While speaking to former Too Poetic DJ Freddie “Kaos” Cox recently, he let it slip that there was an unreleased album the group had submitted to Tommy Boy in 1989. Long story short, I’ve been sitting on the interview for the past month and a half waiting on the LP, called Droppin’ Signal, to reach my inbox. Here it is for the first time on the Internet or anywhere outside of Wyandanch and Tom Silverman’s file cabinet: stream all 14 tracks off the lost album, produced by Too Poetic and Nate Tinsley, below.

A word about Too Poetic: before founding the Gravediggaz with Prince Paul, Frukwan and Rza, rapper Anthony “Poetic” Berkeley, a.k.a. Grym Reaper, was a member of this Wyandanch trio, with dueling DJs Kaos and Woody Wood. The group’s lone release was the 1989 Tommy Boy single featuring the house-y “Poetical Terror” on the A-side, and the better known “God Makes Me Funky,” co-produced by the late Paul C., on the flip. In this interview, Fred/Kaos recalls the history of this short-lived but memorable group, and his late partner Poetic, who died of colon cancer in 2001. Read the rest of this entry »

Known for the 1990 Zakia Records fast-rap gem, “Massive Material/Run For Cover,” Bolaji Barber recently re-emerged with a new album project called The Vinyls on his own Hotstyle Music label. I recently caught up with the North Babylon native over the phone from his new hometown of Orlando and, it turns out, he never really left rap behind. Read the rest of this entry »

Jonzhaft the Psychopath. All photos/flyers courtesy Oxygen

North Babylon, which borders Wyandanch to the south, is not a place many people associate with hip-hop. It’s a predominantly white town. But both LL Cool J and Freddie Foxxx grew up here, and the area has produced many other, less heralded rap talents like Bolaji (of Zakia Records fame) and the subject of the below interview, John “Oxygen” Everette.

I’ve known Ox for a few years, essentially since he started up the multi-regional group Sputnik Brown (which also includes another North Babylon native in Howard “Musa” Lloyd) and, since then, we’ve had many conversations like the one you’re about to read. It’s good knowing someone who was in the mix when hip-hop was really jumping off in the area ’80s but still has the enthusiasm of a “new” artist. What I didn’t initially know is that he was making his own records back then with local label LaRhon as Jonzhaft the Psychopath, and, later, with producer DJ Smash as part of the early ’90s acid-jazz project, Jazz Not Jazz. Here he shares some insight on the little-known rap hotbed he calls home, and his own history as an MC. Read the rest of this entry »

“Wyandanch Week” (Really a once-a-week series of installments) continues with producer/engineer/studio head James Nathaniel “Nate” Tinsley. Eric B. & Rakim, Groove B Chill, Too Poetic, Sid & B-Tonn—if they’re rappers from out of Wyandanch, they did their first studio recordings in Nate’s basement studio. Moving into house music in the early ’90s, he founded the label, Island Noyze, releasing records under the name Nathaniel X and as part of the group Vil-N-X (pictured above). After releasing a single by rapper Brotha Life, “The Wreck’a b/w Show Taker” on the label, he picked up the mic for 1995’s The Brotha Life and X Man 12″ on another Long Island label, Undercover, and a virtually unknown LP by the late ’90s crew, Ghetto Dawgz. Nate recently relocated to Medford, but continues to work with local Wyandanch talent at his home studio. Read the rest of this entry »