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ART OF SCRATCH
I bet if you do polls of Scratch DJs, find out what they use to scratch. Scratching is a thing where you don’t really care about the material, what you’re concerned about is if there’s a bassline that you want to freak. That bassline got to be big and loud. Or if it’s a kick drum, in order to get vucko, vucko, vucko, you gotta get a crazy tight loud kick on the first hit. You listen to all them Def Jam Records, all them Def Jam records start off with that boom-ka-chick-boom. So from a DJ standpoint those records are really fun to play with.
BELIEVE THE HYPE
I remember trying to sign Flavor Flav to Def Jam. Cat’s were like, ‘Yo man, what does he do?’ I was like, ‘He’s Flavor, man. He’s there to give flavor to whatever Chuck has got going on. ‘But does he rhyme?’ ‘Nah, he doesn’t rhyme. That’s what he does.’ He says, ‘Yo Chuck, that shit is crazy, let them niggas know what time it is!’ That’s the shit [now] in hip-hop. Everybody is taking [the hypeman] to mad levels.
FRANCHISE MARKETING
We were the ones who took the merchandising to another level. As the opening act we were selling as much merchandise as the closing act ‘cause everybody liked the target [logo]. Everybody wanted to be a Public Enemy. We had different types of arrangements, T-Shirts, long sleeves, hoodies and hats. We made sure we had a gamut of things available. Well, those were the old merchandising deals.
Now all that happened is the rap artists took the merchandising deals to another level. So now it becomes Ruff Ryder Jeans, Roc-A-Wear. It’s still a merchandising deal. Everybody knows its Jay-Z. It serves the same purpose as Jay-Z putting his face on a t-shirt and you buying it. The only difference is we’re more sophisticated so its now in a slicker form.