn’t understand the progression,
’cause I was kind of like the first DJ/producer. So the first time I saw,
“Produced by Marley Marl,” I had an argument with the record company like,
“What are you doing? You’re messing, everybody’s going to not take me
seriously as a DJ. I’m a DJ!” [laughs] The progression was great because being one of
the first to make that transition, I just didn’t know what that uncharted
waters that we were heading to. Jeff “Chairman” Mao What did you think you were doing when you were doing what you were doing in
the studio? You were facilitating? Marley Marl At first I was just putting good music together. And I was putting it together
as a DJ. You have to think about it, with me being a DJ, I never made records
for records, I made remixes for a DJ. I made DJ tools for me which became DJ
tools for the rest of the DJs. If you look at the early DMC battles, they’re
cutting all of my songs because they were DJ tools. I was just giving the DJ a
tool to be better. I didn’t consider myself as a DJ, I mean as a producer. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Right. Well, I think when you accepted that you are a producer, you definitely
turned out a lot of records that a lot of us are very fond of. I just wanted
to play something to sort of reset everybody’s ears, because we’ve obviously
heard a lot of different stuff, a just came out of lunch. So we have Marley
here, I’d like to play a little something from his catalog and maybe have him
talk about how he made it just to ease into this. So here’s a little something
from Marley Marl. (music: LL Cool J – “The Boomin’ System”) Marley Marl [applause] Jeff “Chairman” Mao All right. That is “The Boomin’ System” by LL Cool J. Marley Marl Right. ’91, actually. Jeff “Chairman” Mao What goes through your mind when you hear this track, just the music? What do
you think in terms of how you put this together? Marley Marl Actually, I think about when I hear him talking, he’s calling out the samples
in this song. He has the “Funky Drummer” drumming. At that point, [“Hold On” by] En Vogue was
a hot track. What I did, we made a song called “Cheesy Rat” where he says,
“Cars ride by with their booming systems.” He says that in that song, so I
actually took a sample from a record we made earlier that week and made that
the chorus of this song. Because in those days we didn’t have a lot of
resources and I was always thinking of how to be funky with less resources.
When I hear that record, I remember that was the time when everybody had
booming systems in their cars, LL was on the comeback from the album before
that, and it was just a great time. Me and him got together to do that record
which came from the Mama Said Knock You Out album. And you know, we won a Grammy
for that, for the Mama Said Knock You Out, later on. Like I said, a lot of
times we were doing things and we didn’t know what uncharted waters we were
getting to. It’s crazy. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You mentioned En Vogue, “Hold On,” which is I guess, where the bassline comes
from. That was a thing in the early ’80s maybe; you would take something, an
r&b song that was popular, and redo it in a more immediate [way]. Not too
far from when the original song came out. That hadn’t been done in a little
while. I think when this dropped it kind of surprised people. You also have
different layers of things in here. Marley Marl Right. I have my James Brown foundation. A lot of my earlier songs have James
Brown foundations. When I tripped upon sampling, it was actually through James
Brown because I realized that being a DJ, every time a DJ would put on a James
Brown record people would lose their mind. I decided, I was like, “Look, I
need to incorporate that into the production because I want people to lose
their mind to my music.” You know, there was a lot of rap records out before that that
didn’t have that feel. A lot of people credit me for changing the way
producers produce, the way music is sound, where the direction of hip-hop went
at that point. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Let’s go back a little bit, then. Let’s talk about your beginnings. You’re
from an area known as Queensbridge. Marley Marl Yeah. I’m from Queensbridge, New York. Make some noise, y’all. [applause] That area, of course, Nas is from that area, Mobb Deep, Cormega, Roxanne
Shante, MC Shan, of course, me. And before me there was a lot of musicians that
made a lot of music. I would look up to these guys, they were on the radio
already, and I was like, “Wow! I would love to hear one of my songs on the
radio one day.” That’s all I wanted was just one listen, to hear one of my songs
on the radio one time, and the creativity started from there. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So, what sort of folks were from QB at the time that you looked up to? This is
pre-hip-hop, more or less. Marley Marl Yeah, it’s pre-hip-hop. My neighborhood was filled with musicians. It all
started from “The Name Game,” a song from the ’60s. People coming out of
Queensbridge in the ’60s, yes. [sings] “Nanna nannna bobanna,” that song,
the lady lived in Queensbridge. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Wow! I think it’s Shirley Ellis. Marley Marl Yeah. She originally lived in Queensbridge. From there, then we have the band
era. Now, there was a lot of bands. You have a lot of singers, a lot of dancers. We
had singers like Mr. Bernard Fowler, who’s from the New York Citi Peech Boys,
he started out there. Now he sings with the Rolling Stones, he’s the
background singer, the guy with the dreads. He’s from Queensbridge. Mr. Andre
Booth who made a lot of records, who actually introduced me to Arthur Baker
with my first deal. We had Mr. Darryl Payne, he had a whole string of records,
the whole disco era was Darryl Payne. He lived on my block. I looked at him
like a god. I’m like, “Wow! This guy’s music’s on the radio and he lives on my
block!” I couldn’t believe it. There was a lot of bands out there. Jeff “Chairman” Mao And Darryl Payne had done Sinnamon, right? Marley Marl Yeah, Sinnamon, he is from the group Sinnamon. And they made so many records. Half
of the disco era at that time was all his songs. He was incredible. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You got into disco and dance music. Was your brother an influence in that
respect? Marley Marl Sure enough. My brother, he was a DJ in the neighborhood before me. He was a
DJ when it was just about breakbeats and dancing. Hip-hop wasn’t even out yet.
They were dancers, and what my brother would do, they would provide the music
for the dancers. He had a vast collection of records and later, when he went
to the service, I had access to all his records. That was the change of
everything right there. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Did he school you at all on mixing the stuff or did you have to do your own
thing? Marley Marl Basically, my brother’s like this. “Don’t touch my sh--.” [laughter] As soon as he would leave out the house, I’m looking out the window, I see him
walk out the building, I’m touching his sh--. [laughter] Basically, that’s how it started. One day, they was out in the park DJing and
I think that was the time I was able to get on the set finally and show
everybody what I could do. And it was only one transition, from one record to the
next, but I felt like I had the world in my hands. That’s all I needed was one
mix to show everybody, and I just did a hot mix. I wasn’t even scratching, I
think I blended it in time. Everybody was so amazed because at that point it
was like, “We don’t do that, everybody’s just scratching and cutting,” but I
blended it in time. And everybody looking was like, “Wow!” That’s all I did.
One blend, one mix, and I was happy. My life could have ended right there.
[laughs] Jeff “Chairman” Mao Some of your DJ heroes at the time were, who were some of the people you
looked up to? Marley Marl Back in those days, I would listen to the radio station that I work at now in
New York which is WBLS, you can always check it out at www.wbls.com, at that
point was the number one station in the city. I would listen to them. I would
hear remixes on the air like Ted Currier and Frankie Crocker [a New York radio DJ] was there, of
course. It was like a whole array of things that they were doing that was pre-
what we are doing now. Jeff “Chairman” Mao When did you become aware of hip-hop initially? Marley Marl Basically, I was in high school and this guy walked through with a big-ass
radio, blasting beats and somebody screaming over the beats with an echo. I
was like, “Oh, man. That sounds amazing.” So I was introduced to hip-hop
through a guy in the Bronx, he was in our school. And he would play at lunchtime, he would just
blast the music in the lunchroom. It was incredible. It just changed my life.
At that point I was into music, being a DJ. I was more of, I would say, a club
DJ. Disco was out, I was 15 years old, playing in clubs I didn’t even belong
in. I wasn’t even old enough to be in these clubs but my passion for music and
my skill of blending… You know, I pride myself with being a blender. At that point,
everybody was just scratching, going back and forth, cutting and doing all
that. I said, “Well, if everybody’s doing that, let me take a different
approach. Let me blend the music.” I would always notice that when they were
doing that, it looked really nice but the dancers couldn’t dance and I felt
that the music was about the dancers. So that’s why I decided to start blending
music. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Was that schoolmate, was that [DJ] Breakout? Or was that somebody… Marley Marl It was actually DJ Breakout. He was in my school and he used to come with the
tapes and play every park jam that they was doing in the Bronx, or his, or whatever. He
would have it, it would have the echoes, the breakbeats, the scratching [imitates scratching]. It
was just so hard. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So you went to this high school with DJ Breakout. Marley Marl Yes. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Funky Four Plus One. Marley Marl Yes. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Let’s just hear a little bit of a Breakout tape. (music: Funky Four Plus One excerpt from live tape) That’s kind of what you might have been hearing, something like that. Marley Marl 100%. I might have heard that tape right there. [laughs] But actually, it was
amazing to me, because it was a street culture. I was already into the music,
but to hear someone rapping continuously over the music, and then breaks being
extended how they used to do it, that was amazing to me. So I went home and made
a crew. Jeff “Chairman” Mao What was the name of the crew? Marley Marl Sureshot Crew. We were hot, it was eight MCs, but they couldn’t make
records so you’ve never heard of any of them. Except one. Dimples D, my first
record. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Did you guys aspire to make records? Did you know that that’s what you could
do? Marley Marl No, but we could rock a party. I can tell you that. We were rocking parties,
rocking the jams in Queensbridge. But later on, when I became a producer, I
tried to go back and produce them, but we couldn’t make records. It was a little
different, the streets, and then trying to make something that the public would
like. It’s a little different. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Did you ever go up to the Bronx to try to check out any of the jams after
hearing the tapes or anything? Marley Marl What I would do, the funny thing about Queensbridge, where I lived, I don’t know what it was, but
the Bronx people came to us. Maybe they was on a New York City tour where
they’re in Queens, maybe they on Staten Island, I don’t know. But my first time
seeing [Afrika] Bambaataa was actually in Queensbridge Center. He came to our
neighborhood. I was like, “Wow!” I was too young to actually get in the jam
but I know I stuck my head and looked in the window, and I saw what was going
on. That was hot. That kind of changed my life, too. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Was there anything in particular that seemed distinctly “Queensbridge” from that
era, as far as hip-hop went? Because, I mean, it’s traveling across the city
through these tapes. Marley Marl I don’t think Queensbridge really got on the map until later, for hip-hop. It
was a stop, I could say. It was a stop, I mean, [Grandmaster] Flash came to Queensbridge,
Red Alert came
to Queensbridge, it’s crazy, Bambaataa. Most of my earlier hip-hop heroes came
to us. It was crazy. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So when did you start getting the fascination with the studio? Marley Marl That’s actually… That’s a funny story, because I was just a street DJ, not thinking about
producing. I always had a crowd when I would come out. It was toward the end
of the band era in Queensbridge. So, I was DJing on one side of the park, I had a
big crowd. The band was on the other side of the park with no crowd. Me, being
the diplomatic person that I am, I went down to the band guys and said, “Hey,
I’m about to take a break. Would you like to plug into my big soundsystem and
be heard?” They was like, “Yeah,” so they brought their stuff down. I took a
break. They started rocking through the system. OK. Now, the next day
musicians are showing up at my house like we’re friends, but I’m a DJ, you
guys are musicians. There was always a cut-off, a difference between us. Now
I’m noticing keyboard players come to my house, bass players come to my house
because I had the equipment. And then all of a sudden we’re in the house, they’re
jamming in my house, I’m learning how to EQ the bass. I’m learning how to make
everything sound better. And that was my training to become an engineer. Right
there, right on-the-job training. Then I started going around with them with
my system and being the sound guy for them. Obviously, I learned to engineer
from that point. That was the beginning of me being a producer. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You also started to do some interning, right? Marley Marl Yes. At that point my friend Andre Booth, he took me to a studio one time. He
said, “Look, I got rehearsal. I want you to come and EQ us at rehearsal the
way we sounded at that show.” I was like, “OK.” So I went to his rehearsal and
it was a little studio called Unique. It was a rehearsal studio at that point.
Is wasn’t full-blown, the way that it became later on. I did an internship
there. It taught me a lot. I ran into Jazzy Jay, I saw
them make a lot of the records, Force MDs. I was the guy just running back
and forth, getting soda, juice from the store. I would do the runs as well as
just watch what they were doing. It was amazing to me, very amazing. I would
go there four days a week, straight out of school, I would go there and absorb
everything that was going on. Jeff “Chairman” Mao When did you get a chance to actually get your hands on the equipment and
start messing around. Marley Marl Well that took a while because they wouldn’t let me touch the equipment at that
point. So I would say about probably ’85-ish or something like that. No, I’ll go
back a little. Maybe ’83-ish or something like that. I got a chance to touch
the equipment, and during one of the sessions, like I said, the studio had a
lot of expensive equipment. It had something called a Fairlight computer which
was one of the first samplers that ever came out. It was like $100,000 for
60 seconds of sampling. It was incredible. So, one day we were in the studio,
and the cheaper version of the sampler did come later, it was probably E-mu
came with an emulator. They was emulating the Fairlight, basically, and you
could get it at a cheaper price. But if you look at it all, it’s all digital
technology. Everything we’re using now, that was the beginning of it. The
Fairlight computer, they used to put beautiful voices and you could do chords
with the voices, and it just sounded like, [10CC] “I’m not in love.” Stuff like
this. [laughs] One day I was at a session and we was just joking around
inside the… Actually, it was a Captain Rock session. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Which Track? Marley Marl A song called “Cosmic Crew.” Jeff “Chairman” Mao “Cosmic Blast.” Marley Marl “Check out the blast.” Jeff “Chairman” Mao Yeah, yeah. Marley Marl “Cosmic Blast,” that’s the B-side. Actually, I never really said this in an
interview or anything but I sampled the beatbox in that record to make it do
what I wanted it to do. Then, I was going to get something else off of the track,
the sample, and the snare actually recorded first before the sound that I was
looking for. I started playing my sample against the track that was coming
through the speakers and my snare sounded better. I told the engineer, “Turn
that snare down.” I played my snare over it. I looked at him and I said, “Wow!
Do you know what just happened?” He’s like, “Yeah, you made a mistake and
sampled the snare, by mistake.” I was like, “No. This means I can take any drum
sound from any pre-existing record like James Brown “Funky Drummer” snare.”
Because sampling first stared out as mere bits of sound. It wasn’t like three
minutes of a loop or 30 seconds of a loop. It was like we didn’t have all
that. It was expensive to sample so we would take 1.5 seconds and take a
snare, another 1.5 seconds take a kick, another .5 to get a hi hat. That’s how
we had to do it. That’s how the earliest sampling came, so when I took that
“Impeach the President” snare, which is this… [uses laptop] “Impeach the President” snare, back in the day. (music: The Honey Drippers – “Impeach The President”) Hear that snare? That snare would change the world. [laughs] That’s real.
There’s so many records with this snare. From “Funky Cold Medina” to “Eric B.
is President” to “Make the Music With Your Mouth Biz” and so on. [laughs] Basically, when I sampled that kick and that snare and made my own beats,
that changed hip-hop. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So you were originally sampling when you were working on Captain Rock? Marley Marl Yes. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You were trying to catch a piece of was it, you told me, you said Art Of
Noise, right? Marley Marl Yeah, Art Of Noise. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Art Of Noise “Beat Box” was the record you were trying to sample. What were
you trying to get? The voice or something? Marley Marl Yeah, I was trying to get, “Rr-rr-rr-rr r rr-rr,” something like that. I was
going to have that, but the snare came through. I was like, “Oh, OK.” I
started playing that with the track. It was a mistake. It was a basic, honest
mistake that changed everything. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Did you use the Art Of Noise snare for something? Marley Marl Art Of Noise… Jeff “Chairman” Mao Since you already knew this was the first one that you actually caught by
mistake. Did you actually use that for one of your tracks, too? Marley Marl Later on down the line I did, yeah. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Do we know which ones? Marley Marl I wouldn’t say. Jeff “Chairman” Mao OK. Marley Marl [laughs] Jeff “Chairman” Mao I think I’m going to guess, but I’ll guess later. Marley Marl OK, all right. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You come across this very, very happy accident, very fortuitous accident. What
are you thinking then? Are you like, “I gotta just start making stuff“? Did
you right away know what you stumbled on? Marley Marl Let me tell you what I did. Basically, that day I want to the audio store and
bought a cheap sampler, a digital SDD sampler by Korg. It had, I think, 1.5
seconds of sampling time. It was a digital delay and a sampler, look at that.
It had a trigger in the back so me being an engineer at Unique Recordings, I
would see these guys triggering all day. It was amazing to me because Arthur
Baker was there. All the songs, like “A.E.I.O.U,” they was into electronic music way before it was
really popular like that and I remembered that I could get a trigger to
trigger my actual sample. I would trigger from a drum machine. This is like
pre-MIDI, we didn’t even have MIDI at that point. It was before MIDI. We had
something called Sync. I don’t know what happened to it, but MIDI took over.
We would sync and pulse, that’s what it was all about. I would make a pulse
come from my drum machine and trigger my samplers for however the rhythm I
wanted the drums to be. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Were you still trying to make club music off of this? Everybody knows you made
the hip-hop records off this, but did you try to make any club records with
the sampled kick and snare and all this? Marley Marl Not with that particular one because being a DJ I would already know what went
with what type of music. I was doing a lot of early electronic music before
the sampling came in as being a producer. That’s what we had. You got to look,
before hip-hop there was disco. Before disco there was electric funk or
something like that. It all comes together. You have the Giorgio Moroders, you have
Afrika Bambaataa, and them was doing a lot of electric funk like that,
Kraftwerk. Those were my early heroes. Giorgio Moroder, let me tell you what
song really, really, really changed my life. It was a song by Donna Summer,
this song here. (music: Donna Summer – “I Feel Love”) Now, I say that because that was electronic music. You have to think about it.
I was working with bands at that point. I was interning at Unique, rehearsing
with bands. When I heard a syncopated bassline to a track and all the
electronics going on, you notice when I played that record, some things were
in that side, some things were on that side. Everything was electronically to
the beat, it was electronically to the beat tight. That record right there
made me decide that I want to make music. I want to make music like that. I
want to learn how they made this. You have to think, this is pre-everything.
Giorgio Moroder is, I would call him the godfather of electronic music, because
they were first, him and Kraftwerk. They made a lot of records and those
records made me want to go in and dig. “How did they do that? How did they
make a bassline syncopate in time with a track?” It was incredible. And they was
doing that pre-’70s, something like that. So, they were way ahead of us when it
came to production in Germany. Jeff “Chairman” Mao But you did do your own dance tracks, too, before even the hip-hop thing
really jumped off for you. Marley Marl Yes. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So this is one of your mixes from back in that era, the ’84 era. (music: Aleem – “Release Yourself”) Marley Marl [laughs] Wow. [applause] Jeff “Chairman” Mao That’s Aleem. Marley Marl Yes, I think now you know where that sample, the snare came from on that. It’s
actually Art Of Noise snare on that record, but it’s EQed. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Oh really? OK, all right. Now we learn something. Marley Marl And compressed. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Interesting. Marley Marl Now, the sampler; that was my first time experimenting that way. These guys,
they let me do what I wanted to do with this record. They had the sample as
you heard, the chorus came and they were saying, “Release yourself.” I said to
myself, “That’s hot. What we need to do is make the record say that more.” So
what I would do, I went and sampled that and started playing that at the
beginning of the track. They looked at me like it wasn’t going to work. It was
actually more sampling at the beginning of the track, but I think one of the
wives of the Aleems said, “Oh, that’s too much of that.” So I had to go back
in the studio and take some out, but that became the most important part of
the record later on. Who knew? Jeff “Chairman” Mao And that’s Leroy Burgess on vocals. Marley Marl Leroy Burgess, yes. I’m in the studio actually with him now. We’re doing new
music together now. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Nice. He was here and did a lecture show with us as well the other day. So,
you decided to make hip-hop records, at a certain point. Actually, before this, ’83 you do the Dimples D record which you kind of made a passing reference to. Marley Marl That wasn’t even meant to be a record. Like I said, my early productions were
just DJ tools for me to have something special that the other DJs didn’t have.
I wanted to be special. I wanted a special version. [Run-DMC’s] “Sucker MCs” was out.
Guess what I wanted? “Sucker DJs.” I made a record called “Sucker DJs,” so when
I play at a club or I did a function, everybody else was playing “Sucker MCs”
which was cool, great record, but I wanted something different so I made a
version with a female talking about sucker DJs. You guys can talk about sucker
MCs, I’m talking about sucker DJs with a female. So it was never meant to be a
record. It was just meant to be a DJ tool. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You also did a record that was not just about sucker DJs, but about you. (music: MC Shan – “Marley Marl Scratch”) [applause] Marley Marl Wow! Jeff “Chairman” Mao OK, so MC Shan is the vocalist on this. How did you and Shan meet? Marley Marl Basically, I was sitting in Queensbridge Park one day and this guy was riding
a minibike around the park. He knew that I was the person that made “Sucker
DJs.” I was getting a little fame in the community, I was coming up, getting
love. He was like, “Hey, I got this song I wrote about you.” I was like,
“Yeah, well, if it’s hot you know where I live. Come check me out.” Basically,
that song right there is one of my first songs that I premiered sampling.
Those are drum samples. Those drum sounds are samples. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So what’s that from? Marley Marl A record. [laughs] Basically, that’s my first time sampling drum sounds, on
that record right there. That right there started changing everything because,
you have to think about it; before a sound like that would come out, you had
bands replaying hip-hop breaks. Not good. It just wasn’t good. No disrespect,
it just wasn’t good. You have to think, when I first heard rap, I heard the
scratching of breakbeats and it was just something about the funk. I mean, if
a band doesn’t have funk, they can’t replay a funk tune. You get what I’m
saying? So a lot of bad records in hip-hop were coming out with these guys
trying to imitate the breakbeats. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You’re talking about the Sugar Hill [Gang] era, that stuff. You were not feeling the
Sugar Hill joints back then? Marley Marl I would say some of the Sugar Hill records were pretty better than a lot of
the other ones. Sugar Hill was pretty good. Their records sounded very well,
produced well, but there was songs before that on little other labels that, it just didn’t
do hip-hop justice. I just decided I had to make a change because I needed
something better to play. I needed tools. Jeff “Chairman” Mao But also you were saying the drum machine sound wasn’t doing it for you
either, the non-sample sort of drums, right? Marley Marl Well, they were strong but they didn’t have the impact of a James Brown record
coming on. It just was so different. It didn’t have the impact of an “Impeach
the President,” the song that I first sampled. Those were staples. I would
notice that every time any DJ anywhere… I got to tell you, I know hip-hop
was born off of James Brown. It has to be. I just know that, because he was
funky, that was the blueprint, those were the songs that the breakdancers used
to go break to and make it exciting. That was the exciting songs of the night.
It was a little different at that point. Jeff “Chairman” Mao What did you think of Shan when he had this song for you. What did you think
of his style, his vocals? Marley Marl When he came to my house, let me tell y’all, he had it written on a brown
paper bag, the song. [laughter] He must have just wrote it in the hallway before he knocked on my door but he
came, and I brought him in the house, we were talking. I says, “So let me hear
what you got. Let me hear what you got.” He whips out a brown paper bag.
[laughs] “All of these beats and my rhymes attached.” But when I heard his
voice, I was like, you know, “If the song is wack, it’s OK, but his voice is
incredible.” So I would work with him because he had the voice in which he
knew how to project his voice into a track like an instrument and that’s
important. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Let’s hear something else that you and MC Shan did together. (music: MC Shan – “The Bridge”) [applause] Marley Marl [laughs] Wow. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So, where was this done? Marley Marl That was done in an apartment in Queensbridge. I made a home studio after I
bought my samplers and stuff. So I made a home studio with my equipment, and I
would make a lot of records. It was at an apartment in 4114 12th Street, 2A.
[laughs] In the living room. That was my two samplers, there. Actually, that
record was made with three samplers, since I had three 1.5-second samplers I
would trigger this kick right here. [triggers “Impeach the President” kick off sampler] That’s what you just heard right there. I would sample that kick, snare and
hi-hat and then put it on… Hey! This record was made off of a 4-track. It
was a 4-track recording. It wasn’t elaborate. I only had four tracks to
deal with so that meant nothing wack could be recorded. [laughs] Very
limited. So I was like, look, I would do it like this. I would use the tracks for the
frequencies that were close to one another. I was always into frequencies and
stuff like that. I already knew that the hi-hat and the snare was around the
same frequency so I would put those on one track, blend them right from the
gate, put the hi-hat and the snare together. Then I would put the kick and
maybe the bassline, since that was the low frequency, I would split it up by
frequency, because I had limited tracks. Snare, hi-hat, track one.
Kick, bassline, track two, the “Bridge” sample track three, and his vocals on
track four. That made the record because we didn’t have a lot of tracks to
play with so the best had to be recorded. I made it on a 4-track. The first
record, “Marley Scratch,” I made on a 4-track cassette player back in the
day. It was a 4-track cassette, you know, a little box like this big.
That’s why I didn’t think I was a producer, because I was working with minute
equipment in the projects, right in my living room. Jeff “Chairman” Mao What does the voice say on the chorus, it’s saying, “The bridge.” Marley Marl It’s saying, “The bridge.” Jeff “Chairman” Mao Whose voice is that? Marley Marl The bridge, Queensbridge, [imitates record] “The the the the bridge, the the the...,” let me hear
that again. I can’t remember. Just the sample part. (music: MC Shan – “The Bridge”) Jeff “Chairman” Mao That’s your voice. Marley Marl That’s me, yeah. I said, “The bridge, Queensbridge,” and just sampled it. It
was weird because I didn’t sample it and then had the ability to play it how I
wanted. That played like that because it was triggered that way, probably from
something that was in the drum machine that just was kicking a pulse to the
sampler and it sounded good so I went with it. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Why the backwards sound? Marley Marl Now, the backward sound is actually a song called “Scratchin’.” What I did,
since I was already experimenting a lot with frequencies, I decided to flip
the horn sound backwards. What I did, I recorded it forward and put reverb on
it. When I turned it backwards, you hear the reverb coming first, then the
actual hit. Nobody was doing that. All I did was flipped it around. I recorded
it one time, that way, then sampled it again catching the reverb first and
flipping it backwards so it would be like a… [demonstrates sound] You
know? Jeff “Chairman” Mao So we’re talking about… (music: The Magic Disco Machine – “Scratchin’”) Marley Marl That was it. Yes. Now what I did, I just recorded that [demonstrates horn
stab] with reverb behind it, then flipped it around so you hear the reverb
coming first and then the hit comes. That’s how it was. [demonstrates sound]
It’s actually that. Jeff “Chairman” Mao OK, but why? Marley Marl Why? Jeff “Chairman” Mao Yeah, why? Marley Marl Because I had nothing else to do. [laughs] I was experimenting. It’s
probably from one of those nights. [laughs] I just wanted to hear something
different. A lot of people credit that song with being the birth of noise on
music. It wasn’t music. I didn’t look at is as music. I just looked at it as,
“I want to put noise on this. I want the Queensbridge anthem…,” which was
never supposed to be a record, by the way. We only made that record for, I
would say it was intermission music for the bands at Queensbridge Day because
rap was second, bands were first at that point. So we could get on, let’s make
it an intermission record and be heard in-between their breaks, and that’s why
that was made, basically. Jeff “Chairman” Mao But noise, just because… Marley Marl Noise because… Nothing sounded like that. I wanted it to stand out. I knew that
rap, the rap tapes that were around was kind of noisy. It wasn’t clear and it
wasn’t really so well-produced. You know, the songs were. I wanted noise. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You did this not to be released as a record, not intended to be released as a
record. Marley Marl Not being a producer. I wanted a DJ tool. That was a DJ tool. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Is this the only version of this that there is or does there exist a version
that was just done for Queensbridge Day that’s different. Marley Marl There was. It’s the same track. The actual record that came out was a re-edit
because we made this song, I played it, everybody was going crazy in
Queensbridge about it, it was very local, but everybody couldn’t get their
hands on it. I was like, “Oh, I’m not giving you a copy. I’m not giving it
out.” So my nephew stole a copy and then gave it out to the neighborhood. Me
being angry at that, that blew it up, though. What I did, I did a re-edit.
That’s the one that went to the public. I said, “Well, if that one leaked, let
me make a better version,” and I just chopped it up and re-edited it and just
made a longer version, extended parts and my version that came out was from
the version that was floating around the neighborhood. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Alright, so. You mention “Impeach the President.” Marley Marl Yes. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You’re using ”Impeach the President,” and you’re using it multiple times. Marley Marl Yes. Jeff “Chairman” Mao What was your philosophy of just utilizing the beats? Marley Marl My philosophy is this, and this is pretty true; see, your brain is already set
to what you like. When you hear something and you like it, you already knew.
Your brain knew you was going to like it. I already knew that the kick and
snare, since everybody loved it on “Impeach the President,” I already knew
that love. Everybody’s brain is set to like that. Let me give them what their
brain likes. Every song that ever used that kick and snare was a hit because
your brain likes it already and I already knew that. I was like, “OK, let me
give your brain some food to like. Let me keep using those sounds on records.”
The funny thing about me using those drum sounds for a good run on about 10
records, they all were hits. People never really realized why they liked those
records, because when they hear something that they like, they automatically
going to like it. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Did anybody ever say, “Wow! These drum sounds are the same on each record. Did
anyone at the time ever notice.” Marley Marl No, because it’s like a drummer. It’s kinda like James Brown. He had the same
drummer on every record, but if the music is different, your brain doesn’t
know. Your brain just knows there’s something in that sound that I like, so
you automatically like it. James Brown’s drummer was on most of all his
records. It was the same drum sound, it was the same kick and snare, but when
the music is there, it changes it up. If I was just using the straight drums
alone, everyone goes, “Oh, you keep using the same…” No, I kept feeding
everybody what they loved. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Let’s listen to one other song that uses these same drums. (music: Eric B. & Rakim – “Eric B. Is President” / applause) Marley Marl Crazy. As I listen to that song, I realize that I was using the same drum
sounds, but I was EQing them different on a lot of the records. It would hit
different, but it was the same basic sound coming through. As you can see, that
record was Rakim and Eric B.’s break out record. That was their first record
they ever made, that was the first record that anyone ever heard from them.
That was made on 4-track. I made that record on a 4-track. Bass and kick
together, snare and hi-hat together, his vocals and Eric B.’s cuts. That made
the record. As a matter of fact, some of the cuts shared the same track with
Rakim’s vocals so you could hear double cuts over it, but when he wasn’t
rhyming I was able to share that track. And I’m noticing on that record it’s
weird because I’ve really never mixed that record. The version that went out
was the demo mix. They just ran with the demo, it was so hot. [laughs] Jeff “Chairman” Mao It’s a crazy record in terms of how out it is, too, in a way. It makes sense
it’s a demo mix because it’s very raw. The cuts are coming in everywhere, it’s
like… Marley Marl Loud. Jeff “Chairman” Mao …loud. Marley Marl You hear loud cuts coming. Jeff “Chairman” Mao The samples, the James Brown voice sample comes in real loud. Marley Marl Out of nowhere. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Out of nowhere. “The Champ,” The Mohawks, the [demonstrates organ sound]
“duh-duh-nuh,” that stuff comes in and out. Marley Marl Halfway sometimes. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Exactly. Marley Marl That was a demo. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Was that just messing around, or… What was it? Marley Marl That was us just creating with sounds and coming what we was going to come
with. I was going to clean it up later, next week, but next week never came.
They just heard that and next thing I know I heard that record on the radio. Jeff “Chairman” Mao The “Impeach the President” drums are, of course, the sounds. What is the
pattern after? The drum pattern, I’m talking about. Marley Marl There’s an artist called Tragedy Khadafi who went on to produce C-N-N and
further on, Capone-N-Noreaga. Well, he was a young guy in Queensbridge. We made
a song called “Stunt of the Block.” He had his first success on NIA Records
with another song but we tried to give them “Stunt of the Block” as its
follow-up. The record company was like, “Look, he sounds like he’s like 14
years old. Why is he talking about prostitutes on his record? We can’t put
this out, he’s like 14 years old with a kiddie voice, talking about a
prostitute in a neighborhood.” Actually, Tragedy was the one that I could say
that he made the blueprint for Queensbridge rappers. The same blueprint that
Nas would follow, Mobb Deep would follow, Cormega and Screwball and so on. He
was the architect of Queensbridge rap, that flow. There’s a song called “Live
Motivator” you could Google it, look for it, by an artist called Tragedy. The
second verse is the blueprint of Queensbridge rap to come. He even says
“illmatic” in his rhyme, so Nas clearly heard his rhyme style and picked it
up. Nas was definitely from the neighborhood. I could say at this point Nas was, he is
the greatest from Queensbridge. Nas got his cadences from Tragedy, he got his
stories from [Cor]Mega. He put it all together and became, “Wow!” The thing
about it, Tragedy was always going to jail as a kid, Cormega was always going
to jail, so that really opened the door for Nas to come through real hard, and
when Nas came through, he came through extra hard. Jeff “Chairman” Mao You mentioned “Stunt of the Block,” so that was where he had some connection
to “Eric B. is President.” Marley Marl Yes, “Stunt of the Block” is a song that we made… (music: Tragedy Khadafi – “Stunt Of The Block” / Eric B. & Rakim – “Eric B. Is
President”) [switches between tunes] “Stunt of the Block,” “Eric B. is President,” “Stunt
of the Block,” “Eric B. is President,” “Stunt of the Block,” “Eric B. is
President.” Now, when we was making “Eric B. is President,” Eric B.. was like,
“Look, I like “Over Like a Fat Rat”.” “Over Like a Fat Rat” was a song by
Fonda Rae back in the day that had a nice little bassline and I’m sure, what’s
his name, had something to do with it, Leroy Burgess. He definitely had
something to do with it. This was the original song, right here. (music: Fonda Rae – “Over Like A Fat Rat”) Now that bassline right there, Eric B. was like, “Look, I love the bassline
from ‘Over Like a Fat Rat.’” I was like, “OK.” I said to myself, “If you like
the bassline from “Over Like a Fat Rat,” I have a track, an old track, drum
track from a Tragedy record that maybe could fit up together.” What happened,
I would pull a track out, that session. I think what I did at that point, I
pulled the session out and I think I wiped everything that I had on there. I
don’t even think I have “Stunt of the Block” masters any more because I think
I erased everything to make “Eric B. is President.” ‘Cause was only 4-track, the
drums was there. What I would do, we would make that and I would replay the
bassline and then Rakim would make the song and that became that first breakout hit. It’s crazy because I had a lot of recycled beats. And I can say most
of these records with the same beat, I probably made within the same week. I
just put them away because I had something called “The sound of the week” at
my studio, my home studio. Since we wasn’t so privy to floppy disks – this was
pre-floppy disk – so what I used to do is save my sounds. I would take a two
track reel-to-reel… How many of you guys know about splicing tape? One or
two people put their hands up. This is pre-digital. We used to have to cut the
tape. Cut the tape and mend it. What I would do, I would put a snare… I would
put leader, snare, leader… now leader is just clear tape in between. So I
would put leader, then snare then leader, a kick. Leader, snare, leader, hi-
hat. So I had a reel, I had a drum reel that was called “Marley Marl’s Drum
Sounds” that I would always go with the artists and say, “Hey. We’re making a
record today. Let’s go do some drum sounds.” “What do you mean?” “Listen.”
[demonstrates sounds] “Oh, I like that, I like that.” So we would pick. That
became that week. Now, my samplers, since they wasn’t digital, I could never go
back to that sound or whatever was in it until I put the reel up. So what I
would do is just keep those drum sounds in the sampler all week and keep it
turned on so when I had a session, “Look!” And start jamming. I could say most
of these records were probably made in the same two weeks because that was the
time I didn’t turn the samplers off. I made all the songs that week in the
studio. Whoever came that week, that was the sound of the week. Jeff “Chairman” Mao There’s a famous story of what happened to the drum reel. Marley Marl Oh, yes. The drum reel; later on me and Shante was in the studio, Roxanne
Shanté, she’s from Queensbridge too, another artist I would produce and make
famous. We were in the studio and it was a group next door, in the next room.
And it was in the studio, me, Shante and Mr. Magic. It was a group called
Boogie Down Productions. They wasn’t really know yet, they was just making
demos. And so what happened, they saw Mr. Magic. I became Mr. Magic’s DJ later on on
that radio station WBLS where I work now, and they was so excited to meet Mr.
Magic. “Oh, Mr. Magic, could you please listen to my demo, please?” He was
like, “I’ll see y’all in a minute.” He kind of played them to the left and
then he’s like, he was a very arrogant guy, God rest his soul, but you know, he had to be
that way, that’s just how it was. He said, “Marley, come with me in the room
and let’s hear these guys…” – I’m going to say “guys” – “…let’s hear these
guys’ demo.” But he said, “These motherf-----s.” [laugher] “Let’s go hear the
motherf-----s’ demo.” I’m like, “Alright.” Now I’m the skinny intern dude, I’m
not really holding no weight. I’m just becoming Marley Marl, a little bit of
fame. So I walk in the room with Mr. Magic. It’s KRS-One, it’s Scott La Rock.
It’s like a whole mob of Bronx gangster-looking guys and goons. I’m like,
“Wow! It’s a little scary in here.” So, we go in the room, we sit down. Mr.
Magic’s like, “Play that sh--.” I’m like, “OK.” They play the music. Now
they’re going crazy, they’re jumping up and down [imitates jumping movement]. Magic’s looking at me like, [looks confused/skeptical]
he goes over to the console, shuts it down. “This sh-- is garbage. Why did you
waste my time and tell me to come in here to hear this sh–…” I was like,
“Oh, wow!” I’m nervous, there’s goons all over the place, they’re looking at
him all crazy and he just turns around and walks out and I’m stuck in the room
with these goons. I’m like, “Well, I guess he didn’t like your stuff,” and I’m
like, “How do I get out of here without getting punched?” [laughs] So alright, I go back in the studio where we’re doing our session. Obviously,
they’re pissed off. So Magic is like, “I’m out of here,” about 20 minutes
later. “I’m out of here. I’m getting out of the studio. We finished.” OK,
we’re getting out. In my haste of getting out of the studio so quick with them
before I miss my ride, I left my prized drum reel that I’ve told you about
earlier with the kick, leader, snare, leader. That was actually like my floppy
disk, it was just a reel of my sounds. It was pre-floppy so it’s the way I
would save my sounds. So, I say this to say that Boogie Down Production got
upset with Mr. Magic because they were trying to get in the Juice Crew. They
was trying be members of the Juice Crew. All they wanted to do was be in the
Juice Crew. That was their audition for the Juice Crew and they failed. And,
stupid me, losing my drum reel at that point and I leave the studio. They’re
heated in the studio, they stay, they walk into the room we came out of, “Oh,
sh--! It says Marley Marl drum sounds.” They found my Holy Grail. What they
did, they went in the studio that very night, took my drum sounds, and made a
record dissing us. That’s crazy. [laughs] And got famous. [laughter] It’s kind of like I co-produced the diss record at me that made them famous. [laughter] That’s crazy. Jeff “Chairman” Mao That really set off the BDP/Juice Crew… Marley Marl Yeah, that started the war. Jeff “Chairman” Mao …quote, unquote war. Marley Marl Yes, it was a lyrical war. Nothing like the wars of today in hip-hop, nothing. It was
just lyrical, you know? And, wow, this guy got famous off of that. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Now, you had said that it was really because the Juice Crew was such a
powerful force, a creative force, in hip-hop at the time. Mr. Magic is kind of a
polarizing figure. Marley Marl The first DJ to put rap music on a commercial radio station in the States,
that was Mr. Magic. He broke rap for every format that does rap right now on
radio, he was the first one that really took a chance with rap music. At that
point everybody was like, “Oh, it’s not going nowhere, it’s just a fad, it’s
this, it’s that.” He’s like, “No. I’m taking it to the radio because when I
come on, four in the morning, playing this music, I got more ratings than radio
stations in the daytime.” He’s doing this at four in the morning. Rap was
really underground at that point. He was the first person to bring rap music
to the radio and to the masses like that. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So he was revered, but at the same time you’re saying he was arrogant, and he
could rub some people the wrong way, I guess. Marley Marl He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. It was just in his nature. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Let’s actually look at a little bit of Mr. Magic and Marley Marl. [video: excerpt from Mr. Magic radio show] Marley Marl [appears onscreen / laughs] Jeff “Chairman” Mao Who’s that guy up here? [laughs] The really cool thing about this is to me,
kind of a minor side note, but I remember you saying, “Yeah, DJing on WBLS was
tough because I had to use the station equipment.” Marley Marl Right. Jeff “Chairman” Mao I don’t know if you can bring back that freeze frame for just this quick
second. You didn’t have a traditional kind of crossfade mixer or anything like
that. Marley Marl That’s pre-that. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So you’re basically using the radio station board to mix off of, right? Marley Marl Right. Jeff “Chairman” Mao How were you able to do this? How were you able to transform or do any kinds
of cuts off of this? Marley Marl Believe me, I come from the school of “Make do with what you have.” If I was
making all these record off of 4-track, I would definitely figure out a way
to DJ on the radio and sound hot. I always have it in my mind to take it to
the next level and be more creative with the equipment that I touch. A lot of
times I take the equipment and use it in a way to suit what I need it for. You
make it for this but I need it to do this, so it’s going to do this for me
that way. It’ll do that for you but I’m going to make it do what it needs to
do for me. I was always that type of person, so when it came to DJing on the
radio and using the station equipment, that’s all we had so I had to learn and
adapt how to mix in reel-to-reels. I had to learn to use the station
turntables to scratch. There was an A/B switch on top of the fader in which I
used to click up and down to make transformation. They were like, “How are you
doing that on the radio station stuff?” I just figured, “It’s a click. It’s
intermitting. I can use it.” [imitates sound] Everybody’s going crazy. It was great because
when you put the fader all the way down, it was automatic cue, so I didn’t
need headphones. There was a little speaker right there with my cue and the
big speakers on top, so all I would have to do was throw it on, pull the fader
down and spin it back. I can hear what I’m doing. I didn’t have to switch,
“Oh, let me hear the next cue, let me switch it back and forth,” because
automatically, once you put the fader all the way down in lock position, you
hear it. I had this little speaker on the side so I learned how to do it and
how to, “OK, let me spin back, throw it in, throw it in.” And I’m catching
records on the radio stations equipment because I’m just kind of nice like
that. [laughter] Jeff “Chairman” Mao [laughs] How did you start with Mr. Magic? How did you get your break with
him? Marley Marl Basically, I started out at WBLS, I did an internship at WBLS. I was the guy
that… They used to have a workout show, twelve noon the lady would do a
workout show and she hired me. Her name is Pat Prescott. She was like, “Look,
there’s a lot of records out but I need extended versions of pieces because
we’re going to do exercise. You’re the exercise editor. I’m going to give you
songs, you’re going to chop it up, and people are going to exercise to your
mixes.” So that’s how I started out at WBLS, making extended mixes, extending
breaks. Then Mr. Magic heard me blend music at a street function or something.
I was interning on the street van. The vans would go around from borough to
borough and play music. I was one of the guys and Mr. Magic heard me and, this
is pre-rap for me, Mr. Magic heard me blend. He said, “Wow, that’s good. What
are you doing on the weekends?” I said, “Well, you know,” I was like 15, “I was
playing that club Pegasus, they paying me good I’m not thinking about radio.”
He said, “Well, can I play that remix on my show?” And, you know, he was very
arrogant, even to me in the beginning. He was arrogant to me before he saw the
style. A few times we had a few encounters and you know, he was Mr. Magic. He said,
“Hey.” Now he’s trying to be nice to me because he heard my mix and he’s like,
“Can I please play it on my show?” It was my time to get him back. I said,
“No.” [laughs] So we got away. Then he saw me at the next function and he’s
like, “Yeah, you got those mixes, man. I’m on the radio, I got like a million
people listening.” I was like, “OK. Well, alright. I’ll bring you two mixes
this Friday.” He was like, “OK, good.” He said, “The radio station’s here.” I
get to the radio station, it’s my first time at WBLS. I’m like, “Wow!” As a
kid I grew up listening to the station so I was like, “Wow, this is it.” He
put my reel up, he puts the song on, and it was actually “Buffalo Gals.” I did
a remix to “Buffalo Gals.” The remix to “Buffalo Gals” started my career in
radio because he loved that one so much. I played it and it was in the middle
of the song, now. He’s going through the records, we’re in that room, he
pulled the next record out and he throws it on the turntable. I said, “What
you doing? That don’t mix. That don’t mix with that.” He said, “What do you
mean it doesn’t mix with that?” I said, “It doesn’t flow with that.” He said,
“Well, go over there and pull out something that flows with that.” So I went
through the records. “Oh!” Pulled out a record put it on the turntable, queued
it up and got it in time with the pitch. The mix was going off and I mixed it
seamlessly, smooth. His head was still bobbing he was like, “Wow! Yo, man.
What are you doing, what are you doing on the weekends?” I was like, “Dude,
I’m telling you I play at the club. I’m OK there.” He’s like, “No, no, no. I
need you here. How much do they pay you? He said, “I’ll double your pay. You come here.”
I was like, “OK.” I came to the radio station and I became the quote engineer
all-star, DJ Marley Marl. He would always say my name on the radio.
Unfortunately, it was at a point in the music where it wasn’t the best rap
music out. The best rap music wasn’t out. I have to be one to admit to
everybody here, I didn’t think rap was going anywhere, because the music was so
bad at first. I was like, “Get out of here, that sh--’s not going nowhere,
it’s not going to be sh--.” [laughter] But later on it progressed into something nice because I said to myself,
“Look. If I’m Mr. Magic’s DJ, he’s given me all these records, these bad
records to play on the radio.” I felt they were bad, but it was the beginning
of rap. People was into it but I was like, “OK, OK.” But I was already a DJ
and so I would play it but eventually I would start producing my own sounds to
put on the radio. That, I would say, that changed the course of rap because, I
give all props to the pioneers of rap. The pioneers of rap did their thing,
they opened the doors, they got the genre rocking. They did the work in the
parks. They did the works on the tapes that was going around the country. They
did all the ground work for rap. I take nothing from them. I give them their
props, but the records weren’t the best records they could be. That’s what I
felt, and I felt that I wanted to at least have DJ tools to make me better in
that time. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Now, Magic was known as Sir Juice. Marley Marl Sir Juice. Jeff “Chairman” Mao So thus came the Juice Crew, which you were part of as the engineer all-star. Marley Marl Yes. Jeff “Chairman” Mao That would be yourself, Shan, Roxanne Shante, and eventually include people
like Biz Markie, Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap. Marley Marl Kool G Rap, yeah. Masta Ace. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Masta Ace. Marley Marl Craig G. Jeff “Chairman” Mao What was the high point for you in your experience in the Juice Crew because
it really became a voice creatively in music? Marley Marl I would say the first high point was my next door neighbor from the next
building, like I said, I wasn’t really trying to make records. It was Roxanne
Shante. “Roxanne, Roxanne” was out at the time and I wanted an alternative to
“Roxanne, Roxanne.” I said, “Hey.” She said, “Hey. I got some rhymes for that
“Roxanne” beat.” I said, “OK,” and I thought, “Wow! Here I go again, making
another DJ tool for me, which became a gold record.” She just came to the
house, one take, rhymed over it and we put it on the radio that night and it
became a gold record. That was the beginning and when I knew that something
was happening, because we just blew up. Next thing you know we’re on tour
going to Europe, from the projects. I’m saying to myself, “How do they know my
name in Europe?” But I was surprised, because rap was moving at a rapid pace
like that and that really showed me. Of course, I made the Dimples D record at
first. That was good. Of course, we made the “Marley Scratch.” That was cool
but “Roxanne’s Revenge,” that really was the turning point for me because I
was like, “Wow, I just did this in my living room and look what happened.” I
think the first one was definitely Roxanne. I would say the second one could
have been Biz, not Biz, I would say Big Daddy Kane. Big Daddy Kane, he would
push me. At this point I was already producer, I already let it sink in; “OK,
I’m a producer now, slash DJ.” He would really push the envelope for me. He
would push it because he would see everything I was doing for everybody else.
He wanted better. He wanted better than Roxanne Shante, he wanted better than
Shan, he wanted better than Biz. He wanted better. He wanted his beats faster
because he was a faster rhymer. He would push my envelope to make me a better
producer, I would say. Jeff “Chairman” Mao And that would result in stuff like this, right? (music: Big Daddy Kane – “Raw”) [applause] Marley Marl Oh yeah, definitely. That was one of the songs that pushed the envelope for
me. As you can see, as time went on I became a better producer because I
started really filling the shoes of a producer at that point. I was really
feeling what I was starting to do and the production got better. One thing I
always prided myself with, all the money that always came in from any record or
production that I did, I always took that same money and bought more
equipment. I never owned a dookie rope. [laughs] I’m sorry if you’re
disappointed. I never had a big rope chain, I never bought nothing like that.
I was always the one to buy equipment. My first Dimples D record as you can
see, it was kind of like a LinnDrum. I went in the studio and I tapped out a
LinnDrum and I put that on and she rhymed to it. Then we made money from that,
I bought an 808 drum machine. From that, I think it was the MC Shan record was
made. From that I went and bought some more stuff, I was just always buying
equipment off of every production. I never took none of the money, splurged it, never wasted money on anything else. I would always go by, “How can I
improve what I’m doing with my sound? How can I make my studio better? How can
I project to the public the love and the feelings that I want to give out, put
in the atmosphere?” I just always would buy equipment to better my sound. Jeff “Chairman” Mao With this particular record, with “Raw” by Big Daddy Kane, you mentioned noise
before with “The Bridge,” this is sort of a continuation of that. How did that
idea with the shrill saxophone little thing going on in the chorus come to be? Marley Marl Well, basically, like I said, Big Daddy Kane would push my envelope and he
would always ask me for stuff that I wasn’t doing with everybody else. With
Kane, we became like really good, I would say, a production team, because he
always had ideas that he wanted to do. He said, “You know, I always liked so-
and-so.” I would go get that and flavor it up for him. Or he would say, “Hey,
you know, I found this so-and-so, what could you do with this?” And I would go
flip it. He definitely was the artist that made me a better producer because
he demanded that and he was really good that way. Jeff “Chairman” Mao Do you remember how you did the drums on that record? I’m just curious because,
is it a chop or is it a loop? Marley Marl It’s actually a chop-loop. It’s like a snare/hat going and then it’s a kick
with hat behind it. So it’s like, it’s like it’s part of a loop, but it’s a
chopped-up loop. And it’s off beat, because when I first looped it for him,
it’s like I said, he was pushing my envelope. I looped it regular where it was
a regular loop, he was like, “Nah, nah, nah. I want it to be off-beat because
my rhyme…” I was like, “No, it’s OK, it’s good like this.” He’s like, “No. It
has to be off beat. I want it like this because my rhyme goes like this.”
[beatboxes drum pattern] I was like, “…OK.” Jeff “Chairman” Mao It follows the pattern of where you got the Bobby Byrd thing from, but it’s
not open on the Bobby Byrd record. Marley Marl Right. (music: Bobby Byrd – “Hot Pants: I’m Coming, Coming, I’m Coming”) Jeff Mao So where did you grab it from? Marley Marl I would grab that snare. See, I was always playing snare, and the good thing about how I used to do it with the leader, and the snare on my reels… When you’re editing, you could get precisely what you want out of the song. So the one little snare in there, I could find it, and I would isolate everything and just get that one from the top. Like, “I’m coming.” Jeff Mao What about the Lyn Collins, which is the horn? Marley Marl “Mama Feelgood.” That was hot because he gave it to me and it didn’t fit. And I was like... But I was wanting to make it fit because, you know, it sounded good, but it just didn’t fit. That’s when I started working with filtering, and EQing. I was always into sound, so what I would do was filter and EQ the drums out, so you only heard the horn. So when I would play it up against my track it would knock out the drums from that and you’d just hear the horns playing with my track so. Right there. That’s the one. Yeah that one. That was the one. [music continues] Jeff Mao So if you’re counting at home, it was the third. Marley Marl Yeah. I would hear things, “OK, right there it’s clear.” And I would grab it from there. And as you can see there was a lot of music going on over there, so what I would do was basically EQ out what I didn’t want and just roll it off, and that made a lot of songs. Jeff Mao Let’s just hear one more Juice Crew thing. (music: Biz Markie – “Nobody Beats the Biz”) Marley Marl Wow. [applause] A lot of things come to mind when I hear that record right there. I mean, first of all, that was ... I sat with DJ Premier, which is my friend and we’re really cool… DJ Premier told me that, that song right there was the blueprint to his production life. You know, the scratching in the beginning. The answer scratching that he does on all his records. You know, you always hear DJ Premier cutting words that match each other. Going in, he said, “Nobody Beats the Biz” taught him to do this. This song was... That’s my production blueprint, that song right there. I would say that’s start with DJ Premier. And, another thing, that was one of my first songs when I had bought an 8-track. You know, so I have more tracks now to experiment, so it sounds a little fuller. It’s probably a little bit more production from the earlier stuff. Jeff Mao And the other thing is, I guess, can you talk little bit about, just from this era, how you decide to choose just where a stab will do rather than letting something play out for a minute. I mean, well not for a minute, but for a couple of seconds, rather than just a little touch of something. Because I think the arranging is always interesting on these records as well. Marley Marl Right. Well, basically I didn’t want it to be just a straight beat, and with them just rhyming. I figured at this point, OK, I’m sampling DJ producer. It’s all hitting me now. It’s all coming to fruition what it is. So, what I would do was just try to always stay creative and keep the beats changing. Keep everything changing. I didn’t want... I only want the same loop over and over because I was kind of like, been there, done that; I wanted to take it to the next level and keep it moving. There’s another record by Biz Markie that’s really important. (music: Biz Markie – “Make the Music With Your Mouth, Biz”) Yeah yeah. [applause] That song right there is still... That I used in “Impeach the President,” kick and snare, but… That song was sampled by so many R&B records to present time right now, and the good thing about making record for me back in the day, I mean... When I was making these records back in the day, we were making peanuts. No money. The publishing was not really what it was… Lucky for me that I obtained all my publishing from all my songs from the beginning. Publishing and masters, a lot of them I own. So what happens, when Jay Z and Mya, or anybody would sample these songs and make new records, I become a partner in the new song, the new composition. So when Jay Z and Mya made “Best of Me” using these drum sounds, I become 50% owner of that song. And it’s crazy because, the Jay Z and Mya version generated way more money than the original, publishing-wise. I would say that the Jay Z and Mya song put my daughter through college, something like that. It’s a lot of things that, through publishing and a lot of records that you can make in your earlier career, you just never know what’s gonna happen later. And people would sample… This song, I’m still clearing this every day. It’s crazy. I’m so surprised that people still want to sample that sound, but that goes to show you, like I said earlier, when your brain likes something you don’t know why you like it. It’s an ingredient in it. Maybe… It’s like food, I would say. If you like a certain ingredient in your food, mostly any dish with that ingredient in it, you’ll probably like, but you don’t know what you love it so much. But your brain is already tuned to like what you like. So if anybody could feed you an element that you like already, within the element, you’ll probably like it. Jeff Mao You know, but it’s funny because the same could be said, not only with this track, but a bunch of the other ones. They keep getting remade. Even as you decided to chill a little bit, you know, with the active production these things still get remade, and like, every few years, somebody comes up with something new. Marley Marl Yeah, that keeps my house right. Believe me. That keeps everything flowing. After a while, I mean, I became inactive in production and just basically started DJing because of stuff like that. I mean, they’re producing for me. And it’s great because if you’re an artist and you make music, one of the most important things for you is to obtain your publishing rights. Never sign them away because that’s the future. I mean, I know a lot of people who are DJing, producing, and started out early, like me, around that same time. I don’t know if they’re in the same position, because they didn’t own their stuff at the end of the day. And you know, that’s the life changer. That’s generational. It keeps going. Jeff Mao So, what happened to the Juice Crew? Marley Marl Juice Crew disbanded... As soon as I left the label, because it was Cold Chillin’ [Records] label, I was there. We had great times. You know, we made great strides for hip-hop. We made great strides for music. We changed the whole forefront of everything, and I kind of felt that I had my run with them. Everybody was their own star. Everybody wanted to do their thing, and I just felt like, “Look, it’s time for me to move on. I did what I had to do here.” So I kind of like quit the radio show with Mr. Magic, and stopped producing for Cold Chillin’, and just chilled for a minute. And then LL [Cool J] came. Jeff Mao Well, Mr. Magic was taken off the air, and you got on the air. Marley Marl Yeah, well, they took him off the air after I kind of broke out because I started doing my own thing. I started doing... Actually I went back to my roots. I went back to club music and started doing a club dance show. It was just so crazy and different from what I had been doing for all these years, and people probably looked at me like, “What is he doing? He’s a hip-hop guy.” But they didn’t realize my roots started from dance music from the beginning. So I went on to do In Control after Magic wasn’t there. I chilled out. I started something called In Control off of the fact, because I did an In Control album on Cold Chillin’. And I was like, “Look, well let me do an In Control radio show.” And, you know, that’s when I had a DJ called Kevy Kev. DJ Clark Kent was one of my DJs. Now, Kevy Kev was in a car accident, broke his leg. I met Pete Rock through Heavy D. And I said, “Heavy, tell your cousin to come down to the radio station, I got a gig for him.” And it was Pete Rock. It was like pre-Pete Rock. Never made a record. Never touched a sampler. He was a DJ, with a lot of records in his house. Here he comes to the radio station. He didn’t quite have all the records we were playing, but he had a lot of break beats. He would get on the radio and cut these break beats. He’s cutting 45s, to an album, 45s, an album. And everybody’s going crazy, and Pete Rock, he got famous very quick from that radio show. I had DJs for about a year before he got there, they didn’t become as famous as he did, and that little two weeks because he was doing something… Jeff Mao I mean, he was really impactful. Marley Marl Yeah. Jeff Mao Anybody who has listened to New York hip-hop radio at that time remembers when Pete Rock got on the radio with you. Marley Marl Oh yeah. Jeff Mao There’s actually a little something. A little snippet of something. If we could play it on the screen. (video: Pete Rock clip) So that’s from your radio show, and those were some home movies from the show. Marley Marl Yes, yes. Jeff Mao But you mentioned LL. This was obviously... A big project for you. Marley Marl Definitely. What happened, see LL came to In Control radio show for an interview promoting and album called Walking With a Panther. It wasn’t his greatest attempt for the streets, but pop-wise it did really well for him. That type of guy was on that album, which incorporated that “Impeach the President” snare. People don’t know why they like that record, but that is why. That was a big hit for him. Now, he comes to the radio station for an interview. I know the albums not all that in the streets, but, you know, me being the diplomatic person I am, I accepted him with open arms and did a straight interview with him. After the interview, I sat down with him and said, “Look, I know you’re not getting that love in the street from this album that you think you deserve, but there’s a song on this album that I think I could remix and it could change a lot of stuff.” And he said, “What song is that? What song is that?” Now you have to think. Me and LL really didn’t get along, because I had MC Shan. He was LL Cool J. Now if you look at earlier comparisons of LL Cool J and MC Shan, they both had the Kangol hats. They both stood like this [leans sideways and crosses arms]. They both were light skinned. [laughs] OK, so people could make a... Be confused by it. Jeff Mao And you guys made a record dissing LL. Marley Marl Actually, yeah, because he took... When we made Marley scratch, he made a song called “Rock the Bells,” but he used our Marley scratch beat. He took the same pattern. Yeah, it was... Was it “Rock the Bells,” or was it the remix that he did? He used our beat. Yeah it was the remix of that one. So, he used our beat! He tapped the same beat out and we said, “What?” And that was... Let me tell you, in those days of hip-hop, it’s not like now. Right now you could sound like somebody, you could be the next MC on the stage that sound like somebody just got off… In those days there was basically no biting. Biting is taking somebody’s sh-- and trying to do it for yourself. So, what LL did, that was a major violation. He bit our beat. So we called him a beat biter. We made a record called “Beat Biter” and went at him. So while I was with MC Shan and the whole Cold Chillin’ crew, I was kind of like at ends with LL and the Def Jam crew. But, when I opened my arms and let him come to my radio show, that made everything cool. And I was like, “Look, I could fix this situation. Let me remix this song on your album.” He said, “What song?” I said, “I can’t remember the title, but I know that your rhymes you said “Runnin’ over n---as like a redneck trucker.” [laughter]] He’s like, “Oh, Jingling Baby!” I was like, “Yes.” So what happened, he got me the parts, and that changed everything. Jeff Mao And sounded like this. (music: LL Cool J – “Jingling Baby” / applause) It’s kind of cool that, he said, you were dancing to a Marley Marl remix single. Marley Marl Yeah, he did change the lyrics in it. He said originally, “Devastating, irritating, and dope on a single now.” Something like that, but when he switched to “Your dancing to a Marley Marl remix single.” I think he did that to show everybody that he was with me. You know, just to show them that Marley Marl made this. Marley Marl’s not with them no more, he’s with me. He grabbed me, and we made a lot of history. From that song, I became his tour DJ, so obviously we’re touring the world doing all the major TV shows. David Letterman, and everything. And we did everything. That right there was, I would say, I did lot of records with Cold Chillin’, and we had a lot of fun, but I would say that, that was the beginning of my life in the entertainment world, because everything started really happening. It was like ... Cold Chillin’ I was making songs in the house as like a guy that you never saw. I’m like the Wizard of Oz. The guy behind the curtain. I’m the guy behind the curtain fixing everybody. But LL really brought me out that way, and, you know, it was a great experience working with him. We would go on to make more records. Jeff Mao And the Mama Said Knock you Out album, or course, was pretty successful, I guess you could say. It did okay. Marley Marl Yeah, I think it was his top selling album. Still, to this day. We probably at about six to seven million. Maybe eight at this point, but it just keeps going. You know, he went on to become a big TV star in America. We still in the lab making a lot of records, but that record, it was a pinnacle point because he wasn’t really getting the love in the streets that he wanted, that he once had before with his earlier records. I would say that record gave him his credibility back for the streets and would open the doors for him for a lot of stuff that he’s doing today. Jeff Mao So can you talk a little bit about the process of recording that? Marley Marl Yeah. Jeff Mao This was not in Queens anymore, either. You moved. Marley Marl Yeah, as you can see the production got way better. At that point I probably bought an SSL [recording console] in my house. Same one as downstairs, the G series. I put in a full-fledged studio. Got 40 8-tracks. [laughs] I’d started making money. Yeah, I bought the G series, the 40 8-track. That all came from, I did... We probably don’t have that song, but I did earlier songs with TLC, when they first came out. I started getting R&B budgets. It was a little different. It was a little different from hip-hop. Those little $3000 hip-hop tracks was cool, but then, when you started doing like $40,000 R&B songs, I could buy a SSL for the crib, you get what I’m saying? Off of two songs, basically. And what happened, I just made a real studio, then LL came. I would say my studio was built off of TLC budgets, but LL came and I was ready. And we would made the whole album off of the vibe of this: He would come in my house, we would go to the club, probably go to the club, go dancing, just get crazy in the club, take that energy from the club, and go record a song later on. Like two in the morning. Two, three in the morning, we would leave the club, speeding down the highway, because we both had expensive racing cars. So we’d speed down the highway. I don’t know why we didn’t crash or nothing. God blessed us on that one.
As I sit back and think about it. How we used to be drunk driving home to go make a record. How did we ever make it there? But the songs came out great. So we would take that energy from the club. Kind of like last night. The energy that was in the air yesterday. We would take that energy and harness it and go make records. Now, if the records we were making didn’t give us that same energy that the club did, we would scratch it. So the whole album was made off of energy and synergy from the night before at the club, and it was a very successful album for him. Jeff Mao At that point, you know, you guys did another record together, or sort of together. Obviously Mama Said Knock You Out was a huge success, so why was the follow up not so huge of a success? Marley Marl Well, that’s when he became an actor. In the middle of the synergy, he gets a role to do a movie called Toys. I think that was his first movie... Second movie actually. That’s when he became an actor. So, in the middle of the album he has to go away for seven months, and that slowed everything down. At that point it was like, OK, we’re making songs. I’m sending him stuff. I had to send him like via FedEx. It wasn’t like you could just email him a track back in the day. I would FedEx him some tracks and stuff. It was like back and forth. It just didn’t mesh up the way the first album did, because his commitments had him in Hollywood, and I was still in New York on the radio. Just the distance between us made the synergy not happen again. But, you know, we did have some pretty impressive tracks on that second album, but I don’t think it matched the first one. The first one’s always a doozy. Jeff Mao I mean, at that point, how did you feel about your role in the music industry and doing production? I mean, you enjoyed more success doing Lords of the Underground. Marley Marl Later Jeff Mao Yeah a little bit later, a couple of years later. But through most of that period you don’t see your name quite as often. You were doing some remixes, which were very successful as well. Why did you sort of pick and choose your spots that way? Marley Marl Because I knew that I... I’m gonna be here for a while. I figured that, look, I’m don’t want to just burn it out. I’m going to be doing this for a while. Let me calm down. The music is definitely what it is, but I was real comfortable at that point. You got to think of it. The whole Juice Crew era was rocking. I just built a nice studio at the house. I’m selectively working with certain artists that I really want to work with, and I just felt that it was time to write my own ticket. I didn’t want to over-saturate what was going on. I just, you know… I was comfortable already. I didn’t want to over-saturate. Jeff Mao And sometimes something like super underground would leak out. Marley Marl Yeah. Jeff Mao Let me play something. One verse off of this, which... Some people may recognize. (music: Nas – “On the Real”) Marley Marl Wow. Rest in peace, K-L. Jeff Mao Yeah, rest in peace, K-L. Marley Marl Yes. Jeff Mao So that’s Nas. Marley Marl Yes. Wow. Jeff Mao A record that, I guess, came out eventually in a different version. Marley Marl Yeah. Jeff Mao But that was the one that kind of got leaked out at the time. Marley Marl Yeah, what happened... See that was, when Biggie came out, Nas, he was doing his album. And then Nas came to me, he was like, “Hey, Biggie’s out.” I was like, “Yeah, I know. Biggies, he’s really dope man.” He said, “Yeah, I’m ready to come out, and do you think people’s going to like me? Because Biggie’s out.” I was like, “Dude, you’re Nas man. You’re Nas. You got ‘em. You got the streets. You the MC that said you went to hell for snuffin’ Jesus man. People remember that.” You know, I said, “To be honest, let me put you on some sh-- real quick. You need to be on tracks like this real quick. We was in the studio. We made like three demos that day. He did one verse on each demo, and that was one of them. That was suppose to actually be with Illmatic, but what he did, he put it on the tenth anniversary of Illmatic mix. Jeff Mao Yeah, he did an extended version of it, yeah. Marley Marl Right. Jeff Mao A different version of it though, slightly. Marley Marl Right, yeah. He put that on that album because that was supposed to be for Illmatic, and, you know, that’s what became of it. It was demo that was floating around, and he finally put it out, like ten years later. [laughs] Jeff Mao So why do you think he had a crisis of confidence at that time? This is like around ’94, ’95. Marley Marl Yeah, because you got to think about it. When Biggie came out, Biggie smashed him. I mean, when I first heard Juicy, and he said my name on it, I didn’t realize the magnitude of it. Pete Rock came to me and said, “Hey, I just did a remix for this new artist, Notorious B.I.G.” And he let me hear the song, and he said, “Every Saturday rap attack, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl. I use to let tape rock til my tape pop.” I didn’t really recognize and realize the significance of him just mentioning me in that song because at that point I really wasn’t doing too much production, but this song would go on through generations, and generations, and generations. A lot of people know of Marley Marl. They don’t know of the none of the Juice Crew sh--. They don’t know of nothing I did before. They know that Biggie said my name on a record. I’m generational, this is just what happens, but I didn’t realize the significance of him saying my name and how it just stands out in the record, because that’s the part of the record that everybody knows. You could pull it down at a party. Everybody’s going to say “Marley Marl,” [laughter] because they know it. I definitely... And I kind of sleep on the significance of him saying my name. I was like, “Oh, he said my name on the record. Good.” Everybody was saying my name on records back then, but that was a hit. That was the one that keeps the name flowing, generation after generation. It’s weird because this song still plays on the radio in New York like three times a day. It’s incredible. It keeps going on, and going on, and going on, and just a little mention like that keeps your name alive. Jeff Mao This was kind of a hit, but people sleep on it a little bit. But somebody else mentioned your name on this. (music: Shai – “Don’t Wanna Be Alone (Remix)”) Now, you mentioned Mya and Jay Z earlier, but this is one that kind of precedes that with Jay Z. When you did the remix for this, this was an R&B record. Marley Marl Right, and what was so weird about that, as I listened to that record, it just brings me back to the day when we made the record. Actually, Jay Z used to run around with Big Daddy Kane back in the day. Right? So when Jay Z came to my house to do that, he came up to the studio we built with the SSL in the room, he comes in the room and he stands there and he looks at me. And I’m like, what’s this guy staring at me for like this? What’s going on? He’s like, “You don’t remember me, huh?” I was like, “Yeah, you Jay Z. You Jay Z now. Yeah, I remember you now. You Jay Z. You made All My Life and all that. In my Lifetime. Yeah, you’re Jay Z.” He said, “No man, I came here before.” I was like, “No you didn’t.” He was like, “I came here. When Kane made Set it Off.” And he goes to the part of the room where he was standing, and he said “I stood right here and watch y’all make the whole song.” “Oh, you was part of the entourage that day.” [laughs] It’s crazy. It’s like... It’s so weird how the universe is just so small, he was already at my house. The funny thing is, I’m meeting people here that was at my house, at Red Bull Academy. They was like, “Yeah, I came to your house before.” I was like, wow. He came to the studio, or to the radio station. I have like a radio station, studio stuff at the house where we broadcast from and we make stuff. So, a lot of people came, but Jay Z was one of them and it was just so weird that he was there before and never... I said, “You was at my house and you didn’t rhyme? Huh?” He said, “It was about Kane right then, so I didn’t want to take the shine.” [laughs] It was funny, but I was like, “How could you come here and stand right here and not rhyme? And you’re Jay Z now.” It was just so weird. That made me realize how dope he really was because he didn’t write anything down for this. He looked at the subject and went in the room and just did it. Then the A&R at the point tried to throw a trip in the game and say, “Hey, I like that, but you should end it off saying something about this.” He said, “Okay.” He just walked right in the room, “Yo, Marley, put on the mic.” Clicked on the mic and just did it off the top of his head and walked back out. Whole thing done in like 15 minutes. Quick, to the point, got his check, and kept it moving. And that became that record right there. It just let me know how really dope he is. He didn’t write anything down. It just came to head. He did the subject. It was right on point, exactly what was needed, and I understood everything. We didn’t have to go back and do any takes. Anything was the first take, we kept it, and he would just ad lib over it. He was just that nice. At that point when he walked out, I was like, wow, he’s gonna be dope. He’s gonna be real dope because I have worked with a lot of MCs up to that point. Look, we did Biz Markie, we did Big Daddy Kane, The Great Rakim, you get what I’m saying? MC Shan, all these MCs I was working with, and here he comes without anything written and damn near tops everything that was done before. I was like, wow, this guy is definitely going to be incredible. Jeff Mao What do you think of... I guess as far as the vocalists you have worked with, do you rank them? I mean, do you rank them? Marley Marl Yeah. Yeah, I do. Jeff Mao Who’s number one? Marley Marl Singer or rapper? Jeff Mao I guess we’ll just stick with the rapping right now. Marley Marl I could say, my number one rapper... That worked with, I will have to give it to... I mean like what Jay Z did off the top, I like what LL did, coming through, because it was very intensive. I would say, my number one rapper, that I ever worked with, the person that pushed me the hardest would be Big Daddy Kane. Big Daddy Kane was different. He had a way he wanted to be. He had a look within his self. He was like a mini James Brown. He knew what he wanted. He even does the James Brown splits and jumps around and flips around in his shows, I mean, still to this day. You know what I mean? So I would say it would be Big Daddy Kane, because he pushed me to be better. He took the laziness from me, because you gotta think I’m doing Shan Records and Shante Records. All this is coming easy. And I’m just doing stuff, and “Hey, take this.” And they’re taking it, and their careers are going. I’m saying to him, “Take this.” “No.” He gave it back and said, “Take this.” And it was like a give and go thing, so I would say Big Daddy Kane was the artist that pushed me to being a better producer. If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have been ready for LL when he came. I probably wouldn’t have been ready for Jay Z when they came through. I probably wouldn’t have been ready for Bell Biv DeVoe later on, or TLC, or anything like that. Kane pushed the envelope and made me better. Jeff Mao A few years ago, you had some health issues. What happened, and how did that change things for you? Marley Marl Well, basically, I had a heart attack. I went home. I just wasn’t feeling well that day. It was a very stressful time for me. I went home, and I just wasn’t feeling well. And I was with my friend, and my best friend, Mari Koda, from the Step Up series, the dancer. She’s like my sister, and she was over there. I told her I wasn’t feeling well. I said, I’m gonna go lay down. And she said the look on my face wasn’t right. She called the ambulance for me, and I went in the room. And I came back, and I said, should I call the ambulance? And they was knocking at the door. She had already called them, so I went to the hospital. And then I got to the hospital. I wasn’t feeling how I felt at home. I was kind of OK. But it was so scary how I felt at home. I didn’t want to leave the hospital. So I said, I’ll just stay here for a while, so I just stayed there, and then the feeling started coming back. And then the lady came, said, “Oh you’re having a heart attack.” I was like, “I’m having a heart attack? Dude, I’m 30 something years old. What’s going on?” You know what I’m saying? So I was like, wow, this is crazy. So I got the operation. They did what they had to do. Luckily, the technology is they don’t have to cut you no more. They just go in through your arm or something and fix it. And I got out of the studio, but that changed my life. I mean, it changed my whole perspective of everything, because I kind of feel like it’s borrowed time now. I’m really not supposed to be here, but I’m gonna make the best out of it, so changed my diet. It changed everything. I mean, at that point I was working at the Kids Station in New York, Power 105. We was doing the kiddie thing, and I was like, let me grow up right now. That was a warning sign for me. So what I did, I changed my whole lifestyle. I changed everything, my diet, get sleep at night. My phone got a little lighter, because I had to take half the phone numbers out with people. Do that sometime, y’all. Sometimes the people that you’re around can influence where you’re heading. You know what I mean? And if it’s not a good energy, you gotta get rid of it. You may love them, but you gotta think for yourselves. Nobody is gonna get you where you need to be but yourself. That’s 100%. So what I had to do is just change up everything, went back to WBLS, did the adult thing, and we became number one. It’s just weird. It’s like I cleansed myself from everything and went to do what I started doing. I started off as an intern at WBLS before Mr. Magic. We made history. Then I went on to Hot 97. I was doing the kiddie thing, playing rap music, and when I got to Power 105, that’s when that happened. And then the rap music started changing. And I mean, it’s easy for me to make any type of style of music. I mean, I do house music, I do disco, I do hip-hop, trip-hop, whatever you want. I do it. So basically, when I went back to WBLS, I went back to doing what I started, when I was at Power 105, the music was changing a little, and I didn’t wanna compete. I think it was moving away from what we started, sample-based, and the energy, it was getting more crunky and stuff, and so what I did, I just sat back, because I didn’t wanna compete. And I just didn’t wanna compete, but along the way, people were still sampling my music from before, so I was making a lot of money. So I just decided not to produce anymore. I just went up to film. Yeah. Jeff Mao And you also wound up also collaborating with KRS? Marley Marl Yes. Jeff Mao Now, not only that, but seems like there have been different conflicts you might have had with people over the years. Mr. Magic eventually, he passed away recently. I remember when you guys did a tribute on the radio, Fly Ty from Cold Chillin’ was there. Marley Marl Yeah, everybody came. Jeff Mao So what can you say just about letting go of certain things and moving on? Because I think that’s maybe something important to pass on as well. Marley Marl Well, basically, it’s like I said. I had to make the choice what was best for me. And that’s what you gotta do sometimes, what’s best for you. Maybe the person, even if it’s a girlfriend or a boyfriend or something like that, you don’t know how that influences your creativity or what you’re trying to do. If they’re not on the same wavelength as you, like you wanna put it a lot of time in your music, your craft, and what you feel they gotta do, and they say, “Hey, why you spend so much time on that computer? I’m over here.” You might wanna let that go, because to be honest, in my earlier years, when I was doing all my earlier productions, I didn’t have a lot of girlfriends, to be honest. I was like a nerdy guy in the house. And if it wasn’t for me being a nerdy guy, playing with equipment… I was a nerd before nerds was cool. [laughter] You know what I mean? It’s real talk right there. And I was really into that, staying home. I was a homebody. I just want to be on my equipment. My girlfriend was my equipment, basically, and that’s how it has to be. You gotta cut everything down. It’s like, all the stuff is gonna come. Get successful, you’ll have your pick. [laughter] Hey, it’s real talk right there. Get successful. You could say, hey what’s up, and you’re good. You don’t have to worry about all of that. Any stress you’re going through in something right now may not even be good for you, so what I do is just flip the script and let everything go. It’s just that simple. Let it go and see your horizon, see where you’re going, and follow that horizon. Jeff Mao Does anybody have any questions for Marley? Audience Member I’m a huge fan. Thank you so much for being here all the way out in Tokyo. You didn’t get to talk about “The Symphony”. What was that like making that track with all the [Juice Crew] guys in the studio? And another question I have for you is... I’m blanking on that. I’m a little nervous. Please, if you could tell me the memories in making The Symphony. Marley Marl Well, “The Symphony” song, I have an album called In Control, which I spoke about. On the back of the album, you could see all of us together in front of a Learjet. That wasn’t our Learjet. I’ll just let you know that right now. Audience Member You fooled me, man. Marley Marl But we rented that for the photo shoot, because we knew the importance of image. We was like, look, if we’re standing in front of a Learjet, we look large. Get your gold chains. Let’s bring the ghetto to the Lear. You know what I mean? And that’s what we did, and it made us look like superstars. But that very day, Kane had an idea. Let’s make a record together. My album was done already, and that was the photo shoot for the album. And Kane was like, “Yo, we all together. Let’s make a record.” I was like, “OK, let’s make a record.” So everybody on that photo was supposed to be on The Symphony, but some didn’t show up to the record, and then wasn’t on the record. But making that record was crazy, because Masta Ace, the first person on the record, wasn’t supposed to be on the record. He was filling in for the person that was supposed to be coming. And what happened, he’s on the record, and it worked out. Then, let’s see… Craig G got on it next. Then Kool G Rap and Kane was battling on that record. Audience Member Right, because they were the two baddest… Kool G Rap was the baddest one, right? On the whole… Marley Marl Yeah, Kool G Rap was incredible when it came to that. Audience Member He’s my favorite ever, yeah. Marley Marl Now, what happened, Kool G Rap, he’s the third rapper on the song. He rapped all the way to the end. And the song was over. It was no room for Kane, because… I was like, “Look, no, we have to make this, shorten it down…” And then they shortened it down. But to make that record was incredible. I didn’t even know the impact that that record would make. A lot of the times, when you’re making history, you’re not trying to make history. You’re just doing it, and it just happens. And that record was one of those pinnacle changes in hip-hop, because a lot of people say that was one of the greatest posse cuts ever made in hip-hop because of the people that was on it. And just making that record, it was fun. I had a lot of fun doing it. Audience Member Wow. Incredible. And one more question. On “Road to the Riches”, can you explain what went down on that production, what you did, because that’s definitely... The piano over the drums, that was your steez, right? Any memories of making that? Marley Marl Oh, yeah, for sure. It actually used “Stiletto” from Billy Joel, I believe it was. It was crazy, because Kool G Rap, he liked that record, and he’s like, “Yeah, I would love to make a record off of that one day. I would love to make a record,” and one day I chopped it up for him. And that’s what came out of it, using my drums and the piano steps, and that was a pinnacle record for Kool G Rap and Polo. That was actually one of their breakout records. They didn’t get the success that all my other artists did, but they had a good street presence, and they were good for the brand, because when you had a crew like that, you have to cover every aspect of the game. They was the street element, while Kane was the ladies element, and Shan was going for the other chicks. And it was like we had different elements in our stuff, so it was important for us to do Kook G Rap and Polo. They was actually one of the first people to bring that gangsta mentality to the rap movement on the East coast, before N.W.A was doing it over there. They was kind of touched it with “Road to the Riches” before N.W.A rocked out. That’s real talk. Audience Member Like Schoolly D, like PSK too and all that... Incredible record man. Thank you for explaining. Marley Marl Thank you. Jeff Mao Who do you think shined the brightest on “The Symphony”? Marley Marl [exhales] Don’t get me in trouble man. [laughs] Who shined the brightest? I would say G Rap. G rap and Kane, I would give it to them. They equal on that. That was a great introduction for Masta Ace. That was his first record that he was really heard on, that really got him there. Craig G was already out. Craig G does his thing, but I would say, it was definitely the last two. I would say 50/50. Jeff Mao But you put G Rap last on “The Symphony Part 2.” Marley Marl Hey, I think because it just happened that way. Jeff Mao Maybe he was a little bit better than… Marley Marl I mean, G Rap, he was always a good rapper, really good, but he didn’t have the appeal. He didn’t have the real appeal. It’s weird. It’s was like kids for me. It’s like you see them grow, and you see who likes what. And it was crazy, because Kane had the females. G Rap had the hardcore guys. He had the thugs. So it was two different things. Jeff Mao I mean, G Rap, it’s a demo is also something we didn’t even mention earlier, but I mean, one of the first records that you did to actually have a loop in it as well. Marley Marl Oh yeah, that was the actual first song that really came out using James Brown, utilizing James Brown, “Funky Drummer” beat. What I did, I took the snare and a hi-hat, and I met Clyde Stubblefield [drummer on the track], he told me about the ghost notes in a song, so what I did, I took the snare, the hi-hat, and the ghost note, that was following in one sample. And I just put that to the beat. We didn’t take the whole loop. I just took the ghost note section, because you gotta think. In the early times, we didn’t have a lot of sampling time, computers was like $100,000. Man, nobody had $100,000 at the earlier part of that, so we would get these cheap little samplers and maybe... Y’all gonna laugh, but maybe 8-bit rate or something, 8 to not even 16, 12. It was like, they sound so ashy. But that’s why a lot of my earlier productions, they sound so ashy, because the sample bit rate, it wasn’t what it is right now. You’re at 96 and better right now. You’re looking at us, sampling stuff at, like what, 8? Jeff Mao Well, I think the thing, though, with those records, that made them stand out, too, was that they were so grimy sounding. I mean, when you Marley Marl productions, from that era, and hopefully you got a sense of this from this talk today, but it really sounded like something that was coming from a different world. I mean, the way the reverb was. I remember you complaining about, you had these lousy mics, and the sound would be tinny, but I think that was also to the benefit of everything sounding in this really otherworldy way. Marley Marl Well, I could tell you. That different place, you’re right. These songs were coming from a different place. That was a little living room in Queensbridge. That was a different place, because a lot of the other artists had big budgets, they was in the studios, doing big studio work, and I’m working on something small in the living room, so they were coming from a different place. A 4-track, and then I got to 8-track. I got a little money and bout a 16-track. Did TLC and bought a 24-track, 48 tracks actually, two 24 track machines that we had to sync together, so hey. Jeff Mao Anybody else with a question for Marley? Audience Member Sorry, I just got know whether your brother ever found out that you touched his sh--? Marley Marl [laughter] Yeah, he did. Well, he went to the service. This is the good thing about my brother, because he went to the service, he went to the Air Force. He’s a brainiac like me too, but what he did, he went to work for NASA later, so he went from being a DJ in the neighborhood, went to the Air Force, and then became a chief-something at NASA. He wouldn’t even tell us what it is. I don’t know. Audience Member He did okay. Marley Marl Right. So he did well for his self too. He retired from NASA, so he’s chillin’. [laughter] Yeah. Audience Member I wanna thank you for being here and sharing all your knowledge. I had this question: I mean, for me, New York’s always been this great crowd for great lyricists. The quality of lyricists has been superb, but the last 10 years, it’s like commercial speaking, the game’s become like everyone’s just talking about money, b----es, and drugs, you know, something like that, but even in those times, even when they got this gangster appeal, the lyrics were more like at different levels, different approaches of those same… How do you feel about that? Do you miss those times? Marley Marl I kind of feel like this. If it’s accepted by society, that means society likes it. I mean, not every part of society likes it, because if it’s popular, and it’s keep selling, somebody likes it. You get what I’m saying? I don’t particularly like it, because it’s not for me, but I notice that you’re right, the lyrical content has went down. It’s not what it used to be, but then you gotta think of society as a whole. I mean, we’re privileged people. We’re in the Red Bull Music Academy. We’re into music. We know what we’re gonna do with our lives, and we’re doing it. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people in society that’s not as privy to the things that we have. They don’t know what they’re gonna do in life, and a lyric that they hear on a record may fit them. It doesn’t fit everybody, but unfortunately, the masses, everybody in society right now don’t really know what they wanna do. There’s a lot of us are headed in the right direction, and you can see it, because we know what we wanna do, and we’re heading there. But unfortunately, there’s a lot of people in society that’s kind of lost. You know what I’m saying? And those songs go to the lost, because we like what we like. I mean, it’s like we can’t save society. You gotta really save yourself. You can’t really save what’s going on and try to change everything. It is just what it is. I think that those songs sell, because there’s a market for it. Obviously, somebody likes it, because it’s selling. I would never say to try to change anything, because you gotta think of rap right now. It’s so diverse. It’s so many different things. There’s stupid rap like you’re talking about. [laughter] Really, and then there’s other rap. There’s intelligent rap. Everybody else that do their thing. So you have to look at rap as like, a blossoming tree. Every branch is a different branch. Every leaf is not the same. You get what I’m saying? So, it has to grow. Audience Member OK, I would say this: Commercial speaking, because it’s like, to me, it’s more like other people like it, but the industry force or move artists to go in that direction. Artists have to fit in that kind of a mold. Marley Marl I don’t know. It’s kind of funny, because I don’t think that... See, I’m in the music business. I don’t think that record companies say, “Make stupid rap.” They don’t say that. It’s like if they make the sh--, and it sells, obviously somebody likes it. They don’t really tell you what to do. It’s a business. If he likes pancakes, and I like sausage, it’s like, he don’t want sausage. You get what I’m saying? I could sell all my sausage to everybody that likes sausage. This is a business. If I’m trying to sell sausage, and nobody’s buying, guess what? I’m out of business. If he’s selling pancakes, and everybody likes flip pancakes and it’s stupid to everybody else, but he’s in business to sell pancakes... What he’s doing. He’s successful in his business selling pancakes. I might not like pancakes, but it’s a business. This is a business. The record companies, they want what’s gonna get money. You get what I’m saying? Political rap unfortunately doesn’t touch as much people as stupid rap, because of society. Unfortunately, that’s just what it is. It’s a business. Record companies never tell an artist, “Do this, do that, do this.” Artists do what they want. But when it comes back from the public, that’s what happens. I mean, I could make political rap all day. I could go make a political rap album. Maybe it won’t do as good as a stupid rap, because the market is not there. It’s a business. They don’t tell you, make that song. Don’t sway them that way. What they do is just put out product. Whatever sells is what they keep going with, basically. I never been in a record company, where they said, “Make this.” It’s up to the artist to make what they like. Now if the artist is lucky enough to make something that the public gravitates toward, because I always tell every artist this, and I’m gonna tell you guys this too: There’s two parts to being an artist. You could be the greatest music maker, the greatest communicator, but that’s only one part. The other part is another magic called... It’s like magnetism to the audience. Certain artists have that. They don’t have to be the best artist as the other guy, but they have something that makes you like them. You get what I’m saying? I don’t know why I like that guy, but I like him, because he has that “It.” A lot of times, it doesn’t be the music. It’s two things. I tell every artist... I tell them, actually three things. Don’t quit your day job. That’s my first thing I tell them. Don’t quit your day job. I tell them that straight out. Then the other thing is make great music, but you have to obtain that electricity that the public likes, that, you know, “Why do I like this guy?” It’s like that. Some artists have that, the charisma that make people wanna spend their last money on their music, so I would say that those are the two most important things. Make great music. Do it, but also obtain that magnetism that make people like what you’re doing. Don’t be an assh---. Smile sometime, for real. You gotta pull them in, because it’s more than the music. It’s like that synergy. If you have that synergy, and you’re halfway talented, then the assh--- that’s good, you’ll probably beat him. That’s real talk. Keep that. Jeff Mao Anybody else? Audience Member Sorry. Just back to the lyric thing. Have you ever rejected lyrics from being used in one of your productions, because you were opposed to them or anything? Marley Marl Let me think. Let me think. No, I would usually let the artist talk about what they wanna talk about. Recently though, I don’t like homophobic lyrics or anything degrading anybody’s choice in their life, so what I would do, when I hear certain things, I be like, I don’t want that attached to me, so I would do it like that. Recently, it just started happening, but before, it was an expressions with just doing it. Fortunately, I didn’t have artists that want to bash anybody’s lifestyle and anything like that, so I didn’t have that problem, but now it’s more freedom of speech, and it’s a little different. I would, maybe, if somebody was talking about somebody’s lifestyle in a song that I made a beef, I would probably tell them to change it up. Yeah, the question in the back. Audience Member Hey man. Yeah, when Southern hip-hop first started becoming a thing, how did that affect your career, and how did you feel about it at the time? Marley Marl What kind of hip-hop? Audience Member Southern hip-hop. Marley Marl When selling hip-hop? Audience Member Sorry, Southern rap. Jeff Mao From the South. Marley Marl Oh, Southern rap, Southern rap. Southern rap is great, because it’s this. You gotta look at rap, again, as a tree. It branches out. I feel the same way I feel about Japanese rap. It’s just an extension. I feel the same way about French rap. It’s just an extension from the original tree, because guess what? If I speak Japanese, right, and I’m listening to a rap record, maybe I don’t know every… I know the words, but I don’t know the meaning. It doesn’t touch me as much. It’s like this. I think Southern rap, in America... See, southerners in America, they speak a different language from the city people. We speak a little more clearer, a little deeper diction, but in the Southern rap, it’s kind of like a drawl in the South, because you gotta think. A lot of the slaves that came to America wound up in the South. They ran to the North to get away from slavery. Now the northern cities is where we live. Now in the South, they have a drawl. They have their own language. It’s a whole different language. I could sit there and talk to a southern dude and not know what the fu-- he’s talking about, [laughter] but to be honest, everybody in the South knows what he’s talking about, so that creates a market. You get what I’m saying? It’s just another branch of the tree. I could never say it’s no good, because I don’t like it. I could say that it’s just a branch from the tree. I can’t say I don’t like Japanese rap. I can’t say I don’t like French rap, German rap, Spanish rap… I can’t say that, because it’s an extension from what started in the Bronx, so it’s just evolution, man. You can’t say, I don’t like that, because it’s not what it is. There’s a market for it. It sells, and at the end of the day, this is still a business. They’re selling records, so they have a market. Audience Member As the market for Southern rap grew, did it affect your career adversely at all? Marley Marl Not really, because at that point, when the South started expressing their language in rap and communicating to their people more, and you have to think too, they are more southern cities in the United States, so that means there’s strength in numbers. If I’m talking that language, you gotta think, the South in the United States starts from Philly on down, Philadelphia. And that’s way up in the country. Everything else is South. Pow. You know what I mean? So the Southern rappers talk to a bigger audience than the Northern rappers. That’s why the North is not that hot no more, because the South realized how to make this shit too. And we know how to talk the language to our people, just like maybe whoever was hot in Japan 15 years ago, a rapper, they not shit, because there’s rappers out here that speaking the language, that it crosses over better. I don’t wanna hear somebody rapping, I don’t know what he’s talking about in a different language. I got somebody over hear talking in my language, and I like it. And they’re catering to my issues, not what’s happening in the North, what’s happening in New York City… We don’t care about Timberlands, Timberland boots. We don’t care, because we don’t wear that down in the South. You get what I’m saying? Audience Member So there’s not much of a crossover. Marley Marl Right. Right, and it’s just a market. It’s strategic marketing, different markets for different music. Audience Member Thank you. Marley Marl All right. Audience Member Hello. Marley Marl Hello. Audience Member Hi, I just wanted to know what you’re into these days, and if you’re working on anything, what you’re vibing... Marley Marl Oh, basically, what I did, I took my career into music for the movies and stuff like that, since I have a big vast catalogue. A lot of my songs in my earlier career were going in movies, but I didn’t really care at that point, because it was just music to me, but now, my first scoring that I was doing for a movie was Notorious. I did a few scenes for Notorious, the B.I.G. movie, and I kind of liked it, so what I do now, I do soundscaping, and I do scenes for movies for the music, like I took it to there. The Step Up series, I do music for that. And I work with Disney... Oh, you do? Audience Member Yeah I’m a big fan. Step Up 4, yeah. Marley Marl Oh, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. A lot of people don’t like it, but like I say, there’s a market for everything. Everybody don’t gotta stomp the yard. You get what I’m saying? Everybody don’t have to do that. There’s some people in the suburbs that’s scared of that. They don’t wanna stomp the yard. They wanna see a more softer version of how I could do street dance. They don’t wanna fold their arms and be all... It’s not about being hard. Some people like the softer approach to dance, and that happens to be one of them. And it does it very, very, very well, because like I said, it talks to the people who accept that language. I mean, rap… Everybody’s like, oh bring rap back. You can’t bring rap back. You can’t bring hip-hop... “Marley, go make songs, and bring hip-hop back!” Look, it’s not coming back. I’m gonna let you know. It’s not coming back. It’s a tree that grew. That’s like saying the tree is... “Bring that tree back down to a little stem!” It’s not gonna happen. The tree grows, and this is what happens. When a tree grows, branches form and leaves from on those branches. And a lot of times, the leaves fall off, but guess what? The leaves come back next year. It’s that simple. Audience Member Thank you. Marley Marl Thank you. Question over here. Audience Member Hello, and thanks for being here. And with regard to what you were talking about your samples, other artists using your samples right now… When the first lawsuit start coming in ’91 and ’92, in the end of Golden Age and all that, how did that affect the way that you were working or your workflow, or anything about that? Marley Marl Well, basically, with me, lucky for me, I never got sued, because kind of like when I was sampling in the early years, you gotta think, one-point-five seconds as opposed to, what... Audience Member Nobody’s gonna sue you for a snare. Marley Marl Right. Right. That’s basically what... I was in the safe zone, when we started. When people started trying to emulate what I was doing, they took it too far, and that’s when the lawsuits started coming. “Oh, Marley, he’s sampling. Oh I can sample too. Let me get this one minute of a record, and sample it, and loop it up, and say I produced something.” This is what happened. And fortunately, I never caught up in that. As soon as I left Cold Chillin’, I think Biz Markie was the first person to get sued for sampling, because, all right, I gave him a sample-based album the first time out. All right, now he wanted to be his own producer, and he wanted to do what I was doing, so he went and took 30 seconds of a song, as opposed of point-five. You get what I’m saying. So they was like, “Oh, you can’t do that.” “No, Marley does it.” But it was different. And you gotta think, my sampling era was one-point-five, and that’s the most. Kicks, snares, hi-hats, “Funky,” [sings snippet] something like that. It was little pieces. It wasn’t 30 seconds of a song in a loop, and I’m saying, “I produced that song.” It wasn’t that, so sampling got out of control. I could say that. When I was sampling, I would say it was like the Wild West in the beginning. That’s what it was, and it just got out of control. And when the lawsuits started coming, and it didn’t really affect me. All right, I could clear the sample now. If it was something I was gonna use, like the LL album, I could say that was one of my first albums, when I did Mama Said Knock You Out, where I had a sample budget. Who would think? “You got $100,000 to sample what you want, a budget over here. And we’ll give you this for that,” So it was like, “OK.” It was like it’s simple budget, to clear $100,000 means you could clear your samples. If you go over that, it’s coming out of your money, so you have $100,000 to sample whatever the hell you want, and it was okay for me, because with sample clearances, I got a good law team together, and we would always just clear our samples. I never got sued for anything from sampling, because like I said, it was the earlier years. And I didn’t abuse it like that. I didn’t really abuse it like that. Audience Member Thank you. Marley Marl OK. Audience Member Thanks for being here. My question is about samples too, and the sampling process. What do you think about this new generation of producers who use boom-bap sample kits to make new stuff today with old-school samples. You talk about this snare, which changed the game in hip-hop. What do you think about people who, today, use these kind of samples to produce music? Marley Marl Well, it’s cool. Like I said, basically it’s part of the tree. Those people are catering to the people that like that, and it’s really cool because... Actually my son, he just made 20. He’s a producer. His name is M.Will the Shogun. He likes boom bap. He likes more things like that. His crew, that he like, that he hang out with, they don’t really make crunk music. They make a more head-bopping music like a premiere type stuff or early stuff we would do. I see that there’s people that like it, and it’s a good thing. It’s just showing what it could be, and it’s pretty cool. I have no objections to that, I like it. Audience Member Thank you again for your set yesterday and being here today. Two quick questions. One is, radio is really integral for artists to get their music heard by audience. Now there’s so many ways with free MP3s on the internet, and podcasts, and serious radio. What would be a good way to get on the radio, especially in New York. Is it through record labels or is it through people calling in and saying, “Can you play this song?” Or is it just by popular demand? What you hear on other stations? How do you go through getting tracks out? You also helped put a lot of people on by getting them on the radio. What do you think with our generation now, what would be the best way up? Marley Marl Well, these days, since I work at radio, a lot of things change. It’s not the same freedom as we used to have back in the day. For me, I do mix shows, I can basically play what I want to play. I do the major mix show so they don’t format me. But the regular people on the radio, that you hear every day, they’re not playing what they want to play. Everything’s written out. A lot of times, the major record companies, they’re in business with the radio stations. That’s why you hear only the major artists on the radio a lot, because they will come and do concerts for the radio station and the radio station will make money, and then they will play their music to promote the concert, and they’ll play their music and it promotes them too. Right now, for a new artist, it’s kinda hard if you trying to go mainstream. You definitely, if you looking to go mainstream, you definitely would need to be with a major, because they already in business. That promotion dollar... It’s so weird about a major deal and major stuff because today, they’re pushing you. You hear a lot of artist complain about that, “They not pushing me.” But you have your initial push in the first beginning of your album. Then comes your second single, they not pushing you no more. They money is not on you, it’s on the next artist. The artist like, “Yo, I got my second single. I’m trying to go.” But they already shifted. The money went to the next person. Now you hear the other people’s music more than the other artists. So they’re in business together. It’s basically like that. When the record companies throw that budget out and say, “We’re working him this month.” The radio stations are going on him, no matter what. Even if Prince had a single in the last album and it did real well and he’s trying come with his next one, if that record company’s not putting that promotion dollar into that next single, it probably won’t be heard the way it should be. It’s just how it is right now. I mean, the record companies promote what they want to push at that point. Whatever they see that’s generating money. Because it’s a business. You watch the money. “Oh we put out this, and that’s coming back, we’re gonna go with that.” “But what about that?” It’s business. Unfortunately, that’s just what it is. Audience Member To continue on the ever growing hip-hop tree, being someone who has been in hip-hop and have met a lot of people in hip-hop, now there’s this new queer rap scene. The genrezation of music, and then I guess, labeling people by their sexuality to actually profit and sell them. How do you feel about that? Has it come across to you? I know I’m personally labeled in that group a lot, but yet my content has nothing to do with sexuality. I’m kinda just like, “What do I do now?” Do I play with that and work with it as a business and try to go, “OK, this is gonna be my selling point?” I don’t know, it’s just a really interesting thing. And then I also think it’s kind of a silly thing just because there are so many great people in hip-hop that are open with their sexuality. They didn’t necessarily come out as gay or queer or whatever. They’re still celebrated and they are still being heard, and they don’t have to use their sexuality to sell them. I just think it’s really interesting place to be with in and also trying to navigate as an artist that’s unsigned and still trying to have some success as a businessman. Marley Marl Well basically, like I said, in that tree, a lot of leaves grow. There’s a market, you get what I’m saying? There’s people that like the music just as well, but they not kicking the same message. You’re not talking my language. Like I said, there’s a language barrier. Everything is a language barrier. If you could cross the language barriers, you’re good. Now, if you’re talking to a specific audience... Because, like I said, rap is not one thing like it was before. Big Daddy Kane could come out and it could go to this person, that person, this type of person, this type of person because that’s all they had. Now, it’s more seasoned up. For you, you should be good, because that’s a big, big market. It’s a big market, but you just gotta learn how to cultivate it. That’s the whole thing. It’s there for you. I find nothing wrong with any style of rap, any different genres of rap because you could do it now. We grew up now. It grew up into a multi-billion dollar industry. That’s not just from the street. That’s from downtown, that’s from uptown, that’s from the ghetto, that’s from the suburbs, and it’s from the mountains, it’s from anywhere. [laughs] The market there, that’s a big market. You just gotta learn cultivation of the market and then once you’re in, you’re good. You just gotta find... This is what I tell every artist too, this is when the artist are going in the studio: “Who are you making this for? What audience is this for? Are we just in the studio just rhyming and rapping and wasting time, or do you know who you’re making it for?” The best thing for an artist is to know your audience. Know who you’re making your records for. Don’t get mad if Light FM, the light stations don’t play your shit. Guess what? They don’t play that shit. You get what I’m saying? Don’t get mad if the old-school station don’t play your new-school rap, because they don’t play that shit. You make your stuff for your specific audience. This is what I tell artists all the time, “What are we making this for? Who are you making this for? “Oh, I’m making this for this.” “OK.” Boom.
You have an idea where it’s going? You’re not just throwing something in the air expecting to see success from it because guess what? That sh-- don’t always happen that way. It’s not gonna happen if you just throw it in the air and think it’s just gonna cultivate what you wanted it to do. No. Specifically set where you’re going. Hear a radio station that plays that music and say, “I’m making it for that radio station. I wanna hear it there because that’s where it’s gonna go.” Now you’re in a studio with that state of mind, you know what you’re doing. As opposed to just doing anything and throwing it in the air and see what sticks on the wall. That doesn’t really happen. I seen a lot of artist come in the studio with no direction and just want to rhyme, just want to rap and think that gonna change something. That never happens like that. Not cool. Audience Member Thank you. Marley Marl No, thank you. Good question. Audience Member Thanks for being here. You’re answering to a lot of questions by mentioning the market, but at the same time, it feels from you’ve said earlier that, when you started making music... The reason why you became famous at the beginning was you pushing boundaries and didn’t seem that you were so conscious about... It was more about... You mention many times that you wanted to do something different and that you were trying to do something that no-one was doing actually. That’s kind of the contrary of responding to the market. I just wonder what happened with that, because it’s a little contradictory, to me. Marley Marl Basically in the beginning, we didn’t have no rules. The thing, rap was just starting. We had the attention of everybody. Anything we do at that point is gonna be looked at and loved, because there’s only one source of it. It’s coming from there. Now, when you have so many different sources now, it’s too many choices. I could come like this, and it won’t be accepted the same way it was in the beginning, because in the beginning of rap, that’s all we had was us. Now, it grew out to something bigger where it’s different market placing now. So, in the beginning, you could do damn near anything because there wasn’t no choices. Audience Member But the markets are also created by people who are pushing the boundaries, you know? I think. For example, if you take the example of OJ was just mentioning about queer rap. I mean, someone had to be the first dude to be like, “I think I’m just gonna go do that.” Then it becomes a market and then you understand there are people who... Marley Marl I think that market was there before the person. That genre, I think the market was there before somebody jumped out. Audience Member Gay people were there, for sure. [laughter] Marley Marl But somebody had to speak the language, you get what I’m saying? Audience Member But that person who spoke the language first, I think they pushed the... Audience Member But they’re probably not seen as queer, you know? They are just a rapper or they are just that artist. They didn’t have to come up to it as being an artist that’s being pushed as this one thing. I think. Marley Marl Yeah, that market is there. What a person could do, you could push their boundaries, but when you push the boundaries, you gotta first see if people kinda like it. You know what I’m saying? You gotta see if your market is there because you can push the boundaries and be left going on the left, but everybody’s on the right. You get what I’m saying? So you’ll just be looked at like, “What you doing over there, everybody is doing this.” You get what I’m saying? So you gotta really figure out what people like. And if you wanna push their boundaries again, you could do it musically, but like I said push the boundaries, you have to have something about you that grabs the people to you. Like, Prince, for instance. Prince push the boundaries. That was later on in the music, but he pushed boundaries because he had the magnet that made people like whatever the hell he was doing. I don’t know why I loved Prince in the early time. I don’t know. Little dude jumping around in high heels. [laughter] Hey, I don’t know but he had something about him that made people like him. He had that energy. You could push the boundaries but you have to really make sure that there’s a market for it first. Really, else you’re just shooting into the wind. Well as for the early time in rap, we was the only thing happening. Whatever we did, they heard it in Japan. They went with it. Whatever we did, they heard it in France and just went with it, because we was the only game in town. Now when there’s a lot of games in town, you gotta learn how to play it. You gotta think, the early times in rap, we can do anything because there was only one rap stage. Right there, coming out of the Bronx and coming out of New York. So whatever we did on that stage is cool. Now, how many stages are there? That’s in that tree. There’s so many different stages right now. People on that stage now... What stage got the crowd? You get what I’m saying? It’s like a festival. There’s a lot of artists, but there’s only one crowd. Over there, over there. Alright, there’s a little bit of people over there. But that’s where everybody’s at, they’re over there with that artist, obviously that artist is doing something well. And there’s choices right now. There was no choices before, like there are now. Right now, it’s harder, because there are so many different choices. So many people know how to do it in their own language. So that’s another barrier. Before, if you was the only one in the 80’s doing it, you’re the only one. You’re gonna be in Japan. You’re gonna be in France. You’re gonna be in the UK because you’re the only person doing it. You get what I’m saying? In earlier years, it was different for me. As I went on through the years and started working in the music business, I started understanding what the business was about and it is a business. We have to make money. If you’re in this and you’re not making money, you’re not in it. You probably won’t... The record company will, “Next!” Get the next artist. Pushing the boundaries is good, but you really gotta make sure there’s a market for it. That’s a 100%. I don’t have anything about anybody pushing any boundaries, but make sure there’s a marketplace for it. That’s most important because it’s a business. Jeff Mao What if people don’t realize that they don’t want to hear it yet? Audience Member Exactly. Marley Marl Well... How does that go? They don’t realize that they want to hear it yet? Jeff Mao But we didn’t know... Marley Marl That’s a fluke. Sometimes there’s flukes. Just like just a friend, you get what I’m saying? You didn’t realize you want to hear Biz Markie sing. “You, got what I need.” [laughs] You didn’t know that until you heard him sing. That’s what that is. Jeff Mao We didn’t know we wanted to hear rap. Marley Marl That’s right. Well... Jeff Mao And then it came. We were very happy. Marley Marl Very powerful. That’s a very powerful thing. Jeff Mao So maybe there’s something that we haven’t realized yet can be a genre in music, a style of music. Marley Marl Give it to the world and see if the market accepts. Just put it out. Put it out and see if the market accepts. Just put it out and see if the market accepts because, like I said, there’s choices out there. There’s people speaking in your language. There’s people speaking in Japanese. There’s people speaking in French that, they’re connecting. They’re connecting to the people. Hey, put it out there and see. That’s what we call a fluke. Sometimes a fluke happens. You know every once in a while, you don’t know. But it’s not planned. It just happens. Who was our last fluke you heard about like this? That just blew up and changed everything? Audience Member I don’t know of the last one but I think the ’90s are a good time for music because, super weird stuff that came out and became pop... Marley Marl That’s when it started budding. Reaching out. Audience Member Yeah, the last one. Yeah, I don’t know. Marley Marl That’s when it started budding, really. That’s when it really started spreading out, the arms started reaching out on the whole music thing. Now, everybody started realizing how to do it. You get what I’m saying? “Oh, person did that? I can do it like this.” So that’s that one stage. Now the stage, you gotta fulfil that stage. There’s nothing wrong with trying to push the envelope. Nothing wrong with it. But, you have to make sure the market is ready. Once their ready, you better be ready. For real. I can’t think of too many artist that came out within the last 10 years that changed anything. Jeff Mao Anyone else have a question? Audience Member On the boring subject of sampling and copyright laws again. I guess, it is kind of important because it can end your career quicker, or at least, hinder it, or put a few obstacles in it. Now you were saying, you can use short snippets. At the same time, the Clyde Stubblefield, James Brown... Even the tiniest fraction of a beat, the ghost note, would something I would never be able to replicate, because that’s why I go and sample it. I want that. That’s like, I don’t know, zero-point-whatever seconds. At the same time I want that particular sound. So I’m possibly infringing another person’s copyright there. How does your legal team navigate those sort of things? I mean to the degree that you can actually get paid on using those samples. If I recall earlier from the Jay Z situation. Marley Marl Basically, we become new writers with the new song. If I sample something, it has to be cleared. Somebody would approach the owner and say, “Hey, he used your one-point-so-and-so on this. What do you think he deserve?” And say, “Hey, give me 20%.” Because that plays throughout the record. It depends on how much of it you use, and how much the person wants to charge you. Even for me, when people sample my stuff to this day, I have to listen to it, and I have to say, “Well, I think that’s 60% of my doings in your song. So I think I deserve 60%.” Let them put it out already and then come to me. I’m gonna get that 60%. Unfortunately, if they put it out, you get what you want because it’s already in the public. They can’t pull it back. So whatever you say is gonna happen. Usually, you clear it before it goes out to the public, and whatever you think it’s worth you tell them. Then they make the comparisons, and they make the price or whatever it’s gonna be. But when you clearing samples, they want to see how important it was to the song. It’s not even samples no more. Publishing. There was a song out by Kanye a few years ago, “Theraflu.” “Can a young n---a get money anymore?” Right? I made a song with LL, called “Illegal Search.” Where LL said, “Can a young n---a get money anymore?” And then Kanye says that in his song. We didn’t sue him. He gave us the publishing because he knows that came from LL Cool J’s song. He cleared the publishing, not the masters. So there’s two sides to everything. There’s master, publishing. Most of the time, masters are owned the record company. Publishing is owned by the artist. But if you’re lucky like me, I went back and sued Cold Chillin’. I own all my masters and my publishing, for all my Cold Chillin’ sh--, so I have to clear it twice. But in publishing side, you could take a word or a phrase from a song, and you have to clear it. He said that in the record, “Can a young n---a get...” That was his chorus. So it kept coming back in the song. So when I heard that, I was like, “Well, if that’s the chorus and it’s one of the most important part of the songs, we gotta get like a good 40% of that.” That’s the foundation of the record right there. The “Theraflu” record, me and LL owned 40% of the Kanye song, and it went pretty well. That was a big hit. It’s more than just the copyright sampling of the masters. It’s publishing too. I got a pretty good legal team and I got a pretty good eat. I could hear my records on anything. [laughter] Audience Member Well on that note, how do it work the whole administrative process if, let’s say, I say, your “Impeach the President” snare is a lot more appealing than the actual original one. Now, I go and sample yours; is J. B.’s estate getting anything off that? Or how does something like that work? Marley Marl Well the J.B.s didn’t own it, actually, a guy Aaron Fukes... What he did... This is the weirdest story in the world. He used to own Tough City Records. He still owns it. When I was living in Queensbridge, I was getting my production feet wet, and I would do remixes for him and fix up a lot of his records, right? He didn’t have a lot of money. He was like a... He used to do something for Billboard back in the day. I think he used to do the column for R&B in the ’60s. So he had all these 45s at his house. All these old records that you never even heard before. And what he would do is say, “Here, I’ll give you this bunch of records if you fix my Spoonie Gee record.” So he would give me a big pile of 45s that never came out. So, that’s where I found “Impeach the President,” at one of them piles. What happened, I started sampling “Impeach the President” on records. And you know, the records do pretty well, most of the songs. When I had sampled it on, “Around the Way Girl,” with LL Cool J, and we started selling 2, 3 million records, he goes and finds the owner of Impeach the President, and go buys the rights from them. But he gave me the record, that sample. Now, I made the sample hot. He goes buy the right and tries to sue me because I used it on “Around the Way Girl.” Audience Member So he’s like a musical hedge fund manager. Marley Marl Right, right. There you go. So I say this to say that, yeah you’re right. If we took a one-point-five, like the snare sound from a record and used it on “Eric B. is President,” and it was just that little... I think the original owners didn’t even know that we was using it. Like I said, statute of limitations. Early years of the Western times; whatever happens then, stays in the West. You know what I’m saying? [laughs] Yeah, you’re right. If we sample something in those days, and it gets resampled now, no the original owner probably, if he didn’t claim his stake then... Because it’s business, you know, statute of limitations and times. If you don’t move quick enough, it can get past you. That’s why I always listen for anybody that would have sampled anything that I put out, stuff like that. I don’t think anybody sampled my drum sounds from a record like “Impeach the President.” I don’t think anybody really blew up like that, if it wasn’t cleared. Everybody cleared the stuff when they was using my stuff. Audience Member I have this question: I know the legal time for one person to sample a sound like six seconds or something like that. Am I right? Marley Marl I wouldn’t say six seconds. Really any part of the recording that you can identify. Audience Member OK, I was going that way. Nowadays, I think that technology, society and everything is like too much information. Everything is so [inaudible]. Nowadays I can tell that they’re like genres, very specific genres that are based on not even a second of a sound. I don’t know. For example, ballroom house, that has these “Ha,” sounds. Or the ice rink, from grime. We can go straight off with lots of niche genres like this thunder music or Soundcloud music with lots of samples of video games, beats that you can directly say, like a coin sound from Mario Bros, that you know that sound is coming from that. Do you think that the legal part of sampling is gonna change in the near future? Since this small pieces of time represent a lot that I think, before, because there wasn’t that much information out there. Do you think it can change? Even micro sampling, way in the future, can be like, in this legal loop. Talking about beats from video games or very real short samples that can build a whole new genre of music. Do you think that legally that can change to be more, not restrictive, but controlled or more like... I don’t know, if you understand my question. Marley Marl Do you think will change, the way people make music because of the guidelines with sampling? Audience Member Talking about clearance of samples? For example, people won’t be allowed to use the Mario Bros coin sample, or something like that, because it make direct reference to another product or anything. Marley Marl I think if you use a Mario Bros sample on your record, and it’s just an underground hit that’s just playing in clubs and it’s not on a radio, it’s not generating a lot of fanfare and money, you could probably get away with it. But once it goes mainstream, and it becomes on the radio, you have publishing issues, because now it’s on TV and radio now. It’s official. When you put stuff on the radio or television, you have to pay for this through the publishing. You have to pay the publisher. Now, it would be wrong to have your stuff on TV as great as Mario Bros, something that popular and you didn’t clear it. That’s not cool. That’s really not cool. Do I think it’s gonna change how people produce? I think if you clear it, you’re good. It’s a business. You gotta clear it. It’s not the rebel years no more. You can’t rebelly do it and, “Hey, we just did it and it’s there.” It’s not like that because hey, whose to say your song may not get on the radio or somebody might not want it for a video game. You have to clear your publishing. It’s really a business, and you don’t want to put it out there and not have it cleared, because you’re just asking for trouble. I mean if it’s like something you gave to your friends and it’s something your DJ friends are just playing and you made it, who give a... [laughter Audience Member I know. You never know. You said that maybe in some years, that song that you lent to a friend becomes something mainstream or something that can be resampled. The question is talking about that legal part, for kids, even. It’s very common that nowadays there’s kids from I don’t know where, a 14-year-old, make this beat and suddenly... This guy Arca, he’s from Venezuela, he’s living in New York now, and he’s like 23, 24. He’s working with Jay Z or something like that. If that is gonna change the way, really junk producers make music. I don’t know. Because I think in the near future, now that Soundcloud or anything is gonna be more dangerous, it has that ice on it. They are gonna identify every... There are algorithms in YouTube that can listen or identify very specific pieces of sound. Marley Marl Like a fingerprint. Every music has its own fingerprint. Audience Member Yeah. Talking about like, DNA of a sample, or something like that. Do you think it can change the way of the sampling culture? Marley Marl I don’t think... I mean, if it’s cleared, you’re good money. If you trying to act like it was the Western time, when we first started, it’s not happening no more. After Biz Mark, I sent, sued, that ended all of that. That was ’90 or something, ’92-ish. They put the foot down on sampling. They shut it down at that point. Audience Member "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now”? Marley Marl Gilbert Sullivan. [sings] “Alone again, naturally...” He tried to sample that music. He went to clear it with Gilbert O’Sullivan, and Gilbert O’Sullivan said, “I don’t want my music on a rap song.” That’s when everybody was anti-rap. They went and used it anyway and got... That was the first sampling case that someone got sued for sampling, because they didn’t clear it. It’s about clearance. As long as you clear it, the artist, down the line, gets paid, basically. If you clear the sample... That started everybody clearing samples at that point. Before that, like I said, it was the Wild West. It was anything goes when it comes to making beats. Audience Member All samples cleared? Marley Marl Yes, because of that. He had to clear all his samples after that. Audience Member [inaudible] Marley Marl Right. Audience Member [inaudible] Marley Marl After that point, everything had to be cleared. That’s to make sure that, like he was saying earlier, if somebody sample’s your stuff, will the earlier artist get paid from it? But that was a good thing too, because further on down the line, it opens doors just for clearance. You have to clear it, because it’s a business. You don’t want to put something out and it does very well and there’s a sample in it and you get messed up because of that. You don’t want that. Jeff Mao Anybody else? A question for Marley? Well, I think there’s nothing left to say except, thank you to Mr. Marley Marl. [applause]